Pick up a book, any book. Look through its pages. Certain elements are evident: individual pages, columns of text, titles, headings, illustrations, indexes. When did these book conventions develop? Would you be surprised to know they were present almost since the very inception of the printed book?

The first book printed on a press with moveable type, Guttenberg’s 42-line Bible was printed in 1455 in Mainz, Germany. The incunabula period that followed, from 1455 to 1501, saw the inception of the printed book and the germination of the seeds that developed into today’s modern books.

Incunabula are books printed with moveable type in Europe between the years 1455 to 1501. The term comes from the Latin word cunae meaning cradle, as in an infant’s crib, indicating that they represent the embryonic stage of the modern printed book. (singular: incunabulum)

The Humanistic Touch

Incunabula emulated handwritten manuscripts.

Abbreviations and contractions in printed works followed the choices scribes made in the hand-written manuscripts.

The type in both manuscripts and incunabula have unique characters introduced by the craftsman. The humanistic touch that creates unique letterforms changed from the hand application of ink on paper in manuscripts to the hand construction of metal type that then applies ink to paper.

Rubrication and border decorations were added by hand to printed books because incunabula printers were not able to reproduce the variety of colors (black, blue, and red) used in the hand-written manuscripts.

Textura Quadrata – Blackletter Type

Textura quadrata used for the 42-line bible refers to a script originating in northern France in the 11th century whose sharp-edged letter forms created a textured pattern when filling an entire page.

The term Blackletter came into use around 1600 to distinguish this style of type from the more modern Roman type.
Example: The 42-Line Bible, 1455

Roman Type

Roman type developed during the Italian Renaissance with the revival of interest in ancient Roman and Greek culture. Type modeled after the inscriptions of ancient Roman monuments was used in the mid-15th century. Nicolas Jenson was a major contributor to type design and developed the first known roman typeface in 1470. Roman type differed from blackletter by using square capital letters and lowercase letters (called Carolingian minuscule). This type was used in an edition of Eusebius’ Preparation for the Gospel. Jenson’s roman typeface designed more than 500 years ago is still recognized today for its high quality and readability.

Italic Type

Aldus Manutius printed a series of incunabula reviving Greek classics. The type he designed began with Jenson’s roman type but then attempted to emulate the cursive script used in older hand-written manuscripts. This type became known as italic, or sometimes Aldino typeface (as Aldus Manutius is a Latinized version Aldo Manuzio). The first use of this slanted roman type was his edition of Virgil’s Opera in 1501.

Virgil’s Opera, 1501, Aldus Manutius

Parts of a Book

A number of stylistic choices are found in both hand-written manuscripts and printed incunabula: head titles (headings in the upper margins noting the title or chapter), two-column layouts, margins (blank space left around the text), marginalia (smaller text size located in the margins to provide notes about the columnar text), rubrication (illuminating and enlarging the first letter in a chapter), and border decorations on the first page of the book or chapter.

Front and Back Matter

Manuscript creators left the first leaf of a book blank in response to the damage this page would endure.

Many early printed books lacked a title page.¹ Incunabula printers eventually developed title pages that included decoration and bibliographical information.

Notations about the creation of individual manuscripts and incunabulum (title, author, publisher, date, etc.) were placed at the end of the book. This information developed into colophons in later incunabula.

Title Pages

After 1460, incunabula printers began starting the text on the third page of a book and leaving both sides of the first leaf blank. In the 1480s, printers began adding text to the first leaf on the first page. Eventually, this developed into a title page similar to what is used today.

Example: Source: Problemata (Leipzig, 1494)from Dawn of Western Printing (http://ndl.go.jp/incunabula/e/index.html)

Read more about title pages at I Love Typography’s article The First Title-Pages by John Boardley

We can see the precursors of footnotes, endnotes, and callout text boxes. talk about handwritten notations.

Page Numbers

Quires and gatherings

Incunabula are composed of sheets of paper folded in half making two leaves (or four pages in modern terms – incunabula printers did not number the individual pages). These sheets are gathered together and sewn down the fold into quires. The number of leaves created by folding sheets can vary and the resulting quires have different names based on the number of leaves they contain:

• A duernion = four leaves/8 pages
• A ternion = six leaves/12 pages
• A quaternion = eight leaves/16 pages
• A quinternion = ten leaves/20 pages
• A sextern = twelve leaves/24 pages

Example: unbound manuscript showing quires from First Impressions (http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/firstimpressions/)

Signatures

Incunabula printers did not number the individual pages. In order to keep quires and leaves in order when sheets were bound, printers would number the first half leaves of quires. These notations are called signatures. They consisted of a letter for the folio and a Roman numeral for the leaves.

Example: Signature B3from Dawn of Western Printing (http://ndl.go.jp/incunabula/e/index.html

Illustrations

Relief

The technique of using carved wood to apply ink to paper or fabric was in place prior to the incunabula period. Designs were carved in relief into wood. These were inked and then stamped onto substrates. Early incunabula printers used woodcuts to add illustrations to printed pages and decorative initials. The text and woodcuts could be printed together. Printed illustrations were often hand-colored.

The first illustrated Bible. Günther Zainer, 1474.

The Göttingen Model Book

This book contains drawing of leaves, initials, and patterns, with the various color combinations and construction described in detail. Many of the Gutenberg Bibles contain illustrations from these instructions.
Example: Folio 3, recto and verso.

To see all the pages, go here.

One point linear perspective

The illusion of translating the three-dimensional world onto the two-dimensional surface of paper is called linear perspective. Fillipo Brunelleshi (1377-1446) is credited with the first use of linear perspective with his painting of the Baptistery in Florence in 1415. This system, which caught on quickly, uses vanishing points in which all lines converge on the horizon.
Example: Albrecht Dürer’s The Apocalypse, a set of 15 woodcuts on the revelations of St John.

The Revelation of St John: 1. The Martyrdom of St John the Evangelist, 1497, woodcut

1. Morse Library, Beloit College. “Nuremberg Chronicle,” 2003. http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/inside/about/name.htm.