The Gutenberg Museum Mainz ------
Two original A Guide Gutenberg Bibles and many to the other documents from the dawn of the age of printing Museum ofType and The most beautiful Printing examples from a collection of 3,000 early prints
Printing presses and machines in wood and iron
Printing for adults and children at the Print Shop, the museum's educational unit
Wonderful examples of script from many countries of the world
Modern book art and artists' books
Covers and illustrations from five centuries Contents
The Gutenberg Museum 3
Johannes Gutenberg- the Inventor 5
Early Printing 15
From the Renaissance to the Rococo 19
19th Century 25
20th Century 33
The Art and Craftmanship of the Book Cover 40
Magic Material Paper 44
Books for Children and Young Adults 46
Posters, Job Printing and Ex-Libris 48
Graphics Techniques 51
Script and Printing in Eastern Asia 52
The Development of Notation in Europe and the Middle East 55
History and Objective of the Small Press Archives in Mainz 62
The Gutenberg Museum Print Shop 63
The Gutenberg Society 66
The Gutenberg-Sponsorship Association and Gutenberg-Shop 68
Adresses and Phone Numbers 71 lmpressum The Gutenberg Museum
~) 2001 The Cutcnlx~rg Museum Mainz and the Cutcnbc1g Opposite the cathedral in the heart of the old part ofMainz Spons01ship Association in Germany lies the Gutenberg Museum. It is one of the oldest museums of printing in the world and This guide is published with tbc kind permission of the attracts experts and tourists from all corners of the globe. Philipp von Zahc1n publisher's in Mainz, In r9oo, soo years after Gutenberg's birth, a group of citi with regard to excLrpts of text ;md illustrations zens founded the museum in Mainz. They wanted to hon taken from the publication our the inventor, to day's "man of the millennium", and pre "Buchkultu1 in Mainz" sent his technical and artistic achievements to the public at (\.) HJ98 Philipp von ZtllX'rn, Mainz, Cc1 many large. They also aimed to exhibit the writing and printing of as many different cultures as possible.
Etlitors: l·:va I- r~,nchutt-1knz and Stct:mic Mittenzwci, l'vbinz A Treasury of Printing 'l'ranslations: Ruth Chitty, english Nlag PapL'l: Phocno-.fvlatt, ~[Jl'cially coated art [Wint, the city library, meaning that the most beautiful and charac white, wood-ficc ~1apcr, teristic volumes from the library's extensive collection could 135 g/m' (contents) anJ 250 g-/m 2 be requisitioned for the museum. Visitors were thus present (cov<:r) fl ()Jll Papierf;tbrik Srllcufclcn, ed with a survey of almost soo years of the printed book. In D-73252 Lenningen time the museum expanded to include sections on printing Special thanks to Papicrfabrik Schcufdcn techniques, book art, job printing and ex-libris, graphics and posters, paper, the history of writing of all cultures of the Key world and modern artists' books. U. D.: lJII.t Om'HOt The Gutenberg Society l 1.-ll.: ~" ' lluud>ll tr• lltn•, K. M S.: t< ni Mtch.td !:it"''" J.:I'f The opening of the museum also saw the birth of the Inter J 1<,: J•hy,cn K1J1 r national Gutenberg Society (lnternationale Gutenberg G. ll: t :a:nr.nu.lc HL·uolu Gesellschaft). Their aim is to give financial and moral sup Z.C.: 7..v&jt""'.~ l .l r 1il •mlit: r port to the museum and to encourage research into the his O.M.: Oun l\il.!rliu tory of printing. The Gutenberg Museum was originally laid out in two rooms at the Kurfurstliches SchloJ; in Mainz, The text is partly based on older Gutenberg l\1uscum which also accommodated the city library. The museum catalogues published by Helmut Presser moved into the new library building on the Rheinallee in and I bns Adolf I lalbcy r9r2. To celebrate its 25th anniversary the Gutenberg Society published a weighty, symbolic festschrift which prompted the launching of the Gutenberg Yearbook. The "Gutenberg Workshop" The same year, 1925, saw the installation of a reconstruction of Gutenberg's workshop which soon became one of the 3 r museum's main attractions. Type founding, typesetting and printing could now be demonstrated visually. The replica Johannes Gutenberg -the Inventor of Gutenberg's printing press, rebuilt according 15th- and 16th-century woodcuts, proved an object of great interest to Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz almost exactly 6oo visitors and was henceforth shown at a large number of ex years ago. His original name was Henne Gensfleisch zur La hibitions all over the world. den, people at the time being named after the property they and their families owned. Much of Gutenberg's life remains A House in the Heart of Town a mystery, as few written documents exist which could give us information. Gutenberg's father, Friele Gensfleisch, was In 1927 the museum was able to move into the Romischer a patrician from Mainz while his mother, Else Wirich, came Kaiser (1664), one of the most beautiful buildings in Mainz. from a family of merchants. Gutenberg's date ofbirth is esti This is now where the museum's administration, the resto mated at being between 1394 and 1404; traditionally, the turn ration workshop, library and Gutenberg Society are housed. of the century, 1400, is celebrated as the year of his birth. We When the Late Renaissance building was heavily bombed in do not know how Gutenberg spent his childhood and youth, 1945, all dreams of enlarging the museum were at first shat nor what kind of schooling he received. As the son of a pa tered; luckily, the museum's contents had been stored in a trician he probably went to a grammar school and possibly safe place and thus remained intact. studied, for the occupations he later pursued demanded a In 1962, the year Mainz celebrated its 2,oooth anniversary, comprehensive education and above all a sound knowledge the restoration of the Romischer Kaiser was complete and of Latin. the building ready for use again. A new, modern exhibition building was also opened, constructed with money donated The Strasbourg Years by a number of generous sponsors. We know that Gutenberg was in Strasbourg in 1434. At the New Acquisitions time Strasbourg was a bustling centre of trade three times the size ofMainz which promised reward for anyone with a The museum made several important acquisitions in the fol mind for business. At this stage in his life Gutenberg was in lowing years, among them a second Gutenberg Bible, the Shuckburgh Bible in two volumes (1978), and two block books printed using wooden formes and today extremely rare. Another major change was the introduction of the Print Shop (Druckladen), the museum's educational unit, in 1989. The museum also stages guided tours and lectures. Restoration and Extension in 2000 A century after its founding, on the 600th anniversary of Gutenberg's birth the old museum building was restored and extended with the help of the state Rhineland Palatinate, the city of Mainz, the Gutenberg Sponsorship Association (Forderverein Gutenberg) and numerous private companies and citizens of Mainz. The museum exhibits are now in a more up-to-date, lively setting. Visitors to the museum can enjoy an excellent array of permanent exhibits and frequent special exhibitions, browse around an innovative museum shop and relax in the pleasant The two Gutenberg-Bible.! museum cafe. in the museum 4 5 The reconstmction of Gutenberg's workshop Iat the Gutenberg Museum 6 7 possession of a handsome sum of money he had inherited from his mother, who died in I433· Armed with this substan tial capital he settled in the Strasbourg suburb of St. Arbo gast and came up with an idea he thought would prove prof itable; as part of a "manufacturing co-operative" he aimed to mass-produce holy mirrors for pilgrims on their way to Aachen. These religious souvenirs were made from a tin al loy which was melted and poured into casts. The mirror proj ect shows that Gutenberg was not only an inventor but also an entrepreneur. What happened in Strasbourg From autumn 1438 onwards, or possibly earlier, Gutenberg started work on another project which he insisted his part ners keep a secret. We only have fragments of information The Book of Books: the Bible During his years in Mainz Gutenberg opened at least one, probably two printing workshops. The first printed materi The Invention als bearing a date were produced in I454· These are the Turk ish Calendar and the most significant work Gutenberg Printing with wooden formes on paper was something Eu produced, his 42-linc Bible orB 42, which has pride of place rope had been familiar with since the late qth century. Gu in the annals of printing history. There were probably sever tenberg's concept went one important step further than this al kss ambitious prints made before this date, but these have simple form of printing; his basic notion was that any text either been lost or exist as undated works. could be reduced to its individual components, to its letters, At the Gutenberg Museum the device Gutenberg perfected numbers and punctuation marks. He was concerned with is presented in a variety of ways. Numerous printed works finding a process which would enable these clements to be from Gutenberg's workshop and those of his contemporar mass-produced, the texts they composed to be printed to ies vividly illustrate the early years of the art of printing. The faultless perfection and the elements themselves to be reus technical side of printing is explained at the Gutenberg able, which in turn would save not only materials but also Workshop and by a great number of museum exhibits. space. 8 42-line Gutenberg Bible, 1 I452-55 (the Shuckburgh-Copy) take to turn his ideas into practice included producing - Punches and Matrices with absolute precision - the individual letters and charac ters of what printing jargon calls "figures" as punching dies. If you imagine just how many stages of planning and exper These dies, uniform in size and style, were engraved in a imentation were needed until this pioneering invention hard metal (probably steel) and could be vertically "pun produced results which were faultless in every respect, then ched" into a softer metal when and as often as required. This it is quite plausible that several years passed until all details produced a negative or a matrL"X, made of a square of copper had been perfected. 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Diir!Drue'Uerimtia. bilb ob brmn mro uirtuttm urttiffi farirm nuun rrmartulJaniratf9 ;fuprmntr, go aiit an a mr: rtfm:tue fum ronnu'bltue Dttbo ... bomio flflUUl:Ef!llttilii tt kttl innulid minr dat1Ulbo: rt antntm mntm owmbot, nut, iit rrf\rtilti bnntitifutimfti:fntualti T'h,• A1uinz P.wlt.·1; Johannes l'l"t awl Pda Srhoj}~1; I.f_)(J The Hand Mould The casting metal, an alloy of lead, tin and other admi..x tures, presumably antimony, was heated to almost 30o"C The hand mould or casting instrument was developed to and poured into the remaining opening in tht: manual caster. cope with mass production. The caster was a hollow mould Letters could be removed immediately and only had to have or cast made out of metal with wooden clamps which could the metal casting tip removed with a hammer. The ktters be separated into two and placed in the matrix. This saved were then placed in a type case and sorted according to the vast numbers of hollow moulds having to be produced. frequency with which they were used. 12 j _ __L__ IJ ______Setting and Printing The Law Suit Before printing commenced the compositor made up one or While Gutenberg was printing his Bible, he quarrelled with more lines in a composing stick. These lines were then ar his creditor, Johannes Fust, who had twice lent him 8oo ranged in a galley (a wooden tray) to make up the printing guilders for his ambitious project. The disputing parties forme for the page. The forme was then lifted into the wood went to court. en press. For reasons unknown to us, Gutenberg lost his case. He had to hand his Bible workshop over to Fust, and possibly also The Printing Press the Bibles he had already printed. Fust continued to run the workshop with one of Gutenberg's printers, Peter Schaffer. Screw presses used to make oil, wine and paper had existed Their officina, the old Latin name for a print workshop, before Gutenberg. In printing, a number of contraptions went on to produce the Mainz Psalter, which can be seen in had to ensure that the plate exerting pressure, the platen, was its second edition from I459· pressed vertically onto the forme and was unable to twist out of position when the cross beam or bar was moved sideways. Gutenberg died in February r468 in his native Mainz, but Unlike the watery ink used with woodcuts, printing ink had not before he, like many of his fellow citizens, had been to be slightly sticky and a deep black to produce good-qual driven from the city in r462. Before he died he was made a ity print. It was made from soot, oil and resin. courtier by Prince-Bishop Adolf von Nassau, meaning he The inked plates were pressed onto evenly dampened paper was able to spend the last years of his life in relative comfort. - at least one double page at a time for books - and then He printed a number of minor works prior to his death, pre hung up to dry on lines. sumably in Eltville and Mainz, and possibly worked with oth er printing workshops, either as a printer or a consultant. What Gutenberg Printed I-I.-B. Once you have seen Gutenberg's printing apparatus in the museum basement, the results he achieved with it seem even Early Printing more incredible. The 42-line Bible, printed between r452 and I455 in a work The Gutenberg Museum has a number of major works from shop holding up to six presses and employing ca. 20 crafts the early years of printing on permanent display. Books men, is impressive in the beauty and harmony of its typogra printed up to rsoo differ in many ways from the books we are phy. familiar with from later years. These early examples have no The black lines of the text are all printed. The initials of the title page, chapter headings or page numbers. What they do r8o copies originally produced on the printing press were col have are pages of beautiful illumination and illustration. oured at various workshops by illuminators (book artists). Visitors will notice that the protagonists of first few decades Each one of Gutenberg's Bibles is thus unique. The Guten of the printed book often still clung to the traditional forms berg Museum is the only museum which gives visitors the of the manuscript. The characteristics of the modern book chance to see two Gutenberg Bibles side by side and to com emerged only gradually through fierce competition among pare them (the Solms-Laubach Bible and the Shuckburgh printers, dependent on selling their books to be able to con Bible). Other important prints from his workshop include a tinue business, and through technical innovation in the unique fragment of the "Weltgericht" poem ("Last Judge printing of pictures. ment"), possibly the oldest example of typographic printing in existence, a fragment from a Latin textbook ("Donatus") and one of the Cypriot Letters oflndulgence which he print ed for the prince-bishop ofMainz. The Colophon 3rd German Bible by Jodocus Pflanzmann, Augsburg, c. 1475, the srh by Johann Sensenschmidt, Nuremberg, c. 1473, The colophon, an inscription bearing the place and year of the 8th by Anton Sorg, Augsburg, r48o, and the roth in two publication and often also the printing workshop (our mod volumes by Johann GrLininger in Strasbourg from 1485. ern equivalent is "book credits"), wandered from the back to The "Reise ins Heilige Land" by Bernhard von Breydenbach, the front of the book, where these facts and the contents of printed in Mainz in I486, is an account of a pilgrimage to Je the book were more effectively advertised. A standardised rusalem. It presents the more realistic view of the world title page was soon developed. people of the time came to hold, a view which is mirrored in the design and form of the book. Breydenbach had an artist Pictures in Books accompany him, Erhard Reuwich, who brought back views of a number of cities on the Mediterranean, among them a It wasn't until the r46os that woodcuts were included in large panorama of Venice. This woodcut, folded like a con printed books. Printing type matter and woodcuts side by certina, was printed from several formes; the paper had to be side in the printing press was initially a difficult feat to mas stuck together to fit the wide format of the picture. ter. Printing in more than one colour, a distinguishing fea ture of the two editions of the Mainz Psalter from 1457 and 1459, was discarded, as the process proved too time-consum ing. The Psalter, on view in the museum treasury, is never theless an aesthetic highlight of the early years of printing as is the Gutenberg Bible. A Puzzling Book Johannes Balbus's "Catholicon", a lexicon of the foreign words in the Bible, also deserves special attention. The smallness of the type allowed a large amount of text to be printed per page and illustrates what the punch cutters and type founders of the time were already capable of. Yet the fact that this work was obviously printed in three different workshops using the same type matter is puzzling. Later Work The museum is in possession of a double page from the J6- line Bible, printed in Bamberg not after 1461. The work was originally attributed to Gutenberg, as it is printed with one of the typefaces from his workshop. We now believe, howe ver, that the inventor merely acted as a consultant in the printing of the Bible, either in Bamberg or Mainz. German Bibles before Luther Long before Martin Luther's translation was complete there 9th German Bihle kY were Bibles printed in German, some of them lavishly illus Anto11 Kobog.:1; trated. The Gutenberg Museum has several, including the 1 Nuremberg, I<{.<'lj r6 .- I Maps A milestone in the art of maps, Cosmographia is an atlas af ter Ptolemy, printed by Lienhart Holle from woodcuts in r482 in Ulm. The book is open at an extremely beautiful map of the world, coloured by hand. This atlas had two predeces sors in Italy which betray early use of the more advanced technology of printing from copper plates. The Most Beautiful Book of the Renaissance Francesco Colonna's "Hypnerotomachia Poliphilis" ("Poli philus's Dream") is without exception considered one of the most beautiful books of the rsth century. The book contains woodcuts in the style of the Italian Renaissance which har monise perfectly with the typography. The book was publish ed by Venetian Aldus Manutius at his officina in r492. Some of the text is arranged in the shape of a vase, heart or triangle, which enhances the decorative nature of the pages. H.-B. From the Renaissance to the Rococo PeterApian, Astronomicum Caesareum, 16th-18th Century I Ingolstadt I54o In the showcases following on from the early years of print ing the books are not arranged in strict chronological order but sorted by topic and subject area. Where possible, typical covers have been placed next to the pages on display to give an impression of what the front of the book looked like. Schedel's "Weltchronik" Humanism and Reformation Hartmann Schedel's famous "Weltchronik", printed at the large Koberger printing workshop in Nuremberg in r493, One of the topics dealt with here is Humanist literature, chronicles the history of the world from its creation- accord such as books by Erasmus, for example. The section inclu ing to the Bible - to the universe of Schedel's day and age. des Sebastian Brant's "Narrenschiff" ("Ship ofFools", rso6), The work contains a total of 645 woodcuts. The many cities with woodcuts probably executed in part by a young Al they depict give an authentic view of how the traveller would brecht Durer, and the first edition of Sir Thomas More's have seen these places from afar. On closer inspection, how "Utopia" from rsr8. The title of the latter work introduced ever, one notices that in some cases the same wood block has the word "Utopia" to common speech. been used for several of the cities! r8 "Theuerdank" (r517), a romantic novel of knights and chiv alry, was inspired by a young Emperor Maximilian I wanting to set himself a poetic memorial. At the time the work was (and still is) considered to be of great bibliophile beauty. Black letter type was used here for the first time, embroider ed with elaborate, almost calligraphic swirls. Another showcase is dedicated to the Reformation writings of Martin Luther. Next to the small, worn philippics lie the large-format editions of his translation of the Bible, illustrat ed with woodcuts. Luther's clear, concise form of expression did much to help standardise the German language. Discovering the World Page ji-om rz w:·iting master's copybook, Another impressive group of books are the scientific works. copper engravuzg, One particularly fine creation is "Astronomicum Caesareum", I I?th centmy a book on astronomy written for Emperor Karl V and pro duced by Peter Apian in 1540 in lngolstadt. By turning the paper dials attached in the centre by a piece of string the read reflect the interests of the day; they report new scientific dis er can easily reconstruct all the conceivable constellations of coveries, spread new religious and political ideas and present the stars and planets. Andreas Vesalius's ''Anatomic" (rsss) belletristic literature in volumes embellished with fancy cop depicts the bones, muscles and internal organs of the human per engravings. The thirst for discovery of the late r6th and body in almost theatrical arrangements. qth centuries, the colonisation of far-off regions and the boom in trade with lands overseas prompted the publication Copper Engraving and Etching of a number of representative geographic works. This was the period which produced atlases and important collections In the centre of the room the technique of copper engraving of views of towns and cities. for graphics is explained. In the course of the r6th century, When in the r8th century the Age of the Enlightenment copper engravings gradually replaced woodcuts in books as brought about a change in the natural sciences with its ef the main form of illustration. Looking at the two scaled forts to observe with objectivity and order, the number of down models of copper intaglio presses, at the chisels and books on botany, zoology and mathematics and geometry other tools, it is easy to imagine how laborious the work of greatly increased. Even topics such as mesmerism (magnetic the copper engraver must have been. suggestion) and physiognomy, whose scientific nature we now challenge, provided material for various theses. The Passionate Collectors of the Baroque The Joy of the Craze for Reading The Thirty Years' War brought a temporary stop to book production in the areas it devastated; once over, Baroque rul The Enlightenment also inspired a bourgeois form of belle ers were free to unleash their passion for collecting artefacts tristic literature with which we associate the names of auth of any kind, books included. Important libraries were started ors like Klopstock, Lessing, Schiller and Goethe. These in Munich and Wolfenbuttel, for example. A new sales niche works were often issued in small-format editions or "pocket appeared for the book, with the first auction of books held books" which the reader could carry around with him or her. in Lei den in r6o4. Printing became a commodity literally fit Another product typical of the Enlightenment is the ency for a king; Louis XV started the lmprimerie du Cabinet du clopaedia. In 1751 Diderot and d'Alembert began publishing Roi at his court in Versailles. The books of the Baroque the 35 volumes of their "Encyclopedie", the most famous of its 20 2I kind, in which the professions of man are introduced in cop public was thus slowly able to start forming its own opinion per plates and descriptions. A steadily increasing number of on various general matters of interest and importance. The weekly and monthly magazines provided the reading faction number of readers continued to grow, causing people to of the population with entertainment and information. The warn each other of the rampant "reading craze". H. -B. IDSTORIA NATVRALIS RANARVM NOSTRATIVM JN QVA OMNES EARVM PROPRIETATES, QVAE AD GENERATIONEM IPSAR\'ll PERTINENT, FVSIVS ENARRANTVR. CVM PRAEFATIONE ILLVSTRIS VIR! A L B E R T I v. H A L L E R SOCIETATIS REGIAE SCIENTIARVM GOETTINGENSIS PRAESIDJS. lDibiT ACCVIlA.TISQVE JCOSID\'$ OltNAVI'T, A VGVSI'VS JOHANNES ROESEL ""' ROSENHOF. NOR/MBE.IIG.AF., TJllio IOIIANNIS IOSEPHI HIISCHYANNL ••=•=•o••••___., ~ ••••••~aft natnrlid)c"li~oric lrbf~c ~tcfiocn anbc~ IUriiiiU aue llgenfdjaften berfd~en, fnbcrll4 a6~r tDre 'ortppan&ung, 11111~i4 kf6ritkl lfftbtt. t1lit tintr \)orr tbt • t rr 11 81\11 b rc d;t ~ ton • an tr, '~"-""" -··0611-l!ltf Rosel von Rosenhif, Historia natura/is ranarum nostratium .. . The Natural History ofthe Frogs of our Counfly ... , r758 22 23 19th Century During the 19th century, the progressing industrialisation and mechanisation of the world of work spread to the book and printing industry. Jobs carried out by hand became eas ier. This lead to an immense increase in production which in turn caused the public to exhibit a greater need for information. The Age of the Iron Printing Presses Initially, 19th-century engineers tried to use manpower more effectively by improving materials. In c. 1780 Wilhelm Haas from Switzerland replaced the wood of the printing press with metal, in c. r8oo English engineer Walter was the first to construct a hand press made entirely of cast iron. This new type of printing press, named after its initiator and benefactor, Lord Charles Stanhope from England, allowed the flat platen to be doubled in size. This meant that with rel atively little force yet with significantly increased printing pressure larger formats could be printed with one single pull of the bar. The use of iron enabled more complex, more ef ficient lever systems to be built for printing presses, some thing not possible with wood. An elegant and decorative ex ample of a hand-lever press is George Clymer's Columbia Press. Originally made in America, the Columbia was also manufactured in Europe from r8q onwards. The model on display at the Gutenberg Museum was built later (r824) by the Zorge ironworks for Vieweg publishing house in Bruns wick. Its rich ornamentation is impressive; the counter weight on the upper bar of the press is a griffin, the heraldic animal of the printers' guild, with two inking balls clutched in its talons. Other printing presses which merit attention here are those John Milton, named after the special toggle levers used to transfer the load Par~dise lost, (toggle presses). Two manufactured by the Dingler company Parzsi792 I (in r834 and 1840) are exhibited at the museum. Despite their improved, more robust construction iron print ing presses were still based on the principle Gutenberg used in printing, namely that of a flat printing forme combined with a flat, platen counterpressure surface. Machines for Quicker Printing The first printing machines were built not long after the in vention of the iron hand press. In r8n Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer, two engineers from Germany, had their 24 steam-driven, automatic cylinder/flat-bed press patented in England, where the addition and application of the ink to the flat printing forme had been completely mechanised. The press was first put in use in r8r2. All that remained to be done manually was to lay the sheets of paper in the press. Later, Koenig and Bauer added a second cylinder to their contraption and in November r814 used it to print an entire issue of The Times in one night. A copy of the machine, scaled down to half its size, can be seen at the museum. Another Koenig and Bauer machine, an automatic perfect ing press built as early as r8r6, was capable of printing both sides of a sheet of paper in one operation, using a special sys tem which automatically turned the paper over. Large numbers of impressions could now be printed within a short space of time, making the automatic cylinder press ideal for producing newspapers, magazines or even encyclopaedias. Stereotyping An additional increase in the number of impressions which could be printed in one operation and in the speed at which they could be printed was brought about by the introduction of the stereotype printing process in the first half of the 19th century. A mould (or moulds) of the type matter for a print job was taken, initially in plaster of Paris (r8o4) and later in papier-mache (r829), leaving the letters used for the original type matter available for other prints. The advantage of ster eotyping was not only that it considerably reduced costs but also that the flexible papier-m:khe £longs or moulds could be bent into cylindrical formes. This lead to a further devel opment in printing technology, to the creation of cylindrical formes and impression cylinders, both of which the Ame rican William Bullock incorporated into his rotary press in r865. The principle of his invention was used for book and newspaper printing until the middle of the 2oth century. Stereotyping, however, was only one method of meeting the enormous demand for single letters and characters. The Columbia-Press, Casting Machines l1824 The process of producing type matter was accelerated from r822 onwards with the fabrication ofhand-worked type cast ing pump and the first casting machines. In r862 the first automatic type casters were able to spit out up to 40,000 sin gle, press-ready characters per day (ro times the number T produced by a hand caster), which did not even have to be Paper from the Roll laboriously finished by hand (example in the basement). The enormous amount of printed matter produced around the middle of the 19th century required progress to be made The Big Challenge: Typesetting Machines in paper manufacture to match the new technology of the The time-consuming task of the typesetter, working by printing industry. hand, was a process which stubbornly resisted all attempts at In 1799 Nicolaus Louis Robert from France produced an mechanisation. It was not until the end of the 19th century endless wire paper-making machine (a model is in the paper (r886) that Ottmar Mergenthaler came up with a practical department of the museum) which in principle could pro and- most importantly- financially viable solution in the duce an endless roll of paper but which still used pulp extract form of his Linotype machine ( = a line of type, a combined ed from linen rags, only available in limited quantities. line composing and casting machine). It was Friedrich Gottlob Keller's discovery of wood pulp in At the Gutenberg Museum you can see two different speci r84o and the manufacture of paper from cellulose by Hugo mens ofMergenthaler's fascinating Linotype machine in the Burgess and Charles Watt in England in rSsr which offered basement, both of which can be demonstrated if required. practicable alternative materials, promising to now reliably meet the printing industry's high demand for paper. New Methods of Illustration New technologies also infiltrated book and magazine illus tration during the course of the 19th century. The woodcut, engraved on the hard, end-grain wood of the box tree, could be printed with the type matter using a letterpress tech nique. Lithography, a flat-bed printing method invented by Alois Senefelder in 1797, was of great significance for print ed music and art prints as it could duplicate the original with an extremely high degree of accuracy. Yet for large editions a robust printing forme was needed with a high load capacity. Steel engraving, developed in c. rSoo to make forgery-proof banknotes, proved itself a suitable medium for reproduction; from r820 onwards it began to be used in book illustration, in particular to print views of towns and works of art. Industrialisation of Book Production Bookbinding, the last stage in the book-making process, was mechanised in c. rSso. Prior to this date books were individ ually bound by hand in parchment or leather; industrial ad Otto Speckto; vance now meant that huge bookbinding factories could illustmtionfrom produce uniform covers in inexpensive materials (such as cal "Puss-i11-Boots", ico) for whole editions of a work. Cutting machines, gilding I8s8 presses and folding and stitching machines ruthlessly super seded the practised skills of the traditional bookbinder, oft en at the expense of quality. Koenig's automatic cylinder press, I I8I4 (model) towards the over-ornate and cluttered and a tendency to not Private Presses last very long. In an effort to try and counteract this negative development of the book, arts-and-crafts reformer William As with the methods of book production, the typography !"1-orris founded the first private press, the Kelmscott Press, and decoration of the book (illustrations and ornaments) m England towa.r~s the end of the 19th century. Looking also fell prey to increasing criticism. Books produced indus back to the trad1t1onal craft of the book, Morris tried to trially were marked by an insecurity of style, an inclination JO JI The 20th Century Competing New Media Developments in the book industry continued to stride rap idly ahead in the 2oth century, yet the book found itself fac ing stiffer competition than in any previous century. The 2oth century saw the rise of the radio, television and comput er, prompting sceptics to declare the book dead on more than one occasion. Offset Printing The milestones of technical development can be viewed in the basement of the museum. One particularly successful in novation was offset printing which was perfected around 1904. Most of the printed matter we handle today is printed using this technique (the museum, for example, has on dis play and uses a Heidelberg GTO from 1985). Offset printing is not only incredibly fast and able to turn out large numbers of a print job; it also produces excellent reproductions of il lustrations. The second revolution in 2oth-century printing took place in the pre-press stage of the printing process. For example, since the development of reproduction techniques using photography the original print has had to retreat to the field of art graphics and today is of practically no significance in printing. During the 2oth century hand compositors grad ually lost sight of the traditions of their trade. With increas ing frequency from the 1950s onwards, they were required to set texts not in lead, as they had done up to now, but to feed them into photosetting machines and then expose them onto light-sensitive material. Marcus Behme1; illustration ji-om Ph. 0. Runge's Photosetting ''Der Fischer un sine Fru", I920 Since the introduction of word processing via computer even photosetting machines such as Higonnet and Moy roud's Lumitype (developed 1946-1954) and Hugo Heine's Diatype (1952-1954) have become a thing of the past. reintroduce the principles oflegibility, beauty and durability Adhesive bindings in place of sturdy, stitched covers, the rise to book manufacture. His books, all of which the Gutenberg of the brochure and of the modern paperback were further Museum has a copy of, inspired many of his contemporaries. important steps taken towards turning the book into a con An enormous number of private presses followed in the sumer product. Yet these occurrences also had a positive side footsteps of the Kelmscott Press, their aim being to preserve to them; they meant that books and thus the tools of educa the virtues of quality and beauty in book production. K. M. S. tion were now available to everyone. 32 33 ~ I Alfons ill!" ria !vlllr!llt, poster "Ht2rcs de l11 J\;[,·nse", I r8yMJ7 The Book as a Work of Art: Fine Editions The division of the book industry into cheap mass-produced articles (the majority) and quality goods (the minority) con tinued well into the 2oth century. Examples of both are on the top floors of the museum. Those who made quality their maxim (usually referred to as handpress printers) initially concentrated on turning the book into a complete work of art. They tried not to neglect any area of work concerning the book, whether this be the choice of font, typesetting, printing, illustration or binding. The book was also moulded by the artistic trend of the age, namely Art Nouveau or, in Germany,Jugendstil. Numerous magazines began to appear at the end of the 19th century which promoted the art of the period. The main pro tagonists in Germany were "Pan" (which started in r895), Ronald King and Roy Fisher, "Jugend" (the magazine which gave Jugendstil its name, "The Lefthanded Punch", from 1896 onwards) and "Die lnsel" (from 1899 on). Guilt!ford, r986 Jugendstil or Art Nouveau Examples of work by the outstanding type designers of the From the Bauhaus to Visual Poetry age, such as Otto Eckmann and Rudolf Koch, and illustrat ors, such as Marcus Behmer or Thomas Theodor Heine, are The museum also has prints by Peter Behrens, by the Bau on display at the Gutenberg Museum. This was also the haus, which with its credo of"Art and Technology- a New epoch which saw the blossoming of applied graphics, as the Unity" renounced the hostility of the age towards tech book illustration by Franz von Stuck and poster by Alfons nology, and by El Lissitzky, the Russian Constructivist who Maria Mucha indicate. trod similar paths. Expressionism and Dadaism, on the oth The tradition of the "classic" handpress printer's remains er hand, forged very different avenues, as work by Kurt unbroken to this day. A few shall be named here: the Bremer Schwitters and Dada magazine boldly demonstrate. In Da Presse (r9II-I935), Count Harry Kessler's Cranach-Presse daism, form, rules and beauty count for nothing. (r913-1933), Trajanus-Pre sse (1951-r972) and Raamin-Presse (in operation since 1973). There is a large number of contem V. 0. Stomps porary small publishing houses who produce either tradition al or experimental work which the museum collects in its Mter the Second World War the various paths in book art Small Press Archives. continued to diverge. Many followed the example of hand There were also publishers of fine editions who pursued oth press printer and patron of modern literature Viktor Otto er interests. They considered literary or political subject Stomps. Chronically short of money, Stomps printed on matter more important than form, for example, or experi anything he could find which was vaguely suitable, even mented with the elements of design. One thing all these using worn fonts on wrapping paper, as in the exhibit. Oth books have in common is that they were almost always a me ers were poet, book artist and book designer rolled into one, dium of expression for the artistic styles of their period. The such as Ken Campbell with his "A Knife Romance" from principle of rationality was only one determining course of 1988. Others used the book form and the empty spaces be direction, with plenty of scope for others to develop along tween lines as their medium of expression, such as in Hel side it. mut Lohr's "Visual Poetry" from 1987. 37 Km c,, mpbdl, /I Knift Romflnce", I O;.;fiml, 1988 ''I Un rc~ ad a h l c,~ Books A Nluseum w ithin t he IVfusetJm One section of Lhc ex hibition is devoted to buok objects. The Gcnnan Bookbinders' CDIIeninn (Sammlung dn Thought'S Oil the re>k of"tllL: book in () llf modern day and age d L: ut srhL:n Buchbinder) is a sL:paratt.: section of" th t.: n1u sL: u1n h;tve i i1 Sjl i red a great· n Ulll her of;trtists to tu rt1 books in t·o ob which cbds wi r·h th t: hi st·Dry and tn·lllliC]lles orl)()okhi11dino,.., , jec ts which often :dictlalc or dispute th e book's purp>se as an in cluding rhc tll:tnuEtcturc of'colDurcd paper, gold hlockitl['; 'it L: m to he read. One cxatll[lk is Kar·lh eir>z /,wick's "Rcisclitc wit·h gcnuir1e gold lca f:llld thl: many di-Hl.:rcJJt ways ofbirHl~ ratm" hom t')<)l which t·akL:s its tit.lc literally; this is litnature ing and hcadb:u1ding. The collection also has infimn;ttion which ctrl travel. 011 the guild syst·elll bookbinders were organised in. 11 .- ll T h ~' ~ ~ · 1ost b e "1(, conclude, two showctses should he mentioned whi ch L: ach year prL:sc nl the "most bc:\lll·if·id books" in Cermany. These arc hooks whi ch tnake up the hulk oF modern book producti on, which- Like the m;tjor·ity - arc mass-prodm:ed. Yet they stand out in that th ey illu stT;ttc that eve n 1\lass flr Th\-:-:> /\rt "m d C ra fi:s rn ~mshij.1 err tho E~ook CoW'!' The r;Ke of" the hook is its cover, wh ic.h with its constatll" changes uf design gives us important inf·(mnaliott as I< > the peri od the hook was produced in. Ch;tr:tcrc ri stic exa mpl es of book u>vcrs placed among the open b 42 43 Magic Material Paper There arc some materials which have the ability to bscinate and captivate the people who work with them. Paper is one ofthcm. lt awakens the creative mind, is used for writing on, t(Jr drawing and painting on and for making three-dimen sional objects from- or simply just collected. Anyone who would like to know what people in other parts of the world wrote on before they had paper :1s we know it should take a look at the showcase in the paper section which has writing fodder made from other base materials. In Central America, New Guinea and on the Tonga TsLmds tapa is still made from the bast fibres of the bark of certain fig ;mel breadfruit trees. Tapa is also used to make curtains and clothes. In l\!Iexico this material is called amatl. Papyrus: an Ancient Writing Material Papyrus, from which we get our word "paper", was a com mon writing material in ancient times. The pith of the pa [1yrus .1 lnnt, n reed which grows in the M ·ditcrntnean, was cut inro long strips. These we.re placed in rows on a ti rm hnsc, with the.: edges slightly ovcrbpping, :tnd covered wirh a Paj>o· thco/1'<', second layer of s rips laid at ri u·b t a n ~l c · to the first laye r. Sc/Jol:::: Vcr/11,~ i'viuim:, The layers were then beate n with a wooden hammer \mti l thcy formed a bonded surface. I r8,~') Paper from the Far East The paper we now usc all over the world has its origins in the China of the second century B.C. Originally made from hemp fibres, silk and the bark or the mulberry tree, paper and the impomtM technique of l1 ow to make it first spread demand that some places forb~tdc the export of rags, causing th roughout E astern sia. Paper made its way to Europe via people to feverishly seck alternatives. By thc mid-r<) th cen th ·silk man and th e.: counn·ics of the Arab world. Spain and tury man had found a way of cutting wood into pieces small Italy were the fi.rst Eur >pea !1 countries to start making their enough to make paper from wood pulp. The method uf man own paper in the r:ah century, Documents tell us that the uf~tcturing paper was also improved. In 1799 Nicolas Louis first paper mill in Germ;tny was Ulman , n·o mer's Gleis Robert produced a paper-making machine which used an miihl in Nuremberg whi.ch st:uted m.anufiH.:ture in I3<)0. In endless sieve (the museum has a model of the improved ma Europe paper was made from linen rags. The watery paper chine from r8oz). pulp was made in large vats. Watermarks Hand-Made Paper The watermark, the trademark of the manufacturing mill Rags as the raw material in paper were not readily available impressed on the paper, is peculiar to Europe and has been in unlimited quantities; in the r8th century they were in such in usc since the r]th century. I-I.-B. and U. D. 44 4S ~' ~ ~ CI~!?~~~~~LA I /1 t' l) ILLl ISTI\t\TED l\Y J\RTIIliR Ri\CKl-IA~I Arthur Rackeham, "Cinderella·: II9I9 derbuch flir Kinder" series (children's picture books), first Books for Children and Young Adults published by Friedrich Justin Bertuch in 1790. They were adorned with hand-coloured etchings depicting the major At the beginning of the section of literature and texts for sights and facts of the world. One very rare children's book children at the Gutenberg Museum is a broadsheet from c. rsso on display is what is believed to be the second edition of a tabula abcdariaewith alphabets and verses intended to help Heinrich Hoffmann's "Struwwelpeter" ("Shock-headed the young learn to read and write. Some of the most delight Peter"), published in r844. It contains lithographic repro ful, educational books for young people are those of the "Bil- ductions of the drawings the Frankfurt doctor originally did 47 T I for hi ~ ,on. Fiuc pictur · bo ok ~ by £"lm(Jus 19 th- and 2oth- entury ill us tmto rs, such as Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rad h;tm ,Ermt Kwidolf, Li csd ottc SchwaJz and Mauri ce en d. k, tTac · further devel opments to th present d 1\y. Thei·c i 11 rending corn ·r with a large ·he t oft ooks forth · ·hildrcn whu vis it the m11setlm t1l read or brows· thmugb. l l.- 13. Posters, Job Printing and Ex-Libris Tel assess just how va ried the s ·ope of the pri nted gr;1phics industry is we only need to coun t the large number 1f areas of appliou ion, omnw nly know11 as "j bs'' < r cotUJl'lcrcial pri nti.ng: prinl'ed fi.J rnls ( trtenbcrg's Letter oflndulgenC' o.:a n justifi ably be indtl tb .l here!), heade d notepaper, ti ckets, invitations, menus, pri ntoJ material s for busincs., m l ·n d ~ r s and diaries, ·all ing c:-Hds and certificates. Th · t nn " ·om mcn.; ial art" re f< ·rs to those areas whi ch i'nclud · graphi ~ :1 ~ pftrt hr :ill'()[ the J esign, such as ck vo tion1ll pictures, iJOst N,·~u.fiirming wlcntlui" card , wrapping p;1per, hrisunus and New Year cards, wine I For tbcycar M.DCC:.XXXXXl (r7'i1) labels brochures, g~u11cs and mw.:h more. Advertising- Always Up-to-Date Ad ve rtising is not a modern invention. Ev' n in the dey nf i_ncu nal uh important :1 11nou.nce mcnrs wc (C "adver ti sed" by reJigious :Uld secular ruler. W<\Jlting to iss ue i nfimn ;~ ti o n and nu:racr custom. Posters illustra ted with woC>ckuts r .: pper Ex-Libris cngwvings promoting evc nrs staged hy tr:wclljug entertain ers and fairground ar ti stes, m.1mng others were not uncom The Gutenberg Museum is not alone in collecting items mo n in rhe ·16th ce ntu ry. T he rJtb rmd 18th cent-u ries used from a very different area of the world of print; with over po. ter to Iraw audience· to rhe theatre and to recrui t 7o,ooo examples, the museum bas one of the largest collec twops. Thl.! bq!ie- formatwo.rks of the m .> rc rece nt age of the tions ~ f ex-libris bookplates in Europe. These small oblong poster Rr wdL-rep1·cscnted u the G utenberg Museum, graphics stuck onto the inside front cover to denote who the whic h has n ·o llecti on of placard Fr 111.th e Art N mveau pe book belongs to mirror the entire development of print in riod an l various examples from the de ad · · which fl llowcd. perhaps its smallest form since the end of the rsth century. Among the nrtists are names such us tto E ·kmann Lud They are also interesting in that they generally include wi g H ohlwcin and Peter Behrens 49 Graphics Techniques: From Wood Cuts to Offset Printing Printing does not only cover the printed word; it also spans 1'1 3 the various graphics techniques used in the reproduction of pictures. In Europe, illustrations - some of them with short texts - were carved into wood and printed on paper from the late 14th century onwards. Woodcuts From the middle of the rsth century woodcuts were used to produce what were known as block books (two arc on dis play in the museum treasury). Wood cuts and typography soon entered into a close partnership. It was some time be fore printers of books, working with single letters and the press since Gutenberg's invention, managed to use the print ing press to print woodcut illustrations and texts simultane ously (r46os). Copper Engraving Copper engraving was put to use in printing slightly later than wood cutting (c. 1420). Whereas wood cutting is a ,. ~\ , letterpress technique (the surface of the forme prints on the 1-r.; .• • paper), copper engraving and the various etching techniques which followed are known as gravure or intaglio printing processes. Lines were engraved into a copper plate and filled with ink which was then pressed out onto the paper using a special copperplate press. Etching by hand in the various in taglio processes demanded great skill and effort and was lat er replaced by a machine which "engraved" the lines and characters in acid. Coppor engraving from Diderot and D 'Aiembert's Steel and Wood Engraving, Lithography and Screen printing ''Encylop.:die", 17JI./l The section of the museum on the 19th century describes the printing processes common at the time, namely steel engrav ing, wood engraving and lithography or flat-bed printing, which uses chemicals. Techniques were required which could print large editions and produce accurate duplicates in true detail. Screen printing and offset printing are products of the more recent past. H.-B. so ink block and wetted until fluid enough to be used for writ Script and Printing in Eastern Asia ing. Brushes were kept in special pots made from glazed ce ramics or other materials, some of them costly. Of all the museums of the western world, the Gutenberg Museum probably has the most extensive information on The Early Days of Printing early achievements in the history of script and printing in Eastern Asia. Archaeological finds have revealed that in During the Han period (zo6 B.C.- 220 A.D.) religious in China script was notated on bone, bronze, ceramics and scriptions were chiselled into square slabs of stone. With the stone as early as the sth millennium B.C. The invention of passing of time, rubbings and proofs of these inscriptions paper, originally made from hemp fibres and later from silk were taken on paper. The next step was to cut texts in Chi rags, the bark of the mulberry tree and other plant products, nese characters in tablets of wood and to use these to pro can be dated back to the znd century B.C. Paper allowed duce prints (7th century A.D.). In this process, each charac longer texts to be notated and texts to be copied. The devel ter had to be painstakingly carved in lateral reverse and in re opment of Chinese script was closely linked to that of the lief writing utensils of the time, namely the brush, ink, the ink Wooden printing formes exhibited at the museum give an block and paper. They were fashioned to technical perfec impression of how text and pictures were reproduced in East tion; careful attention was paid to their form and design. Ink ern Asia for centuries. Four Chinese tablets in wood, cut as was usually made from the soot of burnt pine which was a forme on both sides, show how polychrome pictures were mixed with other ingredients (mainly lime) to form a paste duplicated; printed together, they produce a display of com and then dried. This hard slab of ink was then placed on an plex colour. Wooden printingforme, Korea, IChason Dynasty 52 53 Moveable Type before Gutenberg which involves the whole body, where shape and form are inspired by gestures and the act of writing is preceded by Records tell us that in c. 1040 a man called Bi Sheng began meditation. experimenting with moveable ceramic printing stamps, using them to compose and print texts. They were arranged on an iron grid which had been smeared with wax or resin to prevent them from slipping out of place. The paper was The Development of Notation placed onto the inked ceramic letters and the back of the in Europe and the Middle East sheet rubbed with a blade to transfer the ink to the paper. In later years individual stamps like these were made from wood. The history of notation is one of the most fascinating chap ters of our cultural heritage. If we look back to the origins of Metal Type writing in the Middle East and the Mediterranean we will discover that pictographics and later syllabary and phono The first moveable type in metal (copper, lead or brass) was grams were used as a notated form of communication before probably produced in Korea. In China printing with move writing as we know it evolved. Thousands of years in the his able type was not really widely practised until the end of the tory of mankind elapsed before these early forms of script, 19th century; in Korea moveable type was in common use these ideograms (rock paintings, numerical and graphic long before that. The enormous number of characters in symbols) metamorphosed into alphabets ofletters. Chinese script was a handicap to printing methods with moveable type, whereas in Korea the writing reform of Cuneiform the rsth century reduced the number of characters to 28 and then to 24, making the language better suited to such print The oldest form of notation known to us is a pictographic ing processes. The resulting Korean system of notation, writing system developed around s,ooo years ago in Biblical Hangul, was officially launched in 1444 and by virtue of the Erech, whose pictures gradually took on an abstract form to authority of King Sejong was soon in use throughout the produce cuneiform. The surfaces written on and the writing country. implements used were major factors in determining the char acteristics and development of notational systems; cunei The Book Art of Japan form gained its specific structure from the use of a stylus scratched and pressed into soft clay which was then left to The development and forms of] apanese writing are explain harden. Cuneiform was used in Sumer, Assyria and Babylon ed in the Japanese section of the museum on four large post for hundreds of years.lt was at around this period (c. 3200- ers donated by the Dai Nippon company. Among the pre c. 700 B.C.) that ancient Egypt developed hieroglyphics. cious items on display in an original Japanese showcase is a Dharani sutra from the Nara period (710 -794), a Buddhist Hieroglyphics scroll printed from a wooden forme and kept, as is the tradi tion, in a small pagoda ofwood. Dated c. no, this is estimat The pictographic system of hieroglyphics was not the only ed to be one of the oldest known wooden slab prints in the form of notation to arise from ancient Egypt. Syllabary was world. another product of the region which was used in con Various illustrated books, most part of the collection present junction with hieroglyphics and phonetic symbols (phono ed to the museum by Dr. von Kritter, document the fine art grams). of the colour woodcut in Japanese book illustration. Examples ofJ apanese lead type, also given to the museum by The First Alphabet Dai Nippon, demonstrate how European methods of type production began to spread to Japan in r89o. One artistic An important step was taken in the 2nd millennium B.C. highlight is the calligraphic work of SI-IO calligrapher Shir which was to be of great significance for the development of yu Morita, born in Kyoto in 1912. SHO is a writing process notational systems in the Mediterranean, later in Europe 54 55 and finally all over the world. The Phoenicians invented an From Books of Palm Leaves to Tibetan Prayer Wheels alphabetic script which was easy to learn and thus particu larly beneficial to trade between the Mediterranean coun Books and texts from the various corners of the globe are as tries. In a much altered guise, this alphabet was eventually to diverse as the cultures and walks oflife which produce them, form the basis of the Greek and Roman alphabets. Latin as the museum's section on mediums of notation outside script- with a few minor alterations -is still in use today. Europe impressively illustrates. Here we can sec books from Among the many exhibits on display in this section of the India made of palm leaves, common since about the 7th cen museum is a full-size replica of a sarcophagus from Byblos tury B.C., whose pages are striped like the material they are from c. rooo B.C. which bears the oldest text in semitic al made from; there are Batak books of spells imprinted on phabet script we are able to understand. This early Semitic birch bark (Sumatra, c. r8oo), a Siamese manuscript with alphabet can be described as Proto-(prc)Phoenician. beautiful miniatures pleated like a concertina, which folded The evolution of Ancient Hebraic script and the Arabic al out have a length of rs metres (49 feet), and Tibetan prayer phabet can also be attributed to the Phoenician system of wheels, which relieved the person turning the wheel of actu notation. ally having to utter the prayer. The square script of Hebrew, still used today, dates back to The Gutenberg Museum has recently acquired a number of approximately the sth/4th century B.C., yet is not related to rare manuscripts from India, Burma and Sri Lanka, whose Early Hebraic script. It developed from Aramaic, which systems of writing and meaning have not yet been thor from the 9th to the 7th century B.C. was a widespread means oughly researched. There is thus hardly a region in the world of communication used throughout the entire Near East whose ideas on how to notate the spoken word- either as an and in parts of Egypt, Asia Minor and India. original or a facsimile- are not included at the museum. The Calligraphy of the Islamic World The History of Writing in Europe Arabic script is the most recent of the Semitic alphabet sys The history of writing in Europe ranges from the medieval tems. The oldest inscriptions are from the 6th century A.D. manuscript, an inheritance from the Romans, to modern Two very different styles of writing, the rather angular Kuf calligraphy and advertising type. As the printed book slowly ic and the more fluid Naskhi, gave rise to Arabic letters of took the place of work executed by professional copyists, great contrast. Arabic introduced the notation of vowels to beautiful manuscripts became the cultural and educational its language fairly early on, probably under the influence of heritage of the rich and respected figures of society. Syrian, marking the relevant symbols with dots and lines. The main purpose ofwritten Arabic was to notate the sacred scripture of Islam, the Koran; this applied to nearly all dis ciplines of the arts and crafts where script was used decora tively. The Islamic section of the museum, for example, has Clay Persian bowl ceramics and textiles adorned with Arabic calligraphy. The 'With inscribed characters, ornamental pages of the Koran, painstakingly notated, boast I9th/wth cmt111y an array of subtly coloured designs and are of extreme beauty. This deep reverence towards the written word, which came from its religious use, also meant that the print ing of text came late to the countries oflslam (r7th/r8th cen tury). Slichoth prayers, Hebrew manuscript, I Ofen, I64J Morris, with lettering introduced as a course of study at var Writing Masters ious technical colleges and schools of arts and crafts. Exam Writing masters earned a living by teaching people how to ples of work by outstanding artists, such as Anna Simons, F. write and by preparing copybooks, which the museum owns H. Ehmcke, Rudolf Koch, Eric Gill, Jan Tschichold and many of. In the 19th century the fashion for elegant forms of many others, document the written forms and trends of the notation was revived by arts-and-crafts reformer William modern age. H.-B. 59 / 1i!ilr! ,)'inlOTI .I', /rig( · r:/st"ri/'t', "J1'in ru;(~r>df'il 1/ i JI :l:t! 1tJt'i'rft.•;/'••• , '9-f.- ) () () )J --' l History and Objective of the The Gutenberg "Druckladen" Small Press Archives in Mainz Educational Unit and Workshop The Small Press Archives in Mainz (Mainzer Minipressen The "Druckladen" is the museum's educational unit and Archiv or MMPA) have existed in their present form since practical workshop. The letter cases, lead type and wooden !980. poster type lend the "Druckladen" its museum atmosphere. The main objective of the MMPA is to acquire literature and The toggle lever and gravure presses from the second half of texts generated by small printing and publishing houses the nineteenth century, available for general use, also help (small presses) whose publications are not usually included emphasise the Print Shop's museum character. A table-top in the collections of public archives and libraries. Small and two proof presses round off the current complement of scale editions issued by businesses such as these are either hand presses. unknown or labelled "alternative literature" and ignored. The "Druckladen" offers interested groups and individuals The Small Press Fair the chance to spend a few constructive hours trying their hand at letterpress or intaglio printing, making a compositor The small press meets biennially at the Small Press Fair in or printer of just about anyone! Here, words and pictures, Mainz (Mainzer Minipressen-Messe), first staged in 1970. type and templates can be typeset and printed to individual The fair, which the MMPA plays a major role in organising, designs. The opportunity to produce printed material on a is the international book fair for small publishing houses and small scale provides visitors with an insight into the handpress printers of fine editions. The initiator and first or complicated techniques of manual typesetting, otherwise ganizer of the fair was Norbert Kubatzki, a small press pub only possible with museum collections of lead type. lisher from Mainz. Learning by doing, visitors begin to fully appreciate the Over the years the Small Press Fair has grown into the larg unparalleled perfection of the first printed Bibles from the est of its kind in Europe, with ca. 360 exhibitors and an aver mid-15th century. There are several ways of investigating age of rs,ooo visitors. It has become a trade centre for the ne type composition with old wooden and lead type: west trends and ideas in printing and art and literature pu - Visitors gain initial access to the medium by arranging a blishing. few lines or a short text, using words in the first instance as a means of conveying information; The Small Press Award -Individuals can also set words in combination with pictures or - experiment with typographic material, exploiting the The MMPA also supervises the V.O. Stomps Prize awarded graphic rather than the informative aspect of type. by the City ofMainz. Small press publisher, writer and liter ary patron Victor Otto Stomps breached new territories in The educational focus of the "Druckladen" is on combining publishing others were not bold enough to explore and be the historical side to the invention of printing with came something of a figurehead for the small press of the moveable type with the practice of printing. The workshop post-war years. In memory of Stomps the City of Mainz caters for the following groups: awards a prize every two years for outstanding achievements in small press publishing. The winners of the two prize ca - Groups oflearners at all school levels who can sign up for tegories (book and magazine publishing) are awarded DM special printing processes; s,ooo each. Entries can be made all year round. The Small - Project groups who would like to use the museum as a Press Fair takes place every odd year, starting on Ascension place of learning for practical group work over a longer Day and ending the following Sunday. J. K. period; - Groups of shortterm vtsltors who would like to print - Students of relevant subjects; following their visit to the museum, thus supplementing - Autodidacts and hobby printers who can work without what they have seen with practical experience. In addition, having to worry about tools and materials; we also have a jour fixe once a week, aimed at - Graphic artists, freelance artists, printers, typesetters and accommodating all those who wish to take advantage of our all those who have suddenly come across their old printing open workshop, among them: formes from school. O.M. sued many other publications, among them more than 140 The Gutenberg Society monographs and smaller publications of the Gutenberg Society. The International Gutenberg Society (Internationale Gutenberg-Gesellschaft) was founded to encourage The Gutenberg Prize research into printing the history of and the book and to give financial and moral support to the museum in Mainz. It Together with the City ofMainz, the International Guten celebrated its centenary in 2000. berg Society awards the Gutenberg Prize. Introduced in 1968, the prize rewards outstanding technical, artistic or The society currently has ca 2000 members in 38 countries academic/scientific achievements in the field of printing. of the world. Since 1994, the Gutenberg Prizes of Mainz and Leipzig have been awarded in alternate years. The first prize in 1968 in Mainz went to Giovanni Marder The Gutenberg Yearbook steig. He was succeeded by Henri Friedlaender (1971), Her In the Gutenberg Yearbook, first launched in 1926 and mann Zapf(1974), RudolfHell (1977), Hellmut Lehmann counted among the leading specialist periodicals of the Haupt (1980), Gerrit Willem Ovink (1983), Adrian Fruti world in the fields of Gutenberg research and research into ger (1986), Lotte Hellinga (1989), Ricardo J. Vicent Muse the history of printing and of the book general, the society ros (1992), Paul Brainerd (1994), John G. Dreyfus (1996) publishes contributions on research in German, English, and Henri Jean Martin (1998). The Gutenberg Prize in the French, Italian and Spanish written by authors of inter year 2000 was awarded on 24 June in Mainz to Joseph M. national acclaim. Since its founding the society has also is- Jacobson. G.B. 66 two of the tasks on hand. Through donations and shop The Gutenberg Sponsorship Association proceeds the Association hopes to be able to continue to and the Gutenberg Shop make a substantial contribution to the museum's future. The Gutenberg Shop Jn rb. sp ri.ng or l 94 <1 sm:tll yer highly motivated tcanl of Mainz. printers, publishers and pr.inte individual The shop has many exclusive ideas for presents from the interested in printing clccidcd to go ahead with pl:U1s 11 world of printing. These include the legendary Smallest txtend the Gutenberg lusc\IIT1, !Ul un lc.rmking whi ·h h:td Book in the World, reprints from the 42-line Gutenberg previously fa iled du · to Ia ·1 d su.Ok icnt funding. They Bible, handmade paper, specialist literature on all facets of ti nmded the A~so ·inri\lu filr the Spons r hip of the world of printing and much more. All purchases made the 1,1tenberg Museum E~'tc n si n (Fi>rdcrvcrcin l:!:r in the shop include a donation to the museum. This is weiterung Gute.nburg- Lu.cum ), now the Fiirdervcr' in indicated on your receipt and in Germany can be deducted G utenbcrg nr utcnbcrg ponsorshlp Assoc.iation. s from taxes. Companies and professionals buying items from Llll kr its previous ririe the prime objective of rh .i ~ ci tizens' the shop for all kinds of occasions thus not only enjoy certain action group is to offer (financial) support to th · world tax advantages but also help support the arts. Jamo u~ museum and its nnny · hibirs. incc its initiation Purchases from the shop can be giftwrapped by our shop rhcAssociation has ll'htnnKcd to n m~t s 11 consider. blc sum of assistants, who work on a voluntary basis, or sent all over the money through sponso r hip, donation and fl ro ccds from world by mail order. the Gutenberg Shop. www.gutenberg-shop.de Although the long-pLumed and dcspt:rately-ncedl:ld extension h;ts now been opened there arc stillm;lDy tln ~mdal Our newest acquisition is the Cyberstore www.gutenberg hurdles to be nvercomc. ! ~'q u ipping the tntJseum with state shop.de where you can shop from the comfort of your own of-the-art technology an d fo rms of pre.~cntatiun c:a i.l y home. Z.C. com prehensible to visitor from :til. over the wodd are just 68 Adresses and Phone Numbers Gutenberg-Museum Liebfrauenplatz 5 D-55116 Mainz Tel: +49-(0) 6131-12 26 40 Fax: +49-(0) 6131-1234 88 E-mail: [email protected] Inf(mnation on prices and opening times Museum desk Tel: +49-(0) 6131-12 26 44 G uided to urs Forderverein Gutenberg MainzerTouristik Centrale Tel: +49-(0) 61 31-28 62 10 Gutenberg Sponsorship Association International Gutenberg Society L'association des am is du Musee (Internationale Gutenberg-Gesellschaft) Liebfrauenplatz 5 D-55116 Mainz Liebfrauenplatz, 55116 Mainz Tel: +49-(0) 61 31-22 64 20 Telefon 0 6131 -22 71 20 Fax: +49-(0) 6131-23 35 30 Telefax. 0 6131-14 37 98 "Druckladen" Seilergasse 1 D-55116 Mainz Tel: +49-(0) 6131-12 26 86 Small Press Archives (Mainzer Minipressenarchiv) Liebfrauenplatz 5 D-55116 Mainz Tel: +49-(0) 61 31-12 26 76 Gutenberg Sponsorship Association (Forderverein Gutenberg) Liebfrauenplatz 5 D-55116 Mainz Tel: +49-(0) 6131-22 04 69 Fax: +49-(0) 6131-14 37 98 Gutenberg Shop Liebfrauenplatz 5 D-55116 Mainz Tel: +49-(0) 6131-22 7120 Fax: +49-(0) 61 31-14 37 98 Cybershop: www.gutenberg-shop.de Mz.-Kaste RaJnuJttt1ilor [i;ISchloB SchJoBtor ")., - RotuTor r:1 Hilton' LOhrstr. ~ ... ,..lngoldhall• ~\ Congr••• Centrum M. 1.. -... IDID II\ Ralhaus D ':; (J Aolhm •