Printing in the Western world began with Johann Gutenberg and his monumental Bible of 1455. The invention of printing from movable type changed the production of books from being written out by hand, one at a time, to printed editions as we know them today. This led to a vast increase in the publication of books, encompassing a multitude of both religious and secular subjects. Books printed in the fifteenth century, known as incunabula (a term which refers to "the cradle" of printing), are prized as artifacts of the infancy of printing ...
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Venice: Heironymous Scotus, 1550-1551. Quarto. 75ff. Woodcut device on title page and last leaf, several geometrical text figures, two ten-line and two five-line initial capitals. A book of commentary by the sixth-century Greek philosopher Philoponus, who also went by the name John the Grammarian for his scholarship on language. Although... More
Los Angeles: Kenneth Karmiole, Bookseller, 1981. Quarto. 28pp. One of 164 copies. Scriptores Astronomici Veteres is a collection of Greek and Roman astrological texts, of which the most important is Maternus's Mathesis, the most extenstive astrological book from antiquity. Here, the original leaf is from Liber Octavus, printed by Aldus... More
San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1938. Quarto. 53pp. One of 297 copies printed for the Book Club of California by Edwin and Robert Grabhorn. Tipped-in is a leaf from the Polycronicon, with a rubricated initial on the recto and verso. It contains a passage on the campaigns of Cyrus the Great... More
San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1938. Quarto. (2)ff.,15pp. One of 260 copies. The original leaf is from folio ccxiii of the Pynson 1509 edition. The essay by James D. Hart is decorated on each page with charming color-printed facsimiles of woodcut fools. Leaf lightly stained, else fine. Bound in linen-backed printed... More
Akron & Evanston: Bruce Ferrini /Hamill & Barker, 1993. Folio. 40pp. One of 166 copies. With an original leaf from the fourth edition of the Latin Bible, printed by Gutenberg's successors. The leaf contains text from Deuteronomy 9:17 through 12:6, a significant passage in which Moses returns from Mount Sinai... More
Los Angeles: Plantin Press for Bernard Rosenthal and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, 1971. Folio. 13pp. One of 193 copies printed for Bernard Rosenthal and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge at the Plantin Press, with an original leaf printed on vellum by Peter Schoeffer at Mainz in 1472. It is one of... More
Los Angeles: Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop, 1950. Tall quarto. 62pp. One of 300 copies printed by the Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop. The leaf is from the portion of the Chronicle on the sixth age of the world. It bears two woodcuts on the recto and six... More
Boston: Nimrod Press, 1966. Folio. 7pp. One of 125 copies. A discussion of Jenson’s life and influence, with a leaf showing his beautiful Roman type from the 1472 edition of Pliny’s Natural History, printed in Venice. Even more than 500 years after Jenson first developed his Roman type, it is... More
Paris: Simon du Bois for Geoffrey Tory, 1527. Octavo. 140ff. With twelve woodcut illustrations from thirteen blocks, Tory's "pot cassé" device on title page and colophon, and each page with a four-piece border in twenty-six distinct combinations. The lower blocks of several borders feature coats of arms, including those of... More
