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Category: 15th Century

Detail of the illuminations in the Giant Bible of Mainz.

A Little Note About A Giant Bible

Posted by: Marianna Stell

Happy Giant Bible Day! On April 4, 1952, philanthropist and bibliophile, Lessing J. Rosenwald (1891-1979) donated the Giant Bible of Mainz to the Library of Congress. He made this gift exactly five hundred years after the manuscript’s scribe first put quill to parchment. In keeping with Rosenwald's commitment to encouraging broad cultural engagement with the history of the illustrated book, the Library’s digitization allows book lovers near and far to encounter every page of this important and evocative manuscript.

An illustration of a printing workshop.

Before Control-P: The Printing Process

Posted by: Patrick Hastings

In the digital age, we have all been spoiled by the ease with which we can share our written ideas with others, but let's take a moment to appreciate the skill, time, and resources that were once required to bring a text into print. This post examines the processes involved in operating a printing press in the 15th-18th centuries.

an illustration of workers making a punch in a typefoundry

Just My Type: Making Letters at the Type Foundry

Posted by: Patrick Hastings

Most of us learned in school that Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which is not entirely accurate. He is, however, conventionally credited with inventing the process of mass-producing individual pieces of type. These innovations in moveable type allowed for books to be efficiently produced in large quantities and revolutionized the human ability to share ideas. This post explains the multi-step process of mass-producing metal letters to be used in printing texts.

Woodcut image of the skeletal Zodiac Man.

A Humorous Skeleton

Posted by: Marianna Stell

At the end of the fifteenth century, simplified versions of medical charts featuring an image of the "Zodiac Man" began to appear in Books of Hours. The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division contains many examples of these printed editions, one of which uses a skeleton in place of the Zodiac Man.

Image of page of text with small blue initial and distinctive pen flourishes in red.

A Time Capsule : What An Early Printed Book Can Teach Us About “Anchoring Innovation”

Posted by: Marianna Stell

Did the earliest printers know what print was? Book historian Anna Dlabacova, former fellow in the W. Kluge Center and senior university lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, offers some observations about what a 15th-century book from the Netherlands can teach us about culture and innovation.