ART OF PRINTING.

Shannon News, 10 June 1924, Page 1

ART OF PRINTING.

IN HOUuAJSD KECOKD OF 500 TEAKS. ■. A century ago Holland celebrated the fourth centenary of the discovery by Laurens Hanzoan Coster in Haarlem of tlie art of printing'. .Fifty %years after that celebration fresh historical research made it doubtful if this discovery could correctly be ascribed to the citizen of the Spaarne town. It seemed more probable that modern typography, that is, printing by means of movable type, was practised in Europe , by Johannes Gutenberg at Miuuz, Germany, about the year 1448.

Haarlem has been holding an exhibition showing- what Holla'nd has done in behalf of printing during the last "500 years. The exhibition has been broughti together from different Dutch museums, libraries and private collections, thus offering a very complete survey of a great number of documents many of which are ordinarily not accessible f.o the public. The exhibition is housed iu the former Colonial Museum in the famous Haarlemmer Hout (Woo.d), once the royal palace of Louis Napoleon, Holland's first king. Here is to be seen the oldest book produced in the United Provinces. These" arc the so-called block-books, of the middle of the fifteenth century. The pages of tiiis type of book were printed from a single block of wood, in which the letters were cut out, except the initials at. the beginning of page or paragraph,which were either paint»ed by hand colour or afterwards printed from a seperate block. It is doubtful, if one may speak here of printing, as those block-books belong rather to the engraving art than to • the art of printing. Th'ire are only a few of tihese Dutch block-books left. One of the most famous is the Biblia Paupervm (Bible for the Poor), of which a copy is to be seoir at the I-laar- | lem exhibition*. It belongs to the 1 loyal Library at The Hague. Move numerous are"the oldest Dutch books which were really printed—that is, from .movable type. Copies arc to be seen o.f the so-called "Donaat," a grammar by the Latin philologue Aelius Donatus, very popular in the fifi'teenth and sixteenth centuries. Only a , few fragments remain of the oldest editions of these "Donaat" grammars.

Another section of the exhibition contains specimens of the golden age of Dutch printing, the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth oenturieii. Elzevir and Blaew are names famous wherever book-lovers are to be found, Holland, in those days, was the place where the works of the civilised world its costly maps and best engravings, were published.

Jn tho beginning of the seventeenth century Abraham Bloemaert struck ;i new note- m the old method of the "claire-obscure" by using an engraved brass plate for the contours instead afthe usual wood-blocks. This system was later—in 1740—developed by the Englishmen Knapton and Pond, while Baxter, in 1535, made it still more perfect by creating his .'famous colour prints. Im IG-12, Do,dewijk discovered a now method-'oT brass en. graving-, hiMirst'work of the kind being 1 -a "portrait of Amelia Elisabeth. Countess of Hessen. This invention was the beginning -of the so-called •black art' of engraving which Blootor ling, in 1671, improved greatly.' Interesting examples of the above, mentioned'discoveries, andH>f many others, are to be seen at' the present exhibition. In: the eighteenth century the stereotype system came into vogue. AlniQsti simultaneously Johannes Muller,a Leiden Lutheran pastor, and the Cansteiuscho Bibelaiistall in Halle, Germany, soldered movable tyjpes tightly together or used glue for fixing them, to avoid resetting the types for a reprint.

The art of printing was somewhat neglected during the beginning of the nineteenth century, but in tihe second half of that century and im the twentieth came a strong revival whoa much thought was given to letter types. The art. of reproducing pictures became more accomplished than ever before. That the work of modern printers in Holland can hold its o,wn with the best in Europe is proved by examples at the exhibition.