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Het Boek. Serie 3. Jaargang 33 (1958-1959)

Het Boek. Serie 3. Jaargang 33

(1958-1959)– [tijdschrift] Boek, Het–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Boekbespreking

Ernst Kyriss. Der verzierte Europäische Einband vor der Renaissance. Stuttgart, Max Hettler Verlag, 1957. 40 blz. 16 platen. Meister und Meisterwerke der Buchbinderkunst herausgegeben von G.A.E. Bogeng: 5.

Deze korte verhandeling, geschreven door de Duitse bandenkenner Kyriss kan gelezen worden in aansluiting bij zijn standaardwerk Verzierte gotische Einbände im alten Deutschen Sprachgebiet en met gebruikmaking van de delen met platen, die tot dit werk behoren. Schrijver bespreekt voornamelijk Zuid Duitse boekbanden en een klein aantal banden uit andere landen. De boekbanden uit het tijdperk tussen de Gotiek en de Renaissance, waartoe schr. de banden rekent voor Koning Matthias Corvinus van Hongarije, voor Koning Lodewijk XII van Frankrijk, en de plaquettebanden voor Grolier uit Milaan zijn hier buiten beschouwing gelaten. Schr. deelt mee, op welke wijze deze boeken zijn gebonden. Hij vermeldt eerst de banden ontstaan vóór het Romaanse tijdperk, van circa 700 tot 1000 en de publicaties daarover van K. Christ en G.D. Hobson. Daarna volgen de Romaanse banden uit het tijdperk van circa 1130 tot 1300, die indertijd door G.D. Hobson zijn bestudeerd. In het Romaanse tijdperk zijn een groot aantal stempels in gebruik geweest met voorstellingen, die ook in de volgende eeuwen dikwijls weer voorkwamen. Schr. geeft hier een lijstje van 42 stempels met voorstellingen, die later niet meer zijn gegraveerd op boekbindersstempels. Plaat I toont 12 afbeeldingen van wrijfsels, gemaakt van dergelijke stempels.

De verhandeling over de Gotische banden uit de vijftiende eeuw vormt het belangrijkste gedeelte van dit overzicht. De meeste zijn afkomstig uit de Duits sprekende landen. Schr. geeft een nauwkeurige beschrijving van de wijze, waarop deze boeken zijn gebonden, van de leersoorten en van de onderdelen van de band, zoals het beslag, de sloten, de overslag, het kapitaalband, en van de versiering van de snede. Aan de losse stempels, die op deze banden zijn gebruikt en die blind, dus zonder bladgoud, zijn afgedrukt, is in het bijzonder aandacht besteed. Hiertoe behoren ook stempels met

spreuken, met namen of wapens van kloosters en met namen van boekbinders. Voorts zijn de rolstempels en plaatstempels en de z.g. Ledeschnittbanden met ingegrifte versiering behandeld. Hierna volgt een bespreking van de indeling van de versiering op de platten, van de werkplaatsen en van de kenmerk en van de boekbanden uit een aantal Duitse steden. Op vier platen zijn gotische stempels afgebeeld; hierna volgen zeven platen met banden uit Augsburg, Erfurt, Keulen, Leipzig, Neurenberg en Wenen. De laatste bladzijden van het overzicht zijn gewijd aan de banden, die buiten de Duits sprekende landen zijn ontstaan en aan de belangrijkste literatuur hierover, te beginnen met de Vlaamse en Nederlandse banden en de publicaties van Prosper Verheyden. Hierna volgen de Franse, Engels, Italiaanse en Spaanse banden. Aan dit gedeelte zijn vier platen toegevoegd. Een literatuuropgave met 63 titels van boeken en tijdschriftartikelen besluit deze studie. Als er iets meer aandacht en plaats was besteed aan de beschrijving van de bindkunst buiten Duitsland, zou dit overzicht nog aan waarde hebben gewonnen. Het is echter zeer nuttig, dat nu in een beknopte uitgave, die voor belangstellenden en bibliotheken gemakkelijk te verkrijgen is, een grondige verhandeling over deze oudste boekbanden is verschenen.

 

E. de la Fontaine Verwey

Harry Carter, Wolvercote Mill, A Study in Paper-making at Oxford. Oxford Bibl. Society, 1957. Oxford Univ. Press.

If not the oldest industry, Paper-making is certainly one of the oldest of mechanical industries in England, for paper is a product which, from its very birth, could not be made by the hand of man alone, unaided by mechanical power. Without going back to its origins in China nearly 2000 years ago, we know that in the seventh century (Samarkand, Fez) water power was used to pound the hemp, rags, ropes and even coarser materials to pulp, permitting the disintegrated fibres to be held in suspension, as it were, in a liquid from which the paper as we know it today was first made.

Otherwise than in encyclopaedic articles on the general history of paper and its manufacture, mostly drawn from one or two original sources, (Lalande1, Desmarets2,) no descriptive history of a single paper-mill has as far as we know been published before 1900. It is true that in pursuit of other ends, such as the study of watermarks in the paper made by them, Briquet had before 1900 published in periodicals short notes of the papermills in certain regions of Switzerland3, and Auguste Lacroix4, a paper manufacturer, wrote a sound history of the transition from the handicraft of paper-making to its modern mechanical development. This was for a whole region, however, viz., that of Angoulême, that part of France - now

Charente and Dordogne - where paper-making was established at an early date by reason of its clear waters, second in quality only to those of Auvergne. And now, definitely among the first dozen of such histories of a single English paper-mill, we have before us this Study in Paper-making at Oxford. For many years hence it will serve as a model narrative of the vicissitudes of a paper-making mill for three centuries of its existence. The story of the last hundred years, that is, since the mill in 1855 came under the control of the main user of its product, the University Press at Oxford, is given in fuller detail, none superfluous to a student of the economics of this interesting craft.

As Mr. Henderson, the present Controller of the mill observes in his preface, the attention of scholars has in recent years been attracted to English paper-mills and their records, and this study was clearly written to meet ‘the long-felt want’ for more information on early paper-making, a demand which has become insistent owing to the growing interest in the watermarks used by such mills, as an aid in dating documents.

The early history of a paper-mill, its geographical situation and raison d'être, and ultimately the reasons which enabled it to survive where other enterprises, in apparently identical circumstances, failed, all these are clear and instructive in the pages devoted to ‘The Mill and the River’, carried on to the close of the era of handmade paper, when the first paper-making machine was erected in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. All the facts and details related, the result of the study and comparison of original documents, are fascinating; they permit of comparison with the story of other paper-mills in England - so far as published - and the many ‘Jubilee Albums’ published by the owners of paper-mills in continental countries, some of them covering four centuries and longer (Arches, and Johannot), three centuries (Reggio-Emilia), two and a half centuries (Whitchurch, Alfeld), two centuries (Fabriano), and many others, not to mention the reputed earliest recorded paper-mill in Europe, at Jativa in Spain, in the twelfth century if not earlier, which the author calls ‘the cradle of papermaking in Europe’.

Among the interesting details of the mill at Wolvercote, to those who have been initiated in the development of paper-making machinery by R.H. Clapperton1, now living within a few miles of this mill, is that the original mill must have worked a stamping-mill, so feelingly described by Thos. Churchyard2. The ‘machine’ referred to in p. 23, line 16, must, in 1779 have been a ‘stamping’ machine, for the ‘beaters’ there described as having floors made of ‘stones each six feet by three feet by one foot’ (in thickness apparently) cannot have been what is now known as the ‘Hollander’, improved to its present form at Zaandam in 16733. Consequently we must conclude that this ‘Hollander’ had not yet, in 1780, a hundred years later, found its way to a paper-mill on the Thames. A description of the contents of the mill in 1849 mentions ‘2 cast-iron washing and beating engines, with rollers and plates’, obviously the Hollanders then in normal use.

James Swann, the brother of John Swann, the owner of the mill at Wolvercote, installed his first ‘machine’, a Fourdrinier, soon after 1807, and a similar machine of 60 inches in width was erected at Wolvercote in 1811 which, apparently, was sold in 1848. The second Fourdrinier, a machine of 72 inches, was erected in 1856 at a cost of £7,000, while the third, a machine of 80 inches in width, was installed in 1899 at a cost, including the building, of nearly £20,000, a machine still running today. Paper-makers may envy these figures for they know that a large size-paper machine today may cost anything up to £150,000.

A new mill was erected at Wolvercote in 1856, after which handmade paper was no longer made there.

Soon after the year 1888 Wolvercote began to make ‘dry’ paper, that is, it was no longer necessary to print on paper which had been moistened, a process which dated from the early days of the printing press because of the hardness of paper made from rags.

About 1863/64 a Belgian paper mill supplied paper at 4½d a pound, but apparently fifteen years later a Lancashire mill was able to produce a paper used for Bibles at 3¾d a pound, the lowest cost for a book paper recorded in the history of the Bible Press.

In 1894 paper used for Bibles cost the mill 2½d a pound, and was sold to the Oxford Press at little more than cost price. This must of course have been a paper made from chemical wood and highly glazed; in 1856 the Bible Press purchased thin Bible paper from the firm of Dickinsons for 9d a pound, naturally paper with a rag base seeing that the invention of paper made from wood was only developed after 1870/74.

As has been said, the chief work of the Oxford University Press was the printing of Bibles, the sales of which, chiefly to the British and Foreign Bible Society, had in 1856 reached a number of 1,000,000 a year.

In these days of inflated currency, it is interesting to learn that in 1864 a 24mo Bible could be sold to the Bible Society for 4d each and it is recorded that about this time the cost of paper represented approximately two-thirds of the total cost of these Bibles, excluding composition.

One of the most interesting passages in this history of the mill, which produced what is known as ‘Oxford India’ paper, the first specimen of which is said to have been brought from the Far East in 1841, with which 24 copies of the Bible were printed, is that (p. 42) where one would expect to find an authentic narrative of the origin of this paper. Mr. Carter, who has obviously been at pains to discover the true facts, must admit that ‘the experiment has become a legend at the Press and the truth about it is hard to discover’. For the first time I read here (p. 43) an admission that ‘a paper-maker who (in 1896) examined the small Bible (of 1842) was of opinion that the paper was machine-made of English origin, and belonged to the class known to the trade as “Pottery Tissues”, which Fourdrinier was making at Hanley before 1837’. Is this perhaps the solution of the origin of this ‘legendary’ paper? Though I have never seen the original, allegedly oriental paper of 1842, I have always felt that the substance (about 30 gr. sq.m.) was not the difficulty in reproducing this India paper, but the toughness, a quality which could not be repeated without a raw material of

fibres similar to the original; such a toughness was only attainable in European papers produced from rags or rope. The ‘pottery tissues’, however, in order to resist a certain amount of rubbing, have to be tough and in 1837, the date suggested above, this toughness could only be produced from well-beaten rags. That the Oxford India Bible paper (first made at Wolvercote in 1875) of the 1890's was sufficiently resistant is proved by the copy of a Bible (Ruby 24 mo Thin) presented to me sixty years ago; from constant use the binding has suffered but not the paper, the last page of which bears the well-known watermark of the scutcheon bearing the open book with seven seals and three crowns, with the word Oxford above and India below. What has since been known as ‘Oxford India’ paper was apparently made at Wolvercote from 1875 until about 1890 (p. 50), from which date the mill began to make paper from ‘a mixed rag and woodpulp content’.

Watermarks, incidentally referred to in the Preface, have regrettably been ill-served by the author. The four specimens are given in reduced sizes, thus rendering them worthless for serious comparison; further, the watermark of a fleur-de-lis reproduced has been mutilated by converting the lower arm into a trefoil instead of curled tendrils. The correct watermark is reproduced under no. 1687 in Heawood's Watermarks of 1950, the original of which is in possession of the present writer.

Mr. Carter may be congratulated on having produced a model history of an English paper-mill; it is to be hoped that many other British mills will, before it is too late, at a suitable opportunity entrust the making of a similar history of their mill to their local annalist.

 

E.J.L.

A.F. Allison and D.M. Rogers, A catalogue of Catholic books in English printed abroad or secretly in England 1558-1640 in Biographical Studies, vol. 3, nos. 3-4 (Jan. & April 1956). Ook afzonderlijk verkrijgbaar in 2 delen. XIII en 187 blz. 4o. Bognor Regis, The Arundel Press, 1956. - Prijs: 12 s. 6d.

Een catalogus, die ook buiten Engeland belangstelling verdient, niet het minst vanwege het hoge percentage der Roomse boeken - dat betekent hier: door Katholieken geschreven - op het vasteland, en dan hoofdzakelijk in Frankrijk en de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, gedrukt. Het was toentertijd weer het bekende liedje: een overheersende, dit keer Protestantse partij, die meende door onderdrukking der uitingen van de Katholieken zichzelf krachtiger staande te houden.

De beide samenstellers hebben heel wat bibliotheken moeten doorwoelen - zie de lijst op p. ix-xi - om deze collectie van 934 werken bijeen te garen, de nos. 1-930 en daarbij 572a en b en 800a, benevens één ongenommerd, na 514. Vermeld is, waar exemplaren bewaard worden. Nooit meer dan twaalf echter. (Waarom?). Op te merken valt, dat hetgeen ‘English’ heet de vier talen van het koninkrijk omvat: Engels, Schots, Iers en Welsh, terwijl bovendien Latijnse boeken voor de Engelse kerkdienst, buitenslands gedrukt, zijn opgenomen. Behalve door de eigen betekenis is de catalogus

tevens van grote waarde voor de nieuwe editie van de bekende Short-title Catalogue, thans in voorbereiding. De corresponderende nommers der eerste uitgave gaan hier aan iedere titel vooraf en een asterisk- meer dan tweehonderd maal voorkomend - geeft aan, wanneer een werk daar tot nu toe ontbreekt.

Bij de steden in Zuid-Nederland, waar deze verboden kost werd opgediend, gaat Antwerpen met 68 uitgaven voorop (drukkers: Rob. Bruneau; Arn. sConincx; Gill. Coppens van Diest; Jan Fowler of Foulaert; een Engelsman, Henr. Jaye, van wie slechts één Antwerpse druk, no. 811, vermeld wordt, de overige zijn Mechels; Jan van Keerberghen; Jan de Laet; Jac. Mesens Sr. en Jr, van de eerste een Ierse druk; Jac. Seldenslach; Will. Sylvius; Joach. Trognesius; Rich. Verstegen en Dan. Vervliet). Uit Leuven stammen er 35, waaronder 5 in het Iers, afkomstig van de pers der Ierse Franciscanen (overige drukkers daar: Joh. Bogaert; Jan Fowler of Foulaert; Hendr. Hastenius; Lour. Kellam, later in Douai gevestigd, en Jan Maes). In Mechelen drukte Henr. Jaye 16 Engelse boeken, waaronder één, no. 601, met schijnadres Keulen; Brussel leverde er 11 (drukkers: Jan Mommaert en zijn weduwe; Jan Pepermans; de weduwe van Huyb. Ant. Velpius Sr.; Huyb. Ant. Velpius Jr., benevens Rutg. Velpius). Van Gent kwamen er 6, gedrukt door Joos Dooms en Ghellyn Manilius, terwijl Doornik met 2 Engelse boeken, door Adr. Quinqué, en Luik met 1, gedrukt door Will. Hovius, vertegenwoordigd is. Ik geef deze cijfers onder het voorbehoud, dat ik goed geteld en gezien heb.

Want nu raak ik aan de zwakke kant van de publicatie: de indices zijn te summier en niet voldoende in aantal. Om van de voortreffelijke stof aan de gebruikers het meest mogelijke nut te verschaffen had daar heel wat meer bij gehoord. Aanwezig zijn slechts een Chronological Index, lopend van 1562-1640, waarin men bv. kan vinden, dat in 1595 de nos. 438, 498, 558 en 784 zijn gedrukt. Maar het was doeltreffender geweest zich hier niet tot dode cijfers te bepalen, doch de verkorte titels der boeken te vermelden. Er volgt een Index of translators, compilers, editors en daarna de Index of printers and publishers, waarbij uitdrukkelijk gezegd wordt dat hij ‘does not include false or fictitious names except when these are unidentified’. Dit laatste is op zichzelf al een gemis. Hoeveel levender en bruikbaarder was deze index verder geworden, zo bij de naam van drukker of uitgever diens woonplaats vermeld was. Een hoogst noodzakelijke toevoeging, waarvan ik mijn eigen exemplaar reeds heb voorzien, onder stil protest, dat de heren Allison en Rogers mij een werk lieten doen, dat meer op hun weg had gelegen. Een paar kleine foutjes merkte ik op in dit register. Op p. 183 moeten onder Jaye de nos. 914 en 915 vervallen en onder Kellam, widow no. 855. Op p. 182 kan bij Cousturier no. 572 worden ingelast. Tot slot komt er nog een lijst van Secret presses operating in England. Dat is alles. Ten zeerste mist men: een alfabetische index der plaatsnamen en een andere der schuiladressen en vooral ook een uitvoerige opgave der publicaties van elke drukker. Dat o.a. in een 12tal uitgaven een Antwerps schijnadres is gebruikt door ‘secret presses’ in Engeland is een bijzonderheid, die men node in de indices mist en weer verplicht is, zelf uit de catalogus op te diepen. Nogal brutaal gingen die geheime Engelse persen daarbij te werk. Ze overtreffen in dit opzicht hun voorgangers uit de dagen der opkomende Reformatie,

die, hoewel evenmin vervaard, toch minder ver gingen in de keuze hunner schuilnamen. Zo vermeldt An apologicall epistle van Rich. Broughton van 25 Maart 1601 (no. 152) het valse adres van Arn. sConincx, en een ander zijner werken, no. 162, dat van Rich. Ve(r)stegan, ao 1603. Een werk van Thomas Wright, Disposition or garnishmente of the soule to receiue worthily the blessed sacrament, 1596 (no. 923) noemt als drukker Joachim Trognesius. Zowel sConincx, als Verstegen en Trognesius waren bestaande Antwerpse drukkers. Hebben deze Antwerpenaren, die zelf eveneens verboden boeken voor de Engelse markt hadden gedrukt, soms vrijwillig hun naam aan de Engelse persen geleend? Ondanks het voortreffelijke materiaal, dat hij bevat, blijft deze catalogus toch maar mi-confectionné. De fijne afwerking ontbreekt, tot schade van het gebodene.

Sta ik alleen, wanneer ik bij de Ierse en Welshse titels heel graag ook een vertaling in het Engels had gezien? Lichtelijk verrassend is het, temidden van al die Roomse of door Katholieken geschreven boeken als no. 865 aan te treffen Virgil. Thee first foure bookes of Virgil his Aeneis translated intoo English heroical verse by Richard Stanyhurst, wyth oother poëtical diuises theretoo annexed, de enige Noord-Nederlandse uitgave, in 1582 bij Paets (‘Pates’) te Leiden verschenen. Wat doet Vergilius hier? Was de vertaler Katholiek? Of schuilt er soms in de aanhang iets van Katholieke aard? Een kleine toelichting was hier niet ongewenst geweest.

Men krijgt trouwens de indruk, dat de samenstellers uitermate bang waren één overbodig woord te zeggen. Zo zijn de Introductory notes slechts een zakelijke gebruiksaanwijzing. Doch had daarnaast een leesbare Inleiding met een historische orientatie niet alle reden van bestaan? Waarin dan tegelijk de verzamelde stof enigszins systematisch naar tijd en inhoud behandeld had kunnen worden. Want in hetgeen hier als ‘Catholic books’ wordt samengevat, zijn toch de nodige schakeringen: controverse, politiek, stichting, liturgiek, mystiek, enz.

Tot slot enkele titels van werken, voor ons land niet zonder belang. No. 566: Newes from the Low-Countreyes. Or the anatomy of Caluinisticall calumnyes, manifested in a dialogue betweene a Brabander and a Hollander... Translated out of the Netherland language, into English. By D.N. 8o. 1622. (S. Omer, Eng. Coll. press.) en de nos. 579-580, twee edities van dezelfde pers, gedateerd 1621 en 1622, der Observations concerning the present affaires of Holland and the United Provinces, made by an English Gentleman. 8o. Een leven van S. Elizabeth, koningin van Portugal door Franc. Paludanus, gedrukt in 1628 by Pepermans in Brussel, is uit het Nederlands in het Engels vertaald door Zuster Catherine Francis (Greenbury), een abdis (no. 595). En zo is er meer, voor Nederland van enige betekenis.

Het is een degelijke en waardevolle catalogus geworden. Maar die, met een geringe moeite van de auteurs, toch nog veel bruikbaarder had kunnen zijn. Nu doet hij denken aan een wat nonchalante schone, die tot eigen schade verzuimd heeft vóór het bal voldoende zorg aan haar toilet en make-up te besteden.

 

's-Grav., April 1958.

M.E.K.

Joachim Kirchner. Bilderatlas zum Buchwesen. Teil II (Lexikon des Buchwesens. Band IV). Stuttgart, Anton Hiersemann, 1956. XLVII blz. en 545 afb. op 324 blz. Register. - Prijs DM 58.

Dit deel, dat het Lexikon des Buchwesens afsluit, brengt illustraties over boekdruk, papier, boekhandel, bibliotheken, bibliografie en bibliofilie. In vele opzichten is de wijze, waarop het materiaal wordt aangeboden, aannemelijker, dan in het voorgaande deel het geval was.

Bij de geschiedenis van de boekdrukkunst is thans gelukkig de chronologische volgorde in acht genomen. Zo werd de mogelijkheid geschapen de historische ontwikkeling enigermate aan de hand van afbeeldingen toe te lichten. Meestal is dit geschied door portretten van drukkers vergezeld te doen gaan van titelpagina's van door hen uitgegeven werken. Een en ander wordt wel afgewisseld met voorbeelden van tekstpagina's, maar van deze laatste zouden we gaarne meer gezien hebben. Trouwens, met een reproduktie van de 18e-eeuwse kopergravure van Laurens Jansz. Coster of van de gedenksteen ter nagedachtenis van Montelin is men ook niet zo bijster gebaat. Bij de voorbeelden van moderne typografie is aan de letter en de tekstpagina meer aandacht geschonken, maar hier heeft Duitsland een te groot overwicht.

De gehele afdeling van druktechniek kan mij weinig bekoren. Voor de technicus heeft deze reeks van afbeeldingen geen enkel belang, voor de niet-technicus is het nut uitermate problematisch.

Veel bevredigender is de rubriek over het papier en zijn bereiding, waarvoor Frau Toni Schulte verantwoordelijk is. Hier treft men aardige en begrijpelijke afbeeldingen aan, die inderdaad een inzicht geven in de geschiedenis van dit belangrijke onderdeel.

De afdeling boekhandel valt in twee rubrieken uiteen. Een kleine rubriek over de geschiedenis, die weinig overzichtelijk is, geeft aardige afbeeldingen over de boekhandel in de kunst. Veel groter is de rubriek over de boekhandelfirma's. Over het algemeen is ook hier weer het systeem gevolgd van portretten met afbeeldingen van gebouwen, interieurs en ook wel brieven van beroemde auteurs of titelbladen van bekende werken. De hierbij weer in acht genomen alfabetische volgorde is minder bezwaarlijk dan bij de hierop volgende belangrijke afdeling der bibliotheken.

Hier zijn m.i. belangrijke kansen gemist. Men had bij deze afdeling de gelegenheid gehad de ontwikkeling van het bibliotheekgebouw, zowel in zijn uiterlijke vormgeving als in zijn interieurs te doen zien en plattegronden waren daarbij stellig niet overbodig geweest. Men had ook van de ontwikkeling der magazijnen, der dienstruimten, der catalogi, der meer en meer in gebruik rakende machines een illustratiemateriaal kunnen bieden, dat tot nu toe ontbreekt en zeer instructief zou kunnen zijn. Thans moeten wij het weer doen met de dwang van het alfabet, waardoor de Universiteitsbibliotheek van Coimbra en de Public Library te Detroit of de ‘chained library’ van Hereford en de Universiteitsbibliotheek van Innsbruck enigszins onwennig op één bladzijde in elkaars gezelschap staan. Hoe dom het alfabet hier is, blijkt wel uit de laatste bladzijde, waar het gebouw van de Zentralbibliothek te Zürich en het interieur van de Zutfense librije staan afgebeeld.

Het hoofdstuk bibliografie geeft de portretten van zestien bekende bibliografen met het titelblad van een werk, waaraan zij hun roem ontlenen.

En daarna volgt als laatste een vrij grote afdeling bibliofilie, gelukkig weer in chronologische volgorde. Meestal zijn het portretten van bibliofilen met een afbeelding van een handschrift uit hun verzameling of van een voor hen vervaardigde boekband. Merkwaardigerwijze sluit deze afdeling met afbeeldingen van de produkten van bekende moderne persen, zoals deze ook in het hoofdstuk geschiedenis van de boekdrukkunst voorkomen.

Een register op alle in beide delen van de Bilderatlas voorkomende afbeeldingen sluit dit deel, dat ongetwijfeld veel belangwekkend en onbekend illustratiemateriaal brengt en een zelfstandiger karakter vertoont dan het voorafgaande deel.

 

L.B.

The Mainz Psalters and Canon Missae, 1457-1459. By Sir Irvine Masson, F.R.S. London, Printed for the Bibliographical Society (at the University Press, Oxford), 1954. 72 pp., plates. 63s.

In this truly magnificent volume Sir Irvine Masson re-examines the printing history of the Mainz Psalter of 1457 and of the Canon Missae of 1459, together with that of the 1459 Psalter so far as it bears on the other two. Though it was the Canon which prompted the enquiry, this now only has a modest section at the end, the ground having been cleared first by a thorough and most illuminating examination of the earlier and larger volume.

The merit from which perhaps all others spring is that Sir Irvine has conducted the whole enquiry afresh, taking nothing from others that he has not verified for himself. This often results in a sharper focus for things already darkly known, as when he makes a clear distinction between the shorter issue, for general use, and therefore with open spaces for antiphons, versicles and responses which varied according to use, and the longer issue, for use in the diocese of Mainz, where these spaces are printed in. It is thus possible to say of each copy, irrespective of its present length, to which issue it belonged.

In this way the study continues, clarifying here, breaking new ground there, subjecting the books to a close and patient scrutiny which unravels, piece by piece, their intricate printing history. It appears that the 1457 Psalter nowhere shows more than two settings of a single page, though each setting by itself may be press-variant, and that duplicate setting is confined to the earliest quires printed, A-E and N-P. The reason was, in all likelihood, a decision to increase the edition of the short issue, the production of both issues having been decided on from the start. The three-colour printing was done as a single operation, the type-pieces for the red and blue being taken out of the forme for each fresh inking, though a certain amount of afterprinting had to be done where the same two-line initial had to be used twice on the same page, or where the presence of one ornamented initial in the forme was incompatible with that of another.

Type analysis shows that for the 1457 Psalter two casefuls of type were used, though it cannot be certainly said to what extent they were used simultaneously. What is certain is that the second case to appear was the only one used on the Canon, and that for the 1459 Psalter a single case was used which contained a selection from the two earlier cases.

The setting can have been no easy job. Besides a stock of different characters rather larger than that which his modern counterpart is accustomed to work with, the compositor of Psalters and Canon had to distinguish between two forms of nearly all those characters which present a vertical stroke to their left-hand neighbours. To preserve uniformity of spacing a special sort of each of these characters was cut which lacked the spurs and serifs on the left side, could thus be cast on a narrower body, and would not clash with a preceding character having spurs or serifs projecting on the right. The use made of these ‘abutting letters’ Sir Irvine has fully analysed. It allows certain inferences to be drawn as to the order in which the 1457 Psalter was set, but not, he thinks, as to the presence of different compositors. A crowning refinement of compositor vexation was that the height of the two-colour initials was actually a fraction more than a multiple of the body-height of the large text-type. Since the initials could not be cut down, the surrounding types often had to be trimmed to admit the initial.

The Canon Missae turns out to have been produced in much the same way as the Psalters. Its twelve known copies and fragments, though pressvariant, belong to a single edition, and it used the second of the two type-cases from which the 1457 Psalter was set. This, and some other considerations, among them the states of damage of certain initials, prove a date in 1457/8 for the printing of the Canon: ‘the earlier alternative is as likely as the later’.

All this has been argued with great acuity and with the mastery of detail that only an application of the most exacting standards of scholarship can provide. There is only one section in the book where criticism might hope to rear its head with some slight profit, and even here Sir Irvine has forestalled the critic by opening the attack himself in a postscript. This is in his digression on pinholes, which tries to examine the evidence these holes provide for the instrument on which the Psalter was printed. The pinholes in question must have been made by pins, on some part of the instrument, which served the same purposes as those on the tympan of later presses. The 1457 Psalter shows six holes in every leaf, two in the upper and two in the lower margin, approximately in line with the two sides of the type-page, and two in the outer margin, approximately level with the head and foot of the type-page. They are also found in other works by Schoeffer, and they may be accompanied by other holes in similar organic positions. Sir Irvine has examined a number of different books printed by Schoeffer and has recorded their pinholes in a table, though he has at least overlooked one uncommon set in the 1460 Clement, in line with the inside of the outer colum of the commentary, and he also did not see the 1467 Clement, which sometimes at least has a second hole in the lower margin in line with the inside of the type-page and well above the regular hole.

The subject really requires a detailed study, and that Sir Irvine could

hardly be expected to give it in the present context. He has, however, ventured to suggest that the instrument must have possessed a frame carrying the pins which was either large enough to support the whole sheet and carried two symmetrical sets of six pins, or was half that size, carried one set of pins, and possibly received a folded sheet. On second thoughts he then added that the half-size frame could not be used for verso printing as, since the tail of the page is taller than its head, the lateral punctures could not have entered the original holes, as in fact they must. He did not, however, draw the inference that in that case there might easily have been two frames, one for recto and one for verso printing: if the pin-setting could be duplicated on the large frame, it could also be reproduced on a separate frame. Moreover, even with a single frame it is quite possible to print both recto and verso, as long as one does actually print on folded sheets, and as long as one does not turn the verso forme at 180o to the recto forme. To understand this one must note that the point-holes in the side margin are farther removed from the outside of the type-page than the inside of the type-page is removed from the fold. For recto printing the sheet is on six pins, for verso printing on four (or vice versa). Since in verso printing each of the four holes used goes on a pin that did not originally produce that particular hole, and since it is unlikely that the rectangle formed by the pins will always be absolutely true, one, or perhaps two of the pins will produce a new hole by the side of the old, and in fact this is what we find in many of the books concerned, where particularly the inner hole in the lower margin may sometimes occur in triplicate.

Printing on folded sheets, moreover, though it is summarily dismissed by Mr Povey in a valiant but, one regrets, unsatisfactory attempt to solve this particular puzzle (The Library, 5th series, vol. xi, no 1, March 1956, pp. 18-22), was a reality. Not only does Schwencke state that it was done for the 42-line Bible, but Wallau mentions for this very Psalter that some of the afterprinted initials also appear in blind on other leaves - in fact on the conjugates of the leaves on which they were printed. I have not myself been able to verify this in this particular book, but have seen numerous instances of it in the 1459 Psalter. The most interesting perhaps is the sheet 121, 126. In the Meerman copy the initial V on 121a, which was afterprinted, appears in blind on 126a, while the afterprinted first O on 126b appears in blind on 121b.

This is far from to say that either Psalter must have been produced by printing on folded sheets. The evidence so far cited refers exclusively to afterprinted initials, when the procedure may have been different from the normal. On the other hand, the afterprinted initials would in any case be the most likely pieces of type to show this phenomenon, since they would take the whole pressure normally distributed over a full forme. It might further be argued by some that in the main printing run the danger of offsetting would be far too great in folded sheet printing, but this objection seems to be effectively disposed of by Sir Irvine's observations on the slow tempo of this complicated printing process. Guard sheets, moreover, could have been used.

What does seem clear, however, is that a careful study of pinholes, blind

printing, and offsetting in as many suitable copies as possible of the relevant works should go a considerable way towards elucidating the nature of the instrument and procedure employed by at least one early printer. To have made this evident is not the least of Sir Irvine's merits.

It remains to say that the Oxford University Press has done a superb job in producing the book and its magnificent full-size facsimiles (two of them in colours), and that the Bibliographical Society should be warmly congratulated on having made its publication a fact.

 

Groningen

Johan Gerritsen

Records of the Court of the Stationers' Company, 1602 to 1640. Edited by William A. Jackson. London, The Bibliographical Society, 1957. xxiii, 555 pp. 60s.

In 1957 it was four hundred years since the incorporation of the Stationers' Company, and among the events which celebrated that anniversary not the least fitting was the presentation of the volume here under review. It was twenty-seven years since the Bibliographical Society had inaugurated these records, supplementing the work done earlier by Arber, by publishing that part of Register B which Arber had not been allowed to print. Mr Jackson's erudite industry has now at last given us a sequel, and a welcome sequel it is. It consists of the first part of Court Book C, from its inception down to the end of the year 1640, the corresponding part of the Letter Book, Liber A, and the whole of the Book of Entraunce of Fines. Together these give a comprehensive account of the Company's affairs in these years, so far as they were reflected in the business of its Court, though since the Clerk who wrote them was familiar with the matters he described, and we are not, it is difficult to arrive at a perfect understanding of what was going on.

One could hardly have expected the editor to digest all the material and to present us with a history of the Company for these years as well as with its records, and that indeed never was his purpose. But he is to be commended for a lucid introduction dealing with the Company's English, Latin and Irish stocks, the Ballad Partners, George Wood's patent for printing linen cloth in colours, and the patent for things printed on one side of Marin de Boisloré, Roger Wood, and Thomas Symcock.

Mr Jackson's other main contribution, apart from the arduous one of preparing the text, are the copious annotations and references. In the earlier volume these were very succinct, and had to be, since they were placed in the margin. Mr Jackson's are at the foot of the page, and he has therefore been able to let himself go more fully, though indeed the earlier editors could afford to be succinct through continuous reference to their much more substantial introduction. On two points, however, they score over Mr Jackson: they were able to include a few plates, and they provided a dream of an analytical index.

The absence of plates from the present volume is the least of the two, and we should be chary of laying it at Mr Jackson's door, since it may well have been due to financial considerations. To be sure, we can feel confident without reference to any plate that Mr Jackson's transcript will be an accurate

one, but one would have liked a glimpse at each of the three manuscripts as they are.

The matter of the index is more serious. Even without an index the volume would have been welcome, since at least it would have enabled any interested scholar to do at home what he could otherwise only hope to do at Stationers' Hall. But a volume of this size - the records themselves run to 490 pages - is not easily or quickly read through, and if it is to be an efficient tool its contents have to be made accessible through the index. For Court Book B this was done supremely well, though of course it meant 46 pages of index to 94 of text. One can well understand a somewhat more concise index being aimed at in the present case, though one of 58 pages to 490 of text does seem on the short side, but an efficient index of this type would demand the exercise of extreme scholarly care in its compilation. This the present index does not seem to have had, whether because there was a dateline to meet in connexion with the intended presentation, or because of a lack of inclination in the compiler cannot here be determined. But one does indeed find in it the same lack of attention to detail which in the Table of Contents, in the front of the volume, led to the omission of the Letter Book which takes up pp. 340-437. In what follows we shall cite, if not whole chapters, at least a few verses.

In Court Book B we have, under Apprentices, almost a whole page of index, starting out with the names of all apprentices mentioned, and following up with 37 specific entries. Mr Jackson has 21 lines recording 58 page-references distributed over 14 summary headings, plus a useless See also passim reference duplicating information already better given. Of these 58 page-references 23 come under the heading binding. They are divided over three sub-headings: bound to another; contrary to order; scriveners. The next heading, discharged, accounts for ten more. Of these ten, some six or seven might as well have come under ‘contrary to order’, and of the remainder one was not an apprentice but a journeyman whose discharge was indeed ordered but not effected, while another was not so much to be discharged as to be made free. The ‘scriveners’, which on reference to the items indexed appears to be shorthand for ‘apprentices kept unpresented and bound at a scrivener's contrary to order’ could just as well have come under this woolly heading ‘contrary to order’, while one of them should certainly have appeared under ‘discharged’. Of those listed under ‘binding: contrary to order’ one was certainly, and others were probably, never bound at all.

Obviously these entries should have been better digested before the index headings and sub-headings were determined, and if one tries to see these happenings in the light in which the Company saw them a proper scheme of entry is not difficult to devise. Also, Mr Jackson does not enter apprentices' names here, nor does he find this the place to record an apprentice imprisoned ‘for his lewed Courses’ (p. 193).

To cite one more instance of the tendency objected to, on pp. 504 and 545 there are two footnotes to items concerning Francis Constable and John Waterson, though a third and a fourth which, to be consistent, there should have been for Bartholomew Downes and Robert Young are lacking. They refer to transfers of stock parts which Mr Jackson found puzzling. Constable

is indexed as assigning a livery part twice, and the footnote queries: ‘How he managed to recover his part to which J. Waterson was elected is not told’. A similar Waterson entry elicits: ‘Something is wrong about these entries, for J. Waterson is recorded as having first one and a half yeomanry parts and later two livery parts’. The point of this is that nobody could have more than one part, whatever its type, at any time (though holding a part in the English stock did not disqualify one from holding parts in the other stocks also). Something is wrong indeed here, but it is in the index entries, not in the records. Constable obtained a livery part in the English stock on 27 June 1620 and assigned it to his brother Robert on 14 January 1632. He also had parts in the Latin, Irish and Grammar stocks, and these he assigned to Waterson on 3 September 1621. Proper indexing would have shown this at once - and so would a perusal of the actual entries before writing the footnote.

Waterson's case is a little more complex. After having stood for one unsuccessfully on 10 December 1621 he had a yeomanry half part on 22 May 1623, and on 7 June 1624 he and Robert Young each had a yeomanry half part ‘to mak vp there half parte whole yeomanrye pte’. This yeomanry part had been Thomas Downes's and became available because he was elected to the livery part of Mrs John Browne Senior. Mrs Browne, it had been certified, had ‘latelie married out of the Company’ and was therefore no longer eligible to hold this part. This gave Waterson and Young a whole part each, as we have been expressly told, and it is therefore peculiar when on 31 May 1625, election having been made for Mr Bill's livery part, which ‘fell vpon mr Downes’, the latter's yeomanry part is stated to have fallen ‘vpon John Waterson & Roƀte younge’. Confusion is worse confounded when Mr Jackson wishes this Mr Downes to be Bartholomew, for the latter obtained a yeomanry part on 6 May 1616 and transferred one to his son on 20 December 1636, which would mean that neither his disposal of this livery part nor his acquisition of a new yeomanry part between 1625 and 1636 had been recorded. This difficulty does not exist for Thomas, and the most economical solution would seem to be that the 1624 transfer had fallen through (perhaps Mrs Browne had been wrongly certified?) and that it was carried out anew in 1625, when Thomas Downes did at last get his livery part. Moreover, when Waterson himself obtained a livery part on 16 June 1627 we hear of only one yeomanry part that he had. As to the two livery parts with which Mr Jackson credits him, one was that we have just mentioned, the other is a ghost raised by the transfer of Constable's part in the Latin, Irish and Grammar stocks which we mentioned earlier.

This lack of care in the index is also mirrored in a certain unscholarly high-handedness in the footnotes. One is glad to concede an expert the right to a show of authority, because that is a right which any expert deserves, but in matters of opinion one likes to be given some reasons. If on 7 May 1621 Edward Allde is fined for having bound Thomas Fawcett his apprentice at a scrivener's, and if on the same date a Thomas Fawcett was made free of the Company, one is naturally inclined to think this is the same man, since that would be the one occasion when the details of his binding were sure to be gone into. To Mr Jackson this seems unlikely, though in a

precisely similar case on 1 July 1639 he accepts the identity without a qualm. Surely one might be told why?

To sum up, though Mr Jackson's contribution to knowledge is perhaps less than it might have been, his contribution to scholarship is impressive. Whatever his shortcomings, he has undertaken a task which few would have attempted, and he has brought it to a solid conclusion. For that he certainly deserves our gratitude. The Oxford University Press has translated his work into type with the superb craftsmanship which we have so gratefully come to take for granted.

 

Groningen

Johan Gerritsen

Max Reichel, Die fortlaufenden astronomischen Veröffentlichungen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Mit einer Gesamtbibliographie. Köln, Greven Verlag, 1957. 122 S. (Arbeiten aus dem Bibliothekar-Lehrinstitut des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Heft 12).

Dit boekje vangt aan met een dertigtal bladzijden tekst, waarin zeer kort de geschiedenis der sterrewachten beschreven wordt. In verband daarmede treffen wij dan ook een schets aan van de publikaties dezer instellingen. Zolang dit scheppingen van één man waren, droegen de publikaties ook een zeer persoonlijk karakter en werden zij zelfs door of onder het toezicht van de astronomen gedrukt. In later tijd waren het vaak de akademiën van wetenschappen, die sterrewachten stichtten en de publikaties van deze laatste vonden derhalve in de akademiegeschriften een plaats. Daarna begint men aan de universiteiten colleges in de astronomie te geven met als gevolg, dat men in de loop van de 18e en 19e eeuw aan bijna alle universiteiten sterrewachten aantreft. Door hun groeiend aantal wordt een andere wijze van publiceren noodzakelijk; op het eind van de 18e eeuw komen de astronomische tijdschriften op en omstreeks diezelfde tijd beginnen de sterrewachten zelf hun observaties in geregeld verschijnende bulletins, verslagen, jaarboeken en hoe ze verder heten mogen te publiceren. Ook de in de 19e eeuw ontstane astronomische genootschappen gaven eigen organen uit.

Aan dit overzicht verbindt de schrijver de vraag of het naast elkaar bestaan van de tijdschriften en van de publikaties der sterrewachten niet oneconomisch geacht moet worden. Hij meent hierop een bevestigend antwoord te moeten geven, maar een oplossing brengt hij natuurlijk niet. Terecht legt hij hier een verband met de gehele problematiek van het tijdschrift in de huidige tijd en wij weten, dat hierover het laatste woord nog niet gezegd is.

Het hoofdbestanddeel van het boekje is de bibliografie, die in drie delen uiteenvalt: de astronomische tijdschriften en publikaties der astronomische genootschappen, de publikaties der sterrewachten, de astronomisch-bibliografische naslagwerken. Tot deze laatste categorie mag dit nuttige boekje thans ook wel gerekend worden, ook al is de bibliografie niet meer dan een titellijst.

L.B.


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