Imprint

“ In modern times we should probably say the imprint, for although the printer’s name, as well as the publisher’s, may be given at the bottom or on the reverse of the title-page, it is more usual to find it at the end. The ancient colophon also gave this information, but it commonly gave much more. To understand the part it played in early printing, we must go back to its predecessor, the manuscript. ”

“ There are even, as Kirchhoff points out, [345] instances of scribes preparing their manuscripts from printed “copy,” and there are examples of these manuscript copies of printed books being made with such literalness as to include the imprint of the printer. ”

“ Mark—Recent adaptations—Story of the device—A colophon-imprint—Designs with ancient motives—The unique mark of the De Vinne Press—Imprint-devices based upon architectural motives—Initials in monogram form—Representative devices used by commercial printers—Decorative imprints with typefounders’ material—Harmony of type, rule and ornament—Small type imprints—Where should an imprint be placed—On books—On small commercial work—A legitimate opportunity for publicity that should be. ”

“ This stamp was never issued perforated, and any specimens so catalogued will be found to be the reprints. The printer's imprint is at the bottom or top of the four centre rows in the sheet. As the Department is accustomed to call the half sheets issued "sheets," it is often difficult to know which is meant. It has been stated that there are only 100 stamps on the plate. The imprint is 4 mm. from the stamps, and the places where the stamps are to be cut apart are indicated by single lines ruled horizontally and vertically. ”

“ Aldus’s anchor-and-dolphin device, and adaptations by modern printers
If a commercial printer has not been in the habit of placing an imprint on his product, and he decides to do so, customers should tactfully be made acquainted with the innovation. They probably stand ready to be convinced of its reasonableness. ”

“ The imprint to this tract ran 'Printed at Ipswich,' but its real place of printing was London, and perhaps the name of Robert Raworth, which occurs in the indictment, may stand for Richard Raworth, the printer whom Sir John Lambe declared to be 'an arrant knave.' Or the printer may have been William Jones, [12] who about this time was fined £1000 for printing seditious books. ”

“ Only in the very early days of cloth binding were spines unimprinted. Of course labelled books, whether in boards or half-cloth, never show publishers' imprint at the tail of their spines.
Always examine end-papers. The quality of Victorian end-papers cannot be obtained to-day, and it is rare that the substitution in one book of an old end-paper from another is so neatly done as to defy detection.
Library labels and their horrid traces have no place in a fine copy. ”

“ Full will note carefully whether there is any change in a new edition, or whether it is merely what the Germans call a title-edition (the same matter with a new title-page) . Medium and Short generally content themselves with noting the number of the edition. Short often takes no notice of the edition. {74}
D. IMPRINTS. 178. The imprint consists of place of publication, publisher’s name, date, number of volumes, number of pages, number of maps, engravings, and the like, and typographic form, which are to be given in the above order. ”

“ But it is really the Library of Congress that must be consulted as to the desirability of many contents notes.
Mr. Hanson: That has been one of the perplexing questions with us in printing cards. We do use the contents as analyticals to some extent, underscoring the particular item on the heading given. But where an analytical is what we catalogers call an imprint analytical, that is, with separate title and pagination, we find it more economical to print a separate card for that title. In other cases and where we find it very inconvenient to use the contents card, we print analyticals. ”

“ Nowadays the thumb print of each employee is taken and when he comes up to draw his money and there is any doubt as to his identity he makes a fresh imprint, which easily disposes of the matter. Rich men disposing of their property by will, in addition to their regular signature, also place the finger prints of both hands on the paper, thereby insuring the authenticity of the document. An easy way to protect a check is to put the thumb print where the figures are written in. ”

“ The 1⁄2c value, which we have left until last on account of its different sheet arrangement, had the “Montreal” imprint, described in connection with the other values, arranged six times on the margins—above and below each pane, at the right of the right hand pane, and at the left of the left hand pane—so that there were three imprints on each of the “post-office” sheets of 100 stamps. In addition, to quote Mr. Howes, “over the top inscription of the right pane is the reversed figure 1, 4 mm. ”

“ Because of inconsistencies in the treatment of main headings for some kinds of works, erroneous dating, and incorrect attributions of authorship, the Index frequently offers the only convenient way to locate unsigned publications. The History of Printing tab in Early American Imprints offers far better access to individuals in the book trade than do the lists of printers and publishers in vols. ”

“ In the first place it must be remembered that during this period, when the censorship of the press was severe, printers and booksellers often contented themselves with placing their initials in the imprints, and almost every name that figures in this volume might have been duplicated amongst the initials, thus swelling the volume to an inordinate size, without any corresponding advantage to the student. Identification of such initials as, say, "T. B.," which may apply to half a dozen different men, must be largely guesswork, unless based on a special study of the work in which they occur. ”

“ To those who read it through, however, Pioneer Imprints will give some idea of the movement of printers and presses across the Nation, as well as insight into the nature and history of the Library's holdings. ”

“ As we have seen, the typical book during the first quarter of a century of the history of printing is one in which the printer supplied the place of the scribe and of the scribe alone. An appreciable, though not a very large, percentage of early books have come down to us in the exact state in which they issued from the press, with a blank space at their beginning for an illumination, blanks for the initial letters, blanks for the chapter headings, no head-lines, no title-page, no pagination, and no signatures to guide the binder in arranging the sheets in the different gatherings. ”

“ The name of the printer, the author, and the publisher was to be placed in every book, and, with a view to encouraging English printing, it was decreed further that no merchant or bookseller should import any English book printed abroad. No person was to erect a printing-press, or to let any [Pg 179] premises for the purpose of carrying on printing, without first giving notice to the Company, and no joiner or carpenter was to make a press without similar notice. ”

“ Proofs are taken from the type in galley and in page form, which are read for errors, so that corrections may be made before the type is sent to press. At least two proofs of the type—a galley proof and a page proof—are always taken and read for errors, and very often in careful work several proofs of each kind are ‘pulled’ and read by different persons. See Proof-Reading.
The printer's form may consist of any number of pages from 2 to 128. ‘Imposition’ is a method of arranging pages so that they will follow one another upon the printed paper in the proper consecutive order. ”

“ It is clear that the specialist must know a good deal more about his stamps than was demanded of the general collector. In the first place, he must be able to distinguish one form of printing from another. For his benefit it may be well to mention that the chief processes employed in printing stamps are (1) Typography, (2) Lithography, and (3) Engraving.
Typography, or surface-printing, is the process employed in the production of our current British stamps. A die is cut with the design standing out in relief—i.e., the portions which are to receive the ink are raised. ”

“ The printer’s type (see Typography) would as a rule be based on a handwriting considered by the scribes appropriate to works of the same class; the chapter headings, headlines, initial-letters, paragraph marks, and in some cases illustrations, would be added by hand in a style which might closely resemble the like decorations in the manuscript from which the text was being printed; there would be no title-page, and very probably no statement of any kind that the book was printed, or as to where, when or by whom it was produced. ”

“ When a Manuscript intended for the Press has been written hastily, has many erasures and interlineations, or is otherwise to any extent rendered partially, or perhaps in some cases wholly illegible, the consequence will be, that if given into the hands of the Printer in that state, the Printing will be retarded, the expense of Printing increased, and much additional trouble occasioned to the Author, in correcting those errors, (should he discover them,) which a clearly written Manuscript would have entirely prevented. ”

“ The service rendered by printing to engraving, it may be parenthetically remarked, is a great set-off against the injury it inflicted upon art in the shape of pictorial illustration. All these circumstances indicate the strong influence of the scribe upon the printer; and it is perhaps not surprising that the latter should for some time have followed the example of his predecessor, and given no title except occasionally the brief heading which frequently precedes the first chapter of a manuscript. ”

“ It is the function of the Calligrapher to revive and restore the craft of the Printer to its original purity of intention and accomplishment. The Printer must at the same time be a Calligrapher, or in touch with him, and there must be in association with the Printing Press a Scriptorium where beautiful writing may be practised and the art of letter-designing kept alive. ”

“ A certain number of these bindings have been settled as the work of a certain man in another way. When the binder was a printer, or a stationer of sufficient importance to have books printed for him, [Pg 119] then we can identify the mark on his bindings by means of the mark used in the books.
For instance, to take an early example. We have bindings by Julian Notary, the printer, which bear his initials and mark, and the mark, of course, is the same as the one he uses in his books, while in them his name is in full. ”

“ But why should a printer use an old, quaint-looking type for printing and reprinting, with differences, one sheet for a book which he had printed entirely with a new and better type employed for many other works? We rather assume that the leaves are the remains of a complete (the second Dutch?) edition in Speculum type 2 and were used on this occasion as substitutes for the two corresponding leaves of the third edition, which had become defective or momentarily unavailable. ”

“ General Magazine advertising of paper has been principally devoted to writing paper. This is natural, since of all paper products this commodity has the largest number of buyers, and the matter of taste is not so over-shadowed by technical considerations, as in the case of printing papers.
The specifications for general printing, involve more knowledge of printing processes than most people possess, hence the final decision rests in a majority of cases on the printer’s judgment, so that logically the printer is the most necessary individual to convert. ”

“ No form was to be kept standing to the injury of workmen. The meaning of this is clearer when we remember that all composition at this time was hand composition and that stereotyping and other methods of preserving forms were not known and consequently a reprint or re-issue was, excepting for absence of editorial work, a new job. If there was expectation that a new reprint might soon be required and the printer had the type to spare he might leave a form standing and so avoid the labor of recomposition. ”

“ The various arts of the printer.The workshop of an early printer included not only compositors and printers, but also cutters and founders of type, illuminators of borders and initials, and skilful binders who could cover books with various qualities and kinds of binding [154] . A purchaser in Gutenberg's shop having bought, for example, his magnificent Bible [155] in loose sheets would then have been asked what style of illumination or rubrication he was prepared to pay for, and then what kind of binding and how many brass bosses and clasps he wished to have [156] . ”

“ Laws of copyright and patent still clung to printing,223 but, except for a proposal made about 1695 by one W. Mascall224 that every printer, letter-founder and press-maker should enter with a statement on oath the number of his presses, the weight of his letter and the extent of his other utensils, we find no reference to letter-founding in the Public Records for upwards of a century. ”

“ For a long time after the invention of printing, the printers sold their own publications; and, in doing this, especially at some distance from their establishments, they were aided by those who had formerly been employed as copyists. Some of these travelling agents, at length, became stationary, and procured the publication of works on their own account.
6. The first bookseller who purchased manuscripts from the authors, and caused them to be printed without owning a press himself, was John Otto, of Nuremburg. He commenced this mode of doing business, in 1516. ”