to enter the printer's device at the end of a book, under the heading
colophon."
And now, the unpleasantly controversial side of the matter having
been disposed of (if so large an adjective as controversial may be
applied to so small a paper), let us devote our little remaining
space to the colophons themselves, first turning our attention to Dr.
Pollard's book,[5] with his own rendering into English of the unwieldy
fifteenth-century Latin.
In the introduction, Dr. Richard Garnett gives a brief sketch of
the derivation and earliest uses of the term. He quotes the Greek
word _colophon_, the head or summit of anything, usually used in a
figurative sense, the position on a crest of the City of Colophon
(whence its name), the first appearance of the word in the seventeenth
century, with its secondary classical sense of a "finishing stroke"
or a "crowning touch," and goes on to say: "Of the use of the word
_colophon_ in the particular significance elucidated in this essay--the
end or ultimate paragraph of a book or manuscript--the earliest example
quoted in the New English Dictionary is from Warton's _History of
English Poetry_ published in 1774. A quarter of a century before this
it is found as a term needing no explanation in the first edition of
the _Typographical Antiquities_ of Joseph Ames, published in 1749.
How much older it is than this cannot lightly be determined. The
bibliographical use appears to be unknown to the Greek and Latin
lexicographers, medieval as well as classical. Pending further
investigation, it seems not unlikely that it may have been developed
out of the secondary classical sense already mentioned sometime during
the seventeenth century, when the interest in bibliography which was
then beginning to be felt would naturally call into existence new terms
of art."
While acknowledging the great interest that many authors have found
in individual colophons, Dr. Pollard states that his task is the more
ambitious, if less entertaining one of making a special study of this
feature in fifteenth century books with the object of ascertaining
what light it throws on the history of printing, and on the habits of
the early printers and publishers. His first conclusion being that
colophons are the sign and evidence of the printer's pride in his
work, he draws attention to the utter lack of such information as
they give in the very earliest books of all, as contrasted with the
self-glorification of Fust and Schöffer when, printing independently,
they affixed the first known printed colophon to their Psalter of 1457
(in at least one copy accompanied by their device):
The present copy of the Psalms, adorned with beauty of capital
letters, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus
fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing, and stamping without
any driving of the pen. And to the worship of God has been diligently
brought to completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of Mainz, and Peter
Schöffer of Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord 1457, on the vigil of
the Feast of the Assumption.
Of Peter Schöffer's later allusion to the shields of his device Dr.
Pollard writes: "Needless discussions have been raised as to what was
the use and import of printers' devices, and it has even been attempted
to connect them with literary copyright, with which they had nothing
whatever to do, literary copyright in this decade depending solely
on the precarious courtesy of rival firms, or possibly on the rules
of their trade-guilds. But here, on the authority of the printer who
first used one, we have a clear indication of the reason which made
him put his mark on a book--the simple reason that he was proud of
his craftsmanship and wished it to be recognized as his. 'By signing
it with his shields Peter Schöffer has brought the book to a happy
completion.'"
[Illustration: _Psalter. Mainz, Fust and Schöffer_, 1457. THE FIRST
PRINTED COLOPHON.]
Again he calls attention to the boast of John of Speier at Venice,
"primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis," by which he asserts his
individual priority over any other firm in that city. And here is the
rhyming colophon used by the same John, in which he boasts with some
ambiguity of the number of copies of Cicero which he has printed in his
two editions:
From Italy once each German brought a book.
A German now will give more than they took.
For John, a man whom few in skill surpass,
Has shown that books may best be writ with brass.
Speier befriends Venice; twice in four months has he
Printed this Cicero, in hundreds three.[6]
In wording their colophons, the early printers were only following
the constant practice of medieval scribes, of whose many colophons
a selection of examples is given in Bradley's _Dictionary of
Miniaturists_.
The moving of printers from one town to another, transference of their
stocks, their quarrels, their boastings and pleas for favor with those
in high places, all are followed, and much information gathered in the
_Essay_. There is simple pathos in the colophon of the _Chronicles of
the londe of England_ printed at Antwerp in 1493, which records the
death of its famous printer, Gerard Leeu,
a man of grete wysedom in all manner of kunnyng; whych nowe is come
from lyfe unto the deth, which is grete harme for many of poure man.
On whos sowle God almyghty for hys hygh grace haue mercy. Amen.
"A man whose death is great harm for many a poor man must needs have
been a good master, and a king need want no finer epitaph," writes Dr.
Pollard.
The days when we find the book trade highly organized and the functions
of printers and publishers clearly separated, are pictured in the
following colophon:
Here you have, most honest reader, six works, etc. It remains,
therefore, for you to make grateful acknowledgement to those who have
produced them: in the first place to that eminent man Master Simon
Radin, who saw to their being brought to light from the obscurity in
which they were buried; next to F. Cyprian Beneti for his editorial
care; then to Jean Petit, best of book-sellers, who caused them to
be printed at his expense; nor less than these to Andrieu Bocard,
the skilful chalcographer, who printed them so elegantly and with
scrupulous correctness, June 28, 1500. Praise and glory to God.[7]
Here are men making aspersions on the editions of rival publishers,
with warnings against them:
Here end the Decretals, most correctly printed in the bounteous city
of Rome, queen of the whole world, by those excellent men Master
Ulrich Han, a German, and Simon di Niccolo of Lucca: with the ordinary
glosses of Bernard of Parma and his additions, which are found in
few copies; both printed and corrected with the greatest diligence.
Purchase these, book-buyer, with a light heart, for you will find such
excellence in this volume that you will be right in easily reckoning
other editions as worth no more than a straw.[8]
We find that the Nuremberg Chronicle is the only book which Dr.
Pollard can call to mind that gives explicit information as to its
illustrators, Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenworff; and finally
we come to books where the author takes a hand, and we sometimes have
a double colophon, as in the case of the _Morte d'Arthur_. Here we
have Sir Thomas Malory's colophon, requesting the reader's prayer for
his deliverance, and for the repose of his soul, and William Caxton's
business-like statement as editor, printer and publisher.
The author's struggle with the printer, to obtain his own way, is no
new thing, as proved by this late colophon of the musician, Johann von
Cleve, affixed to his _Cantiones_, 1580:
As I come to the end of my task it seems worth while to inform
students and amateurs of music that this collection of Motets was in
the first place entrusted to Philip Ulhard, citizen and printer of
Augsburg, to be printed, and that he (as often happens), being made
unreasonably capricious by bodily ill-health, often did not carry
out our intention, and compelled me, by leaving out some motets
(which however, if life bears me company and God helps, will shortly
be published), to abridge the work, and more especially as the same
printer, when the work was not yet finished, came to an end of his
days, and there upon the work was entrusted to Andreas Reinheckel to
be completed, if anything, therefore, is found which might disturb
a connoisseur, I pray musicians to bear with it with equanimity.
Farewell. In the year of the Lord 1580, in the month of January.
We have noted one rhyming colophon, a mannerism much affected
by Italian printers. Another fanciful custom by which the early
printers called attention to their colophons was the use of eccentric
arrangements of types, by which these final paragraphs appeared in the
shape of wedges, funnels, diamonds, drinking glasses and the like.
The earliest known title page is in a Bull of Pius IX, printed in
Mainz by Fust and Schöffer in 1463, but it was some twenty years before
the custom became common. At first the title only, taking the form of
a single sentence, appeared at the top of a title page, but it was not
long before, either in the interests of decoration or of advertising, a
simple woodcut or the device of the printer appeared below the title.
In his _A Treatise on Title-pages_, 1902, Mr. De Vinne proposes the
following ingenious explanation of the evolution of the printer's mark:
"It was hoped that the distinctiveness of a peculiar device would
be remembered by the book-buyer who had forgotten the name of his
preferred printer.
"In the beginning the device was put at the end of the book, above
or below the colophon. It was at first a small and simple design ...
but the eagerness to have a device that should be striking led to its
enlargement and afterward to an entire change of position. When the
greater part of the last page was preoccupied by the last paragraph
of the text, the device required a separate page. This led to making
full-page devices and afterward to the putting of the device on the
first page."
As time went on it was only natural that the remaining space at
the foot of the title pages should be utilized for brief details
of printing and publishing, but the transition was gradual and
unsystematic. Indeed, some printers continued to use colophons alone
well into the sixteenth century, and there are frequent instances
during that century of books containing both title pages and colophons,
the latter being a repetition, at the end of the book, of the imprint,
as the few business-like lines at the foot of the title page had come
to be named.
By the time that title pages were firmly established, publishing
had become a separate business, and the publisher was not long in
assuming the ascendency, often pushing the printer altogether into the
background and appearing alone in the imprint. For a long time the
printer modestly tucked in his name wherever he could, sometimes on the
verso of the title page, and sometimes at the bottom of the last page,
but in a formal manner, without the naive and often delightful and
useful details which make the early colophons so interesting.
With the nineteenth-century revival of interest in typography, the
printer came to the fore again and we see his name appearing in a new
place, the certificate, preceding the title page--an entire leaf,
moreover, on which are set forth the details in which he is interested,
the paper, number of copies, and so on. This use seems to have been
introduced by the finely printed volumes of the French book clubs, with
their "Justification du tirage," and it was followed through the later
decades of the nineteenth century, in the publications of book clubs
and many other privately and finely printed volumes. Simultaneously
with these came the publications of the Kelmscott and other private
presses, which revived the use of colophons in the early manner. The
separate page, placed at the end of the finely printed book of today,
giving details of the making of the volume, is the result of this
modern impetus in book-making[9]--the interest in fine production of
the person for whom the book is made, added to the desire of the modern
printer for recognition of himself as the producer.
[Illustration: _St. Bernard._ _Sermones._ _Rostock_, _Fratres Domus
Horti Viridis_, 1481. COLOPHON WITH PRINTER'S MARK.]
This is but the very logical expression in the books themselves of the
modern trend, so assiduously cultivated, toward the making of good
books, and the return to prominence of the printer after the long
period of his subservience to the publisher. In the present-day notice
of its makers, on the final page of a book, the colophon is revived,
and once more the printer has the last word!
COMPOSED IN GARAMOND TYPES
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Ronald B. McKerrow, _An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary
Students_ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1927).
[3] Iolo Williams, _The Elements of Book-Collecting_ (London: Elkin
Mathews, 1927).
[4] H. B. van Hoesen [and] F. K. Walter, _Bibliography, Practical,
Enumerative, Historical_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928).
[5] Alfred W. Pollard, _An Essay on Colophons, with Specimens and
Translations_; with an Introduction by Richard Garnett (Chicago: The
Caxton Club, 1905).
[6] Cicero, _Epistolae ad Familiares_, Second edition (Venice, 1469).
[7] Diui Athanasii, contra Arium, etc. (Paris, 1500).
[8] Decretals of Gregory IX (Rome, 1474).
[9] We may note that the French technical term for the modern colophon,
"achevé d'imprimer," emphasizes this importance of the printer.
[Illustration]EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY[Illustration]
_Printers' Marks_
From _Fifty Printers' Marks_ by Edwin E. Willoughby. Copyright 1947
by the author and reprinted by his permission. Published by the
University of California Press.
A printer's mark is a trade-mark. Printers used them in the fifteenth,
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the same purpose that printers
employ them today--to ornament their books and to make each volume
readily recognizable as the product of the printing establishment which
produced it.
The printer's mark was but one of the many types of marks which,
largely because of the widespread illiteracy of the people, were used
throughout all phases of medieval life. The ownership of objects,
for example, was often shown by means of a regularly used mark. Two
examples of this type of mark, the seal and the cattle brand, go back
to the dawn of history and have continued in use to the present time.
Merchants in the Middle Ages often identified their property by placing
on it their merchants' marks.
The mark of a merchant was legally recognized as his by his guild or by
the town government. Often it was a representation of the tools of the
man's trade or a replica of his house sign. Sometimes it was an animal
or object which formed a pun on the merchant's name. Frequently, simple
geometric designs were used. Toward the latter part of the Middle Ages,
as merchants grew richer and more powerful, they aped the upper class
by making their marks resemble, as closely as they dared, the heraldic
devices of the knights and nobles. These marks enabled employees or
hired porters to recognize at a glance a merchant's property.
Places, as well as objects, were identified by means of marks. Inns,
shops and similar public places in those days before houses were
numbered were designated by house signs. The Tabard, the inn from which
Chaucer's pilgrims started for Canterbury under the leadership of its
host, Harry Baillie, took its name from its sign--a representation
of a short outer jacket. An equally famous tavern, patronized by
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other "sirenical gentlemen," bore the "Sign
of the Mermaid." And over the door of the Globe, Shakespeare's theater,
hung a picture of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders.
Printing houses, like other business establishments, were known by
house signs. The printer's mark of Adrien van Berghen supplies an
illustration. [Page 48.]
Not only were objects and places designated by marks in the Middle
Ages, but under certain conditions people were recognized by them also.
A knight, his face obscured by his helmet, made his identity known by
wearing on his helmet, shield and tabard simple pictures or symbols
by which he could be recognized. As it was usual for members of the
same family to wear the same emblems, these simple pictures, many of
which became conventionalized, descended from father to son, indicated
relationships, and finally developed under the control of officers of
the king into the elaborate system of heraldry.
Marks, then, were widely used in the Middle Ages. It was inevitable
that they should be used to identify the makers of manufactured
goods. Craftsmen with pride in their work naturally desired others to
recognize their products. As a result, the use of trade-marks became
common. Craftsmen of every trade were frequently compelled either by
law or by guild regulations, to affix a mark to their products as
a guarantee of their honesty and good workmanship. Such marks were
required especially of goldsmiths, silversmiths and other artisans who
were under unusual temptation to misrepresent the quality of their
goods. In England, to take another example, arrowheads, the quality of
which might determine the issue of a battle, were ordered, by a statute
of Henry IV, to be "marked with the mark of him who made the same."
These trade-marks performed much the same function as the house mark
or the merchant's mark; indeed, the three were often the same. They
enabled a purchaser, literate or illiterate, to identify the maker of
a product and to buy thereafter according as he had been satisfied or
displeased with the first article purchased.
[Illustration: GUY MARCHANT printed his first book at Paris in 1483.
His motto, _Sola fides sufficit_ (Faith alone suffices) appears above
the clasped hands, with the first word represented by the musical
notation, _sol_ and _la_.]
[Illustration: JACQUES MAILLET began publishing at Lyons in 1482, and
probably began printing at the same time. His mark represents a shield,
supported by two dogs, which bears his initials and a mallet (_maillet_
in French), hanging from a tree.]
The printer, to be sure, was under few of the compulsions to use a
trade-mark that beset his fellow craftsmen. His patrons were literate;
they could read his name and address--when he chose to set them
down--either in the colophon at the end of the book or on the title
page. But the example of other craftsmen was not to be resisted.
Besides, a well-made printer's mark, or a publisher's device, could be
both useful and ornamental. Put at the end of the book, it could give
it a fitting close. Used in the middle of a book, it could set off
chapters and parts. Above all, especially when it was printed in red,
it could give life and balance to a title page.
[Illustration: ADRIEN VAN BERGHEN in his mark pictures his printing
house "at the Sign of the Great Golden Mortar in the market place" at
Antwerp, where he started in 1500.]
By the printer's mark, also, a prospective purchaser could recognize
at a glance the product of a press. It could prevent a careful
purchaser from being deceived by a false imprint. "Look at my sign,"
warns Benedictus Hector of Bologna, "which is represented on the title
page and you can never be mistaken." It was harder to counterfeit a
printer's mark than to filch his name.
Even a mark, however, was not infallible protection. The "prince of
printers," Aldus Manutius, complains that his Florentine competitors
"have affixed our well known sign of the dolphin wound around an
anchor. But," he adds, "they have so managed that any person who is in
the least acquainted with the books of our production cannot fail to
observe that this is an impudent fraud; for the head of the dolphin is
turned to the left, whereas that of ours is well known to be turned
toward the right."
[Illustration: WILLIAM CAXTON, the first English printer, printed his
own translation of a French romance, _Recuyell of the Histories of
Troy_, in 1474. At his press at Westminster he completed nearly eighty
books between 1477 and 1491, many of which he also translated from the
French.]
In one country only, and there for but a brief period, was the use
of a mark made compulsory. In 1539, François I, in an act intended
to suppress both the piracy of copyrighted works and the printing of
heretical books, ordered every printer and book-seller in France to
have his own device so that purchasers might easily ascertain where
books were printed and sold.
Although (with this exception) the use of marks was voluntary with
printers, they were early adopted. In 1457 Fust and Schöffer, the
successors of Gutenberg, first employed one in the Mainz Psalter, the
first book to contain the name of the printer and the place and date
of printing. [Page 39.] The device consisted of two shields resembling
coats of arms. Other printers quickly followed their example. As the
fifteenth century saw the rise of the mercantile class, it is not
surprising that printers used in their marks heraldic devices, if they
had the right to bear arms, or shields displaying their merchant's
marks in a manner often resembling armorial bearings.
Frequently, printers used as the central part of their marks the signs
which served to designate their places of business. Pierre LeRouge, for
example, used a red rosebush for his sign and in his device. The London
printer, Berthelet, used in like manner the figure of Lucrece.
[Illustration: WILLIAM FAQUES began printing in London about 1503. His
mark represents a hexagram of interlocking triangles bearing biblical
quotations, which enclose his monogram pierced by an arrow. The
initials "GF" are those of the French form of his name.]
If the printer's name could be punned on, it was common to use for
a mark an object the name of which sounded like the printer's own.
Jacques Maillet's surname means mallet. He made it easy to remember by
displaying a mallet in his device. [Page 47.] A few printers, among
them Aldus Manutius, John Day, John Wight and Willem Vorsterman, even
used their own portraits in their marks.
Many other signs and emblems were employed. In an age fond of
symbolism it is not surprising to find that many marks had symbolic and
mystical meanings--not only in the earlier period, when ecclesiastical
symbols were often used, but in the later period also, when devices
were frequently copied from emblem books. Sometimes a printer would use
a woodcut to illustrate a book and then, because it struck his fancy,
adopt it as his mark. Thomas Gardiner and Thomas Dawson, partners, on
the other hand, had a block which contained, around a central open
square, figures forming a rebus of their names: a gardener, a daw and
the sun. With their initials in the open square, it served as a mark;
with the appropriate display letter, it was a factotum bearing the
initial letter of the first word of a chapter.
Printers' marks, in fact, took a multitude of forms during the
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the late
seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they became
conventionalized and were used infrequently; but they did not die out
altogether. The Oxford and Cambridge University presses, for example,
continued to put them on the title pages of their books.
The revival of printing late in the nineteenth century saw an increased
use of the printer's mark. This was almost inevitable, for when the
craftsmen strove to do fine printing, they desired, just as did
the craftsmen of the fifteenth century, to have their work easily
recognized. Today, private presses which specialize in fine printing,
some university presses, and many publishing firms, frequently use
marks which both ornament their title pages and identify for the reader
the creator of the volume.
[Illustration: THE GROLIER CLUB. A rendering of the Club's familiar
mark by Rudolph Ruzicka.]
A. F. JOHNSON
_Title Pages:_
THEIR FORMS AND DEVELOPMENT