“Owing to these causes the various Artists connected with book-writing and book-binding, as well as the trades necessary to them, received great encouragement, while to ensure speed as well as excellence of workmanship, division of labour was carried out to a great extent. Indeed, so important a branch of commerce had the manufacture of books now become, and so numerous were the various classes of craftsmen employed in this way at Bruges, that there sprang up in that city a Guild—‘The Guild of St. John the Evangelist,’ the patron Saint of Scribes—which in 1454 had a formal charter and privileges granted it by the Duke.” Other cities also had similar corporations. Thus, at Antwerp the Society of St. Luke was formed in 1450, and at Brussels there was a guild of Writers called ‘Les Frères de la plume.’ The Guild of St. John the Evangelist contained members of both sexes, and consisted of Book-binders, Book-sellers, Boss-carvers, Cloth-shearers, Curriers, Figure-engravers, Illuminators, Letter-engravers, Painters, Painters of Vignettes, Parchment and Vellum-makers, Printers, Print-sellers, School-masters, School-mistresses, and Scriveners and copyers of books.[31]
Coincident with this development of a thirst for classical learning, and a passion for literature amongst the great and wealthy, was the invention of Printing in the Western world.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] This is shewn, in the history of wood-cutting by Mr. J. Jackson, not to have been the original title of the work, which was rather, says the writer, a book for the use of preachers than the laity—“A series of skeleton sermons, ornamented with woodcuts to warm the preacher’s imagination, and stored with texts to assist his memory.”
[17] The blocks of the original Biblia Pauperum re-appeared in this city on the revival of wood-engraving in Holland; and it is the opinion of Mr. Bradshaw, that it was here the earliest of the block-books was produced. This opinion has additional importance attached to it, from the fact that Zwolle was, in the early part of the Fifteenth century, celebrated as a seat of learning. “Thomas à Kempis, according to Meiners, whom Eichhorn and Heeren have followed presided over a school at Zwoll, wherein Agricola, Hegius, Langius, and Dringeberg, the restorers of learning in Germany, were educated.”—Hallam’s Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 8vo. 1837. vol. i. p. 149.
[18] Some writers consider that the whole of the text of what are considered the first and last editions, and a large portion of the text of the other two, were printed from moveable wooden letters; others again assert, that these letters were made of cast fusile metal. No positive proof, however, has been, or can be given that they were the latter. That the texts were separately printed, is evident, from the different inks employed, the burnished appearance of the paper at the back of the cuts, and the indentations at the back of the lines of type. These last, differing considerably in different specimens, give rise to differences of opinion as to whether the impressions were produced by an ordinary printing press, or by some other method of imparting pressure. The presumption is that all, or nearly all, the impressions of the oldest specimens of the art, printed only on one side of the paper or vellum, were taken in the Chinese way. Before the press was invented, there certainly was a possibility, but that was all, of printing otherwise; but after its invention, impressions could most easily be taken on both sides of the paper, without the risk of spoiling the first, while ‘perfecting’ (i.e. printing) the reverse or blank side of the sheet. As the press was not an essential in block-printing, it was probably not thought of in that embryonic state of the art. But after separable, and especially metallic, letters were made, the press could no longer be dispensed with; types would be all but useless without it; for although impressions might still be taken by careful rubbing, the paper being sufficiently damped, that process would be attended with much additional trouble, owing to the precautions rendered necessary to avoid cutting through the paper, or otherwise spoiling it by blacking the margins on the inked coffin or chase in which the types, when formed into a page, were screwed or quoined or wedged together. The date of the invention of the Letter press, by the adaptation of the screw to the purposes of book-printing, is thus an important element in the consideration of questions relating to the origin of Typography.
[19] About £1000, or £1200, of current English money.
[20] Paper with the same water-mark was also used by the First Printer in England. Vide Plate IX in vol. ii. of The Life and Typography of William Caxton.
[21] Letter in Builder, Nov. 26, 1870.
[22] So called after Andrea Mantegna, a celebrated Italian painter and engraver, born in Padua 1431, died 1505. Cards designed and coloured by this artist are very highly prized.
[23] Builder, Nov. 19, 1870.
[24] “The word which has been translated printed is ‘stampide’ (‘Carte e figure depinte e stampide’), and the question arises as to the meaning of that word in 1441. ‘Stampide,’ according to Florio, signifies ‘to print, to presse, to stampe, to form, to figure;’ and ‘stampe’ in like manner, besides a print or impression, is said to be ‘a marke, a shape, a figure.’ The word existed before printing, in its modern sense, had been heard of, and the natural application of it to the new art, does not in the least determine the question of when that art was invented. ‘Stampide’ in 1441, might simply mean formed, figured, or shaped, by the means of the stencil, a process which we know was adopted at that period, and which being much more rapid than drawing and coloring by hand, would doubtless affect very seriously the art of the card illuminator, similarly as photography, at the present day, has the art of the miniature painter.”—J. R. Planché. Builder, Nov. 19, 1870.
[25] This phrase seems specially to refer to the method of stencilling.
[26] Equivalent to about £5 15s. sterling.
[27] St. Louis of France, after his return from the Crusade, [A. D. 1254], interdicted the use of all playing cards throughout his dominions. They were also forbidden by the Council of Cologne in the year 1281. These prohibitions most probably arose from their being used for purposes of fortune-telling.
[28] Gringonneur was paid for the cards drawn and painted for Charles VI in 1392, fifty-six sous of Paris, which is calculated to be about £7 1s. 8d. of our present money, and a single pack of “tarots,” admirably painted about 1415 by Marziano, Secretary to the Duke of Milan, cost the enormous sum of 1,500 golden crowns (about £625); but in 1454 a pack of cards intended for the Dauphin of France, cost only five sous of Tours, about 11s. or 12s.—The Arts in the Middle Ages, by M. Paul Lacroix.
[29] Several ancient specimens of Greek and Roman signets are still extant. The most remarkable of these is a brass sigillum of C. J. Cæcilius