This video is about one of the most wonderful acquisitions here at Massey College. 1 of 6 copies in existence! This is a rare seventeenth-century printer’s manual, "Neu-auffgesetztes Format-Buchlein," produced by Austrian printer Georg Wolffger between 1670 and 1673 while he was finishing his apprenticeship as a compositor in the shop of Widmanstetter, a printer in Graz.
The manual contains practical information about type case arrangements for Greek, roman, italic, and German typefaces, as well as diagrams for the imposition of the type pages for printing the various formats of books. Throughout the work, text type and ornaments are used in a decorative manner, as is demonstrated in the illustration of the printing press, which is made up of ornaments, brass rules, and type. In our copy, this illustration appears within the text and is repeated as a frontispiece, printed on vellum.
#Rarebook #Library #PrintHistory
Information Obtained in Massey News Archives.
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