How did the first printers achieve the (almost impossible) task of getting crisp impressions of inked type onto paper, evenly, clearly and repeatedly? Well, quite often they did not manage it – this lecture will illustrate how some of the various faults and imperfections found in early printed books provide clues to fifteenth-century printing methods.
Claire Bolton has worked for over 35 years as a letterpress printer – researching, writing, designing, hand setting the type, printing pages on a hand press, and binding books in limited editions at her Alembic Press. Running the Press fostered a lifelong interest in the history of printing, paper and bookbinding, which formed the subject matter of many of the Press’s 100 editions.
A few years ago she decided to put her practice into theory and began to research fifteenth-century printing practices. This gave her the excuse to spend many happy hours looking at incunables; her resulting PhD thesis will be published by the Oxford Bibliographical Society in 2010.
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