Illuminated Manuscripts Vol. 6

A fine collection of High Renaissance page borders, it includes hand pained Illuminated borders as well as borders printed from wood blocks (woodcut blocks). This volume is dedicated to frontispieces and title pages of early printed books of the High Renaissance. Woodcuts and engravings of frontispieces, title pages, page borders, chapter headers, capital initial letters and printer's devices were needed for this new fast growing craft. The invention of the printing press did not immediately do away with manuscript writing and illuminating; books were also printed before the end of the fifteenth century, but they looked pretty much like the ones copied by hand. Woodcut blocks existed before the invention of the printing press, but it was their use in printing that created a huge demand for the services of woodcutters and then engravers; the blocks could be locked into the forme together with the type and printed in the same process. The blocks were typically made of a plank; fine grain wood such as beech, apple, or pear was used. The spaces that were to remain white were cut away with knives and burins; blocks functioned in the same manner as the characters: the relief surface received the ink and produced the image on the paper. Some of these Title Pages and Illuminated Initials were cut on metal, the most common being dotted in the "manière criblée". Rapidly presses were functioning in most of the countries of Western Europe. Printers tended to establish in large urban centers where there were scholars, ecclesiastics, lawyers and nobles who formed their major customer-base. Works in Latin formed the bulk of the earliest printing, but as books became cheaper, works in the various vernaculars (or translations of standard works) began to appear. Often the printer was also the artist and the engraver, the calligrapher and the bookseller.