February 12 History of GD Chapter 5

Typography, one of the most important advances in civilization, slowly moved into the process of bookmaking and printing. The value of owning a book was of great value as new technological advances were made in printing. Watermarks as well as playing cards were among the top inventions of the time period. Block printing of saints and other lettering became popular around the 1460s. These books, containing anywhere from thirty o fifty leaves, were designed with vibrant colors and images that were usually printed on one side. It wasn’t until 1444 that movable type became available. Through the process of creating movable type, considerations were made as to the typeface used. These type faces created out of metal had as many as fifty thousand single pieces used at one time. Unfortunately, the inventor of movable type, Guttenberg, came a long way throughout his inventions only to end at a dead end. After losing all of his work to a friend, he was unable to finish his project of completing the bible using movable type. Shortly after movable type, copperplate engraving became popular in creating playing cards with imagery.

One person that I found interesting throughout this reading was Guttenberg. After coming such a long way through inventing movable type and creating so many pieces of work, it was all taken away from him on the eve he was to finish the bible. The way the story is told, it seems like his friend Fust took all the credit for work that was not his.

One question that I pose is what were all fifty thousand individual pieces used to create books that Guttenberg was printing? Were they different typefaces and letters or were many of them images? There are more individual pieces for printmaking than words in the Chinese language.