XXVI The Tools and Usages of the Early Printers.

THE first processes in the practice of typography—the cutting of punches and making of moulds—demanded a degree of skill in the handling of tools and of experience in the working of metal rarely found in any man who undertook to learn the art of printing. They were never regarded as proper branches of the printer’s trade, but were, from the beginning, set aside as kinds of work which could be properly done by the goldsmith only. Jenson, Cennini, Sweinheym and Veldener seem to have been the only printers of the fifteenth century who had the preliminary education that would warrant them in attempting to cut punches with their own hands. p515

Not every goldsmith370 could do this work with neatness, and for this reason, as well as for the sake of economy, many beginners bought their matrices from the printers who owned punches. In some cases the types were bought outright, but matrices which gave the means of renewing a worn-out font must have been preferred. That there was a trade in matrices before type-foundries for the trade were established is shown by the appearance of the same face of type in many offices. The Round Gothic types cut by Jenson were frequently used by printers in France and Germany. Certain faces of types used by Caxton and by Van der Goes, by Leeu and Bellaert, by Machlinia and Veldener, are identically the same, and must have been cast from matrices struck from the same punches.

The styles of the early types were not invented by printer or punch-cutter. The Pointed Gothic letters of Gutenberg’s Bibles and of the Psalter of 1457 are like those of the choice ecclesiastical manuscripts of that period. The Round Gothic letters of the Catholicon and of the Letters of Indulgence are of the form then used by German copyists in popular books. In Italy, the first types were cut in imitation of the popular form of Roman letters, or in the southern fashion of Round Gothic; in the Netherlands, they present the peculiarities of Flemish writing; in France and Burgundy, they were, for the most part, in the favorite French style of Bâtarde ancienne. In no instance did the printer invent a new style: he did p516 no more than direct his punch-cutter to imitate, as closely as he could, the letters of a meritorious manuscript. In this matter, as well as in the arrangement of types, he followed the fashion set by an approved copyist or calligrapher. The peculiar characters371 of different languages were produced as they were required, somewhat slowly and of unequal merit, by different printers. The limitations of typography were not fully perceived, and many unsuccessful attempts were made to produce types and sectional wood-cuts that could be used in the construction of maps, ornaments and pictures.372

The Gothic character was more popular than the Roman, but there were mechanical reasons why many printers preferred it. It was not so quickly cut, but its broad face, free from hair-lines, was more readily founded. It could be inked with facility and printed with more evenness of color, and it would not show wear as soon as the Roman. Early printers, who had no Roman, were loud in their praises of the Gothic.373 It was preferred by Verard, Pigouchet, Kerver, and nearly all French and Flemish printers. It did not entirely go out of fashion in Southern Europe nor in France until the close p517 of the sixteenth century. It might have been supplanted by Roman characters in Germany, if there had not been at this time a strong prejudice against Roman customs and fashions of all kinds. Attempts at change were frequently made, but they were always unsuccessful.

The steel bought for the type-foundry of the Ripoli Press was probably intended for punches. The use of this metal in other type-foundries may be inferred from the sharpness, when new, of many fonts of early types. That the moulds were of brass is indicated by the allusions of early writers and printers to types made in brass. The matrices were of copper, but it is not probable that they were struck in cold metal, for it required great force and still greater discretion to strike the punch truly, and the risk of breaking it had to be hazarded. For the matrices of the large types of Gutenberg’s Bibles and the Psalter of 1457, copper softened by heat374 should have been, and probably was, provided.

When the secrets of type-making had been divulged, the printers who found difficulties in making or buying matrices tried to evade its necessary conditions and cheapen its processes. The types of wood with holes for wire, described by Specklin and others, must have been punches of wood which had been made in the belief that it would be cheaper to cast words than to cast and compose single letters. The matrices of lead noticed by Enschedé were probably made by striking the punch of wood in half-melted metal, after the process described by Didot. The punch of wood, burned by contact with hot metal, was repaired, altered and renewed; the matrix of lead,375 clogged by the adhesion of metal, became defaced, and was soon worn out. Every change in punch or matrix produced a corresponding change in the cast type. p518

The types of the fifteenth century were made without system. The dimensions of each body and the peculiarities of each face were determined chiefly by the manuscript copy which had been selected as the model. No printer had any idea of the advantages to be derived from a series of regularly graduated sizes, nor of the beauty of a series of uniform faces, nor of the great evils they would impose on themselves and their successors by the use of irregular bodies.376 A classification by scale of the types of any printer of this period will show that there are often wide gaps between the larger, and confusing proximities between the smaller, bodies.377

As the size of every body is determined by the mould in which it is cast, it would seem that there must have been a separate mould for every distinct body.378 But this inference is encumbered with fatal objections. The type-mould of hard metal is, and always has been, a very expensive tool, and it cannot be supposed that any early printer made two or four moulds for one body when one mould would have served. It p519 is much more probable that he tried to make one mould serve for two or more bodies. The inventor of the mould may have thought that it should be constructed with adjustments, so that it should cast different bodies as well as different widths of types. The practicability of a mould of this description is properly demonstrated by the old-fashioned adjustable mould for irregular bodies, or by the mould used for casting leads, which can be so enlarged or diminished that it will cast many bodies or thicknesses. If we suppose that this mould was used by Gutenberg for casting the two bodies of the Letters of Indulgence, and by the unknown printer of the Netherlands for his four bodies of English, and that it was, of necessity, newly set or adjusted each time a new font was cast, we shall at once have a precise explanation of irregularities which are unaccountable under any other hypothesis. Casting types without the system, standards and gauges which modern type-founders use, it is not surprising that the first printers made types with differences of body. It was the impracticability of casting in this primitive mould, at different times, types of uniform body, that compelled later type-founders to discard it, and to use instead a mould for each body.

The casting of the types, which was always done in the printing office, was then adjudged a proper part of a printer’s trade. The earlier chroniclers said the first types were made of lead and tin. The Cost Book of the Ripoli Press specifies these metals, and obscurely mentions another which seems to have been one of the constituents of type-metal. If this conjecture can be accepted, types were probably made in the fifteenth century, as they are now, of lead, tin and antimony.380 Not one of the millions of types founded during the fifteenth p520 century has been preserved, nor is there in any old book an engraving or a description of a type. This neglected information has been unwittingly furnished by a careless pressman in the office of Conrad Winters, who printed at Cologne in 1476. This pressman, or his mate, when inking a slackly justified form, permitted the inking ball to pull out a thin-bodied type, which dropped sideways on the face of the form. The accident was not noticed; the tympan closed upon the form, and the bed was drawn under the platen. Down came the screw and platen, jamming the unfortunate type in the form, and embossing it strongly in the fibres of the thick wet paper, in a manner which reveals to us the shape of Winters’ types more truthfully than it could have been done even by special engraving. The height381 of this type is a trifle less than one American inch. The sloping shoulder, or the beard, as it was once called, was made to prevent the blackening of the paper, for it would have been blackened if the shoulder had been high and square.382 The circular mark, about p521 one-tenth of an inch diameter, on the side of the type, was firmly depressed in the metal, but did not perforate it. As this type had no nick on the body, it is apparent that the circular mark was cast there to guide the compositor. When the type was put in the stick with the mark facing outward, the compositor knew, without looking at the face, that it was rightly placed. There is no groove at the foot. Duverger says that the early types had no jet or breaking-piece; that the superfluous metal was cut off, and the type made of proper height by sawing.383 These details may seem trifling, but they are of importance: they show that, in the more important features, the types of the early printers closely resembled ours.

There is a disagreement among bibliographers about the quantity of types ordinarily cast for a font by the early printers. Some, judging from appearances which show that one page only was printed at an impression, say that they cast types for two or three pages only; others maintain that they must have had very large fonts. That the latter view is correct seems fully established after a survey of the books known to have been printed by Zell, Koburger, Leeu, and others. It would have been impossible to print these books in the short period in which we know they were done, if the printer had not been provided with abundance of types.384 As the types were made in the printing office, by a quick method, from an alloy which could be used repeatedly for the same purpose, the supply was rarely limited by fear of expense.

The trades of compositor and pressman, and possibly that of type-caster, were kept about as distinct then as they are now. There were more compositors than pressmen, and the p522 compositors, says Madden, in the heroic age of printing, were not boys, but men of education and intelligence. The early printers who were taught the business that they might become masters had to pay a premium for their education.385 In the brief time that they gave to the work, their education must have been more theoretical than practical. As the branch of composition required the largest number of workmen, and more intelligence, and less manual labor than any other, it was usually selected by the pupil for practice. Of type-casting and presswork he learned no more than was sufficient to enable him to direct the labors of his future workmen. The knowledge of the trade which the pupil coveted was the ability to practise it on his own account, and this knowledge was, in most instances, satisfactorily acquired when he got a theoretical knowledge of its secret processes.

The frequent specification of the formen in the earliest notices of printing shows that the mould, with its accompanying matrices, was regarded as the key to the knowledge and practice of the art. As the moulds were made by master mechanics, not bound to secrecy, and as the earlier compositors had some knowledge of the process of type-casting, it was not difficult for a journeyman to become a master printer. When he had bought a type-mould and matrices, he could go to any city and begin to print books. He could cast types and mix ink as he needed them; he could buy paper and the constituents of type-metal in any large town; properly instructed, any joiner could make the press.386

The annexed illustration, a fac-simile of one of Amman’s engravings of a printing office, is from his book dated 1564. p523 The case for the type is of one piece and is resting on a rude frame. All the boxes are represented as of the same size, but this is probably an error, for it is an error which is frequently made by designers of this day.387 In this, and in many other early illustrations of type-setting, the compositors are seated on stools. In Italy and in Paris, women were employed as compositors. In the wood-cut used by Jodocus Badius388 for a trade-mark, we see a hard-featured dame before a narrow case, composing types with judicial deliberation. She has in her left hand a narrow composing stick, made to hold but two or three lines of small types. The early stick was not like the neatly finished iron tool of our time, with steel composing rule and an adjustable screw and knee adapting it to any measure. It was a real stick of wood, a home-made strip of deal, with the side and end-piece tacked on. For every measure a new stick or a retacking of the movable piece was required. The date of the introduction of the stick cannot be fixed, but it was used, without alteration for many years, by the printers of all countries. It is possible that some of the early printers p524 had no sticks. The peculiar workmanship of the unknown printer and of Albert Pfister shows that the types were taken direct from the case and wedged in the mortised blocks of wood which served for chases. Blades attributes the uneven spacing and irregular endings of lines in the early printed books of Caxton and of other printers, to their ignorance of the advantages of a composing rule, without which types could not be readily moved to and fro, and adjusted.389

In the following illustration, the compositor has the copy before her in the shape of a book, but Conrad Zeltner, a learned printer of the seventeenth century, said that this was not the early usage; that it was customary to employ a reader to read aloud to the compositors, who set the types from dictation, not seeing the copy. He also says that the reader could dictate from as many different pages or copies to three or four compositors working together.390 When the compositors were educated, the method of dictation may have been practised with some success; when they were ignorant, it was sure to produce many errors. Zeltner said that he preferred the old method, but he admits that it had to be abandoned, on account of the increasing ignorance of the compositors. p525

No feature of early printing is more unworkmanlike than that of composition. Imitating the style of the manuscript copy, the compositor huddled together words and paragraphs in solid columns of dismal blackness, and sent his forms to press without title, running-titles, chapter-heads and paging-figures. The space for the ornamental borders and letters of the illuminator seems extravagant when contrasted with the pinched spaces between lines and words. The printer trusted to the bright colors of the illuminator to give relief to the blackness of the types, not knowing that a purer relief and greater perspicuity would have been secured by a wider spacing of the words and lines. The obscurity produced by huddled and over-black types was increased by the neglect of simple orthographical rules. Proper names were printed with or without capitals, apparently to suit the whim of the compositor. The comma, colon and period, the only points of punctuation in general use, were employed capriciously and illogically. Crooked and unevenly spaced lines and errors of arrangement or making-up were common. Madden has pointed out several gross blunders, caused by the transposition of lines and pages and an erroneous calculation of the space that should be occupied by print. Words were mangled in division, and in the display of lines in capital letters, in a manner that seems inexcusable. But no usage of the early compositor is more annoying than his lawless use of abbreviations. Imitating the example of Procrustes, he made the words fit, chopping them off on any letter or in any position, indifferent to the wants of the reader or to the proprieties of language.391 Whatever opinion may be entertained concerning p526 the deterioration of printing in other branches, it is, beyond all cavil, certain that in the art of arranging types so that the meaning of the author shall be made lucid, the modern compositor is much the more intelligent mechanic.

Improvements were made slowly. The method of spacing out lines so as to produce a regular outline at the right side of every page had been practised before, but it was not in general use even as late as 1478. Arabic figures, instead of Roman numerals, were first used by Ter Hoorne of Cologne, and by Helye of Munster in 1470. Signatures to guide the binder in putting together in order the different sheets of a book were first used in printed books by Zarot of Milan in 1470. As the alphabetical letters of these signatures often had to be doubled, and sometimes quadrupled in thick books, it became necessary to print a full list of the signatures at the end of every book as an additional guide to the binder. This list, registrum chartarum, seems to have been first used by Colonna at Venice in 1475. The clumsiness of doubled alphabetical letters should have led to the use of Arabic figures for signatures, and should have suggested paging, but these reforms were not adopted for many years afterward.392 A table of errata, two pages folio, was exhibited by Gabriel Peter of Venice in 1478. The first full title, if a few lines in compact capital letters can be so called, was made by Ratdolt of Venice in 1477, but his example was not rapidly followed by rival printers. Running-titles and open chapter-headings are innovations of the next century. The printers of the fifteenth century who wished to free themselves from dependence on the illuminator filled up the white spaces about chapter-headings with bits of engraving on wood or metal. p527

Galleys, or trays of wood to keep in place the composed types, were not known; the types were placed line after line, perhaps letter by letter, in the mortised block of wood which served for the chase. Nice justification was impossible. If two pages were put in one mortise, one of these pages would often be out of square—an irregularity which has led some bibliographers to think that each page was separately printed from a separate form. The locking-up or tightening of the types, which was roughly done, often made the types crooked, springing them off their feet and making the spaces work up.393

The neglect of the early printers to praise their presses is remarkable when contrasted with their frequent praises of the marvelous art of type-making. It is inferential evidence that the press was then regarded as an old contrivance, and not worthy of notice, but this conclusion cannot be unreservedly accepted. The principle of pressure was old, and for that reason, was undervalued by printers, but the mechanism of the press was new. That the printing press was an invention of merit will be perceived at a glance when it is compared with the screw press which is supposed to have served as the basis of construction.394 That a proper method of doing presswork was devised in the infancy of the art may be inferred, not only from the permanency of the primitive form of press, all the important features of which are still preserved in the modern hand-press, but from the meritorious presswork of the first books. The Bibles of Gutenberg were certainly printed on a press which quickly gave and quickly released its pressure, and which had the attachments of a movable bed, tympan and frisket, and contrivances for neatly inking the types and for keeping the paper in position.

Jodocus Badius of Paris was the first printer who published engravings of the printing press. It cannot be asserted p528 that they are minutely accurate representations of the press then in use, but they will serve to show its general construction. Two features provoke hostile comment. Contrary to modern usage, the piles of white paper and printed paper are unhandily placed on the off-side of the press, and the stalwart pressman pulls home the bar with both arms. The platen p529 seems altogether too small when contrasted with the great screw, the heavy frame, and the two-handed pull of the pressman. The smallness of this platen was not an error of the designer. Moxon, who has minutely described the press of his time, says that the platen of an ordinary press should be of the size 9 by 14 inches, and that the coffin, or trough in which the bed was placed, should be 28 inches long and 22 inches wide. In other words, the platen was purposely made so that it could impress less than half the surface of the bed; it could print only one-half of one side of the sheet.395 Small as this platen may seem, it was large enough for the frame-work of wood. It gave great resistance under pull, and severely taxed the strength of the pressman. A platen of double size would have defied the pressman; it would have sprung under pressure and have broken the bed of stone.

The types were inked by balls, an appliance which is not more than fifty years out of fashion. These balls were made of untanned sheepskin, stuffed hard with wool, and mounted with handles. The gluey ink was evenly distributed by forcibly rocking their curved surfaces against each other. This done, the balls were then beaten upon the types in the form. [anc529]

When we learn that the early presses were made almost entirely of wood, and put together by ordinary joiners, we may infer that many were unscientifically built,396 and shackly. p530 All the materials for presswork were imperfect. The types, cut to length by a saw, were of uneven height; the paper was usually of very rough surface and of irregular thickness; the platen of wood, rarely ever truly flat, must have given unequal pressure at different corners. It was necessary that some substance should be put between the platen and the white sheet which would compensate for these irregularities. This substance was a woolen blanket, in two or more thicknesses, which spread or diffused the impression. The wetting of the paper, which made it soft and pliable, materially aided the pressman, but his great reliance seems to have been on strong impression. All the old cuts of presses represent the pressman tugging at the bar with a force which seems out of all proportion to the size of the form.

The early press was rude, and the method of printing was unscientific, but in many offices the pressman was superior to his press and his method. [anc530] By doing his work slowly and carefully he often did it admirably. It was always done slowly, with a waste of time which, if allowed in the modern practice of printing, would make books of excessive price. Some notion of this waste may be had after an examination of the letters of the Psalter of 1457, in which exact work was produced by painting, not by printing proper. That the performance of the press even on ordinary black work was slow, is indicated by the great number of presses used by the early printers, and is proved by the plain statement of Philip de Lignamine, p531 who said that the printers of Mentz printed three hundred sheets a day. This seems a small performance.397

The accurate register of the first books was produced by placing the white sheet on four fixed points which perforated the four corners of the leaf when the first side was printed. In printing the back of the page, the half-printed sheet was hung on the same points, from the same point-holes, and was impressed in the same position. Blades notices the four point-holes in some of Caxton’s books, and it is probable that the mysterious pin-holes in other books are the marks of points. It was soon discovered that register could be had with two points, which were placed in the centre of the sheet where the marks would be hidden by the binder.398 p532

The printing ink of the fifteenth century, as we now see it, is of unequal merit. In the books of Jenson it appears as an intense, velvety, glossy black; in the Bibles of Gutenberg it is a strong, permanent black, without gloss; in the Psalter of 1457 it appears in some places as a glossy black, and in others as a faded color which had to be retouched with the pen; in the works of the unknown printer it is a dingy and smearing black; in the book of some printers it is a paste color which can be rubbed off with a sponge; in nearly all, it is uneven, over-black on one page and gray on another.399

The general impression that early printing ink is blacker and brighter than modern ink is not always correct. Early ink seems blacker, because it is shown in greater quantity, for the early types were larger, of broader face, without hair lines, and could be over-colored without disadvantage.400 The same ink applied to the small thin Roman types of our time, p533 would seem dull and gray. The microscopic examination of any early ink will show that the black is not fine and not thoroughly mixed with proper drying oil. But this imperfection is comparatively unimportant. It is a graver fault in some early inks that they are not firmly fixed to the paper.401

There is no trustworthy account of the invention of printing ink, but the types and the inks were undoubtedly invented together. One was the proper complement of the other. It may be supposed that Gutenberg acquired the knowledge of the newly found properties of boiled linseed oil402 from German painters. It is certain that he used oil as the basis of his ink, and that it was also used by his pupils and successors. And it has been in use ever since, for there is no substitute.

We have not been told how the ink was compounded. Our nearest approach to this knowledge is through the Cost Book of the Ripoli Press for 1481, which specifies and prices the materials. As no p534 mention is made of smoke-black, we have to infer that pitch was burnt to make this black. Linseed oil, as the most bulky ingredient, very properly occupies the first place. The real value of nutgalls and vitriol is not so apparent: they were important ingredients in writing ink, and the Italian printer may have thought them indispensable in printing ink. Shellac and liquid varnish were used to give a glossy surface.

Printers soon discovered that printing was an art of too many details, and that the manufacture of printing ink was its most objectionable duty. There was risk of fire in the boiling of linseed oil; there was discomfort and dirt connected with the manipulation of the ingredients; and in inexpert hands there was waste and often entire failure. In all large cities, ink-making was set apart and practised as a distinct trade. As a necessary consequence, the quality deteriorated through the competition that followed. Moxon’s criticism of ink made in England in 1683 could be applied without any injustice to much of the ink of the fifteenth century.403 p535

Gutenberg, Schœffer, Zell, Mentel and many early printers of France and Italy neglected engraving on wood.404 It may be that this neglect originated in the difficulties of printing types and wood-cuts together,405 or in a despisal of the rude productions of the block-printers,406 and in the intention of the p536 typographers to make emphatic the superiority of their branch. Wood-cuts were freely used by typographers in the heart of Germany and in the Netherlands, the districts where we find the earliest notices of block-printing, but they are generally of a low order. Many of them are barbarous, as faulty in cutting as in drawing, and pleasing only to uncultivated tastes. It is probable that, about this time, many of the more skillful engravers and designers407 abandoned the practice of xylography, attracted, no doubt, by the superior advantages offered by the newly invented art of copper-plate printing. The art of engraving on wood, although it afterward enlisted the services of artists like Durer and Holbein, could not compete with this formidable rival. It suffered a long eclipse, from which it did not emerge until the days of Bewick.

The quality of the paper in early books is as unequal as the printing. In the Bible of 36 lines, the paper is thick and strong, of coarse fibre, yellowish, apparently made from sun-bleached flax; in the books of Schœffer, and of the later German printers, the paper is thinner, but dingy and harsh; in the books of the Venetian printers, it is often very thin, usually of smooth surface and a creamy white tint that seems to have been unchanged by time. Different qualities are often noticeable in the same book. There were many paper-mills from which the printers drew their supplies, and every mill made different qualities. Blades says that it was the practice to sort the paper before printing, separating the rough from the smooth, and the thin from the thick, and to print and bind together sheets of similar quality. The sizes required by printers were small. The books first made were printed on sheets about 16 by 21 inches, one leaf of which was as large as could be printed by one pull of the press. The sizes 15 by 20, 14 by 18 and 12 by 15 inches were common, and p537 in request for quartos and octavos. The largest size seems to have been royal, about 20 by 25 inches. The Cost Book of the Ripoli Press gives names and prices to nine distinct qualities or sizes of paper, but it does not define the weights and measurements. The smallest size and cheapest quality, possibly a pot foolscap, was put down at the price of 2 lire 8 soldi (about $2.18) per ream; the largest and best, probably royal, at 6 lire 8 soldi (about $5.80) per ream.408