Printer's mark

“ I have freely availed myself of nearly all the works named in the “Bibliography” at the end, besides such invaluable works as Brunet’s “Manual,” Mr. Quaritch’s Catalogues, and the monographs on the various printers, Plantin, Elzevir, Aldus, and the rest. From Messrs. Dickson and Edmonds’ “Annals of Scottish Printing” I have obtained not only some useful information regarding the Printer’s Mark in Scotland, but, through the courtesy of Messrs. Macmillan and Bowes of Cambridge, the loan of several blocks from the foregoing work, as well as that of John Siberch, the first Cambridge printer. ”

“ Although the early history of the Printer’s Mark in Germany is neither extensive in variety nor startling in surprises, there are still very many features of general interest. And if the Printer’s Mark, as we have already seen, had its origin in Mainz, its development is certainly due to the Strassburg craftsmen. As no other city in Germany can show such a varied collection of beautiful Marks, examples of the Strasburg printers will preponderate in this chapter. ”

“ In beauty of design and engraving, the Printer’s Mark, like the Title-page, attained its highest point of artistic excellence in the early part of the sixteenth century. This perhaps is not altogether surprising when it is remembered that during the first twenty years of that period we have title-pages from the hands of Dürer, Holbein, Wechtlin, Urse Graff, Schauffelein and Cranach. In his excellent work entitled “Last Words on the History of the Title-Page,” Mr. A. W. Pollard observes “From 1550 onwards we find beauty in nooks and corners. ”

“ The very natural question, Which was the first Printer’s Mark? admits of an easy answer. It was employed for the first time in the form of the coupled shield of Fust and Schoeffer, in the colophon of the famous Psalter printed by these two men at Mainz in 1457. This book is remarkable as being the costliest ever sold (a perfect copy is valued at 5,000 guineas by Mr. Quaritch) : it is the third book printed, and the first having a date, and probably only a dozen copies were struck off for the use of the Benedictine Monastery of St. James at Mainz. ”

“ The ninth Mark of this printer was a large and handsome one, being a royal and heraldic device which Wynkyn de Worde used as a frontispiece to the Acts of Parliament, in the form of an upright parallelogram which encloses a species of arched panel or doorway, formed of three lines, imitating clustered columns and Gothic mouldings, and two large square shields, that on the left charged with three fleurs-de-lys for France, and the other bearing France and England quarterly, each of which is surmounted by a crown. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even in England, therefore, the merchant’s trade device was the direct source of the Printer’s Mark, which it antedated by over a century. It will be convenient, 53 first of all, to explain that the first printing-press in England was that of William Caxton at Westminster, whose first book was issued from this place November 18, 1477 ”

“ Thomas Woodcock employed a device of a cock on a stake, piled as for a Roman funeral, with the motto “Cantabo 12 Iehovæ quia benefecit”; Andrew Lawrence, a St. Andrew cross.
11
JACQUES DU PUYS.
Although not in any sense of a “punning” nature, the employment of a printing press as a Mark may conveniently be here referred to. It was first used in this manner, and in more than one form, by Josse Bade, or Badius, an eminent printer of the first thirty-five years of the sixteenth century, and to whom full reference will be found in the chapter on French Marks. ”

“ Here and there over some special book an artist will have laboured, and not in vain; but save for such stray miracles, as decade succeeds decade, good work becomes rarer and rarer, and at last we learn to look only for carelessness, ill-taste, and caricature, and of these are seldom disappointed.” These remarks 49 apply with equal force to the Printer’s Mark, although some exceptionally beautiful examples appeared after that period. ”

“ With W. Faques we exhaust the fifteenth century printers who employed marks to distinguish the productions of their presses.
Notwithstanding the similarity in their surnames it is not at all certain that Richard Fawkes (1509–1530) , who also appears as Faukes, Fakes, and Faques, was related to the last-mentioned printer. His books are now of excessive rarity. The unicorn (regardant on either side of the device) appears for the first time in an English mark. ”

“ In 1504 De Worde began the use of his best known device, first used in a Grammar of Sulpitius, of which the unique copy is in the library of Shrewsbury School. It is square in shape and divided into three parts. In the upper are the sun, two planets, and twenty stars, in the middle Caxton’s initials and mark, and in the lower the printer’s name on a ribbon, above which are a dog and a centaur. This device was used until 1518, when having got cracked and broken it was replaced by an almost exact facsimile. ”

“ Robert Estienne’s mark, and Bruce Rogers’s adaptation of it
EXAMPLE 541
An appropriate mark for a printer to adopt
The cross-and-globe device of the Venetian Society of Printers has proved the most popular of any of the old imprints. When Elbert Hubbard established the Roycroft Shop at East Aurora, N. Y., in 1896, he adopted it as a work-mark, placing an “R” in the lower half of the circle in place of the dot. ”

“ The elder, whose place of business was in St Paul’s Churchyard, must have been an important and rich man and seems to have spared no expense in ornamenting his books. As an example I may mention the great Sarum Antiphoner in two folio volumes, of which there is a copy in the Cambridge University Library. The fine title-pages were not the stock-in-trade of the printer Hopyl, but were specially engraved for Birckman, whose mark occurs in them. ”

“ Prou. xxii,” i.e. “A good name is better than much riches.” The second device, of which we also give an example, is self-explanatory, and is perhaps the more original. It has also an additional interest from the fact that it was used by William Copland, 1549–1561, who was probably a son of Robert, and who simply altered the mark to the extent of substituting his own Christian name for that of Robert in the scroll at the bottom of the device. Over sixty books by this printer are described by bibliographers, and many of them are in the British Museum. ”

“ François Gryphe, who worked in Paris, had one Mark which was original to the extent of the griffin being supported by a tortoise. J. Du Moulin, Rouen, employed a little picture of a windmill on his Mark, as did Scotland’s first printer, Andro Myllar; but Jehan Petit, a prolific fifteenth century printer of Paris, confined his punning to the words “Petit à Petit,” as is seen in the reduced facsimile title, given on p. 9, of a 7 book printed by him for T. Kerver. ”

“ In all the three quarto editions of 1536, none of which has [Pg 231] a printer’s name, is a woodcut of St Paul with his foot resting on a stone. These cuts though almost exactly similar are not identical. In one cut nothing is engraved on the stone, and the edition containing it is known as the “blank stone” edition. In another cut a mole is engraved on the stone, and the edition is known as the “mole” edition. In the third there is what is called an engraver’s mark, with the initials A. K. B., and that issue is called the “engraver’s mark” edition. ”

“ I've now been through all the text and I'm happy to regard it as proofread. Strangely, the poem Birthday lines on p.58 does not appear in the 1840 edition! One question, if I may:the printer's page markings in the footers were all taken out by Kathleen.wright. I know they don't show in the final product but I always but them in, so that the page appears as shown. Do I need to add them, or not? Esme Shepherd (talk) 11:15, 13 August 2019 (UTC) To the best of my knowledge, consensus is that printer's marks, not being part of the author's work, are not required, but also not forbidden. ”

“ The rapid improvements which have taken place in the printing press during the last twenty years, afford another instance of saving in the materials consumed, which has been well ascertained by measurement, and is interesting from its connection with literature. In the old method of inking type, by large hemispherical balls stuffed and covered with leather, the printer, after taking a small portion of ink from the ink-block, was continually rolling the balls in various directions against each other, in order that a thin layer of ink might be uniformly spread over their surface. ”

“ If the printing is to be done on a hand press, a lithographic leather roller is charged with printer's ink, and the plate, which has been fastened on a suitable bed-plate in the press, is rolled up while it is still moist. ”

“ But, let us say in parenthesis, that while we deprecate the lack of artistic culture that prevents our printers from turning out artistic work, we do not for a moment claim that that which is not artistic is poor, or that all printing that is not rough is not artistic. The half-tone and coated paper have their use. If, as a matter of news or information, exactness is required, any sensible printer will turn to the half-tone for assistance. ”

“ When good, cheap ink jets and laser printers hit the market, these noise hassles will end.
SPECIAL FEATURES
“Will it underline?” I asked. And would it offer boldface, the dark, heavy print that books often use for emphasis.
And what about other special features? How about proportional spacing, for instance, which prints the “M” wider than a “j”—making the type look more like a book’s. That could make the print more readable.
Another question is, “Does the printer offer justification?” It’s really a software issue. ”

“ The inferiority of the tools of the early printing office could be plainly exhibited by contrasting them with those of our time—the early hand-press with the modern cylinder printing machine—the entire collection of types made in the fifteenth century with the specimen book of any reputable modern type-founder. But the pride of the young printer in improvements which have been most largely made by the men of this century should be modified by the reflection that there has been no change in the theory, and but few changes in the elementary processes of printing. ”

“ This copper reproduction of the woodcut is filled in at the back with metal, mounted on wood, and is then ready for the printer, who has his ‘overlays’ all ready, and the business of printing begins.
There is nothing more wonderful in the history of printing than the rapid development of the printing machine and the extraordinary increase of its productive power. The ordinary press, though greatly improved, was found quite inadequate to the demands made upon it; and, the attention of practical men being directed to some more rapid means of production, the steam printing machine was invented. ”

“ But the modern printer, as a rule, dumps down the page in what he calls the middle of the paper, which is often not even really the middle, as he measures his page from the head line, if he has one, though it is not really a part of the page, but a spray of type only faintly staining the head of the paper. ”

“ Whether the printers were their own copyists, or whether they employed some one else to do this part of the work, we cannot say, but quite early in the sixteenth century, and from thence onwards to the close of the seventeenth, almost every head and tail piece and initial letter was copied and copied again without limit, and it must not be assumed, without the most careful examination and comparison, that any blocks, found in books having no printer’s name, show them to have been published by a certain printer. ”

“ The general solidity of a page is much to be sought for: modern printers generally overdo the “whites” in the spacing, a defect probably forced on them by the characterless quality of the letters. For where these are boldly and carefully designed, and each letter is thoroughly individual in form, the words may be set much closer together, without loss of clearness. No definite rules, however, except the avoidance of “rivers” and excess of white, can be given for the spacing, which requires the constant exercise of judgment and taste on the part of the printer. ”

“ With the progress of the art of printing during the last quarter of the nineteenth century there has come complexity in all its branches. Type has been wondrously multiplied, inks are in greater profusion, and varieties of paper have rapidly multiplied. The good printer of today needs to know the history of the evolution of type, ink, and paper, if he hopes to be able to cope successfully with the problems facing him. ”

“ At the end of each traverse of the colour carriage there is a pause, which gives the printer time to change the pawl into the new tooth of the index at which it is required.
The printer is guided in his selection of colours for each scroll that he prints by the “scale board” and the “design board.”
Scale boards vary according to the pitch of the design paper, and according to the length of the design, and the number of times in which a design repeats in one revolution of the printing drum. ”