making fraternities of St. Luke, in Venice and in Paris, were constituted of copyists, calligraphers, illuminators and book-binders; but the more practical Northern guilds admitted to membership printers and engravers, and every worker, however humble his work, who contributed to the making of a book. But this combination of copyists with engravers and printers did not at once lead to the printing of books. It did no more than pave the way for its introduction, by making people familiar with paper and printing. For a long time the workmanship of the rival arts was kept distinct; the copyist transcribed books, while the printers made images. But the time came when the copyist had to ask help from the printer.
The printing of books began, not as an independent art, but as an aid to the art of writing. A publisher[1] of London recently described and offered for sale a curious old book, partly printed and partly written, which illustrates the close alliance of labor once maintained between the copyist and the engraver. He describes the book as a folio of 17 leaves of vellum, on which are printed 69 engravings, twelve of them bearing legends, "representing scenes of Christian mythology, figures of patriarchs, saints, devils, and other dignitaries of the church, all colored and illuminated with oxidized gold, impressed in the midst of a manuscript text in German." The engravings of this book are small, about 3 inches long and 2¼ inches broad. They are enclosed by a double border of black lines, and are printed on the left side of the page. The designer of the illustrations was obviously an inexpert, not accustomed to drawing the letters of the inscriptions in reverse order on the block, for some of the letters are turned the wrong way. The engravings were printed before the descriptive text was written. The language of the text, old High German, contains obsolete words which were out of use before typography was invented. Quaritch attributes this
- ↑ Bernard Quaritch, Catalogue of Block-Books , 8vo. October, 1873, pp. 1373–1375. The title of the book, of as he gives it, is Ein Vorrede das Puch haist wockenlich Andack zu Seligkayt der weltlichen Menschen.
