XXVI
The Tools and Usages of the Early Printers.
Punches made by Goldsmiths … Styles of Types imitated from Manuscripts … Popularity of the Gothic … Moulded Matrices … Types made without any System … From an Adjustable Mould. Appearance of Early Types … Large Fonts made … Importance of Mould … Rudeness of Early Composition … Method of Dictation … Faults of Compositors … Slowness of Improvement … Construction of the Hand-Press, with illustration … Inking Balls, with illustration … Slowness of Pressmen … Printing in Colors … Printing Ink … Ingredients used by the Ripoli Press … Moxon's Complaints about Ink … Neglect of Engraving on Wood … Peculiarities of Paper … The Degradation of Engraving … Proof-reading at Weidenbach … Faults of First Editions … Superiority of Printed as compared with Manuscript Books … Permanence of Gutenberg's Method.
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.
