Category: Publishing, English, Books
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Digitised images from The Bodleian Libraries Special Collections Search: Early Printing in Europe: examples and evidence in Bodleian collections The Bodleian’s collections of early printed books contain over 6000 incunables (books printed before 1500). The stories these collections tell cross many centuries and continents. Technological and business innovation in 15th-century Germany launched a printing trade that supplanted manuscript copies of many scholarly and religious works, and made possible new forms of text and illustrative practices.
About - Artists' Books at the University of Oregon Libraries Artists' books have been described as the "quintessential 20th century art form" (Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists Books. New York: Granary Books, 1994), and indeed, though there were many predecessors to the contemporary artist's book, the form was really born in the late '50s and early '60s. The collection at the Architecture and Allied Arts Library, which is supported and extended by artists' books in Knight Library's Special Collections, spans the history of these works of art in book form from 1957 to books by artists today with special emphasis on artists working in the Pacific Northwest.
This was the background leading to the founding in 1965 of the Vancouver based Alcuin Society. The chief aims of the Society are “to further the interests of book collectors and to promote a wider appreciation of fine books…”. To that end the Society provides a wide range of book oriented activities, including since 1981 an annual Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada. The Society continues to flourish. The Society’s From Hand to Hand: A Gathering of the Book Arts in British Columbia… (1986) is a very useful introductory although dated directory of British Columbia fine printing and book arts. The 1970s were important to the British Columbia fine private press/typography scene.
The National Library of Scotland has the pre-eminent collection of decorative bookbindings produced in Scotland during the last five centuries. Some were transferred to the new National Library in 1925 as part of the collections of the Advocates Library, but many have been purchased since in an attempt to document the development of binding styles in Scotland. Below are displayed a representative sample of bindings from the 18th century, together with a number of decorative endpapers from these books.
We can trace Scottish printing back to 4 April 1508.
On that date the earliest surviving dated book in Scotland was printed in Edinburgh.
Here you can read full texts of items printed on 33 of the first 38 printing presses set up in Scotland between 1508 and 1900. These have been digitised from the National Library of Scotland's collections.
They include that first dated printed book – see The Complaint of the Black Knight, printed by Chepman and Myllar.
You can also trace the geographical spread of printing in Scotland, from the first printing towns to the 'printing revolution' in the 19th century.
