[Steppes] Reminder: SteppesLetter Submissions

[Elaine Crittenden]

Here's an article you might want for now:
....................................................................
More Information on The  Printer, Gutenberg
© Elaine Crittenden/Lete Bithespring, 2003, Dallas

The following is an edited compilation from  the book listed as ³Ref.² at
the bottom of this page:

  In the last years of the 1300¹s, in Mainz, already a center of printing of
such items as Bibles and the Church¹s indulgences, Johann Gutenberg was born
to a very upper-class family. Trained as a goldsmith, he lived there most of
his life, except for a stint  in Strasbourg for about 15 years when he moved
there in his early thirties, and where he got involved in a law suit. He
moved back to Mainz for good.
 Experimentation with secret processes in metallurgy, study of the mechanics
of wine presses and the like inspired Gutenberg to take bits and pieces from
various disciplines and to develop individual letter castings to be used in
a printing press based on the wine press.
 Letters were originally carved  into a steel punch. The punch was used in
setting up the process to cast forms into which lead was poured to create
each individual letter. Enough letters had to be cast by the workshop to
make up between 20 and 40 pages of type for a press run. The letters were
then assorted and stored in wooden storage cases, the small letters in the
lower one, the capitals in the upper one, from which we get our terms
³uppercase² and ³lowercase.² This sequence was repeated until Gutenberg¹s
³42-Line Bible,²  which ran to 1284 pages, was completed.
 According to Joseph Blumenthal, Gutenberg¹s font was based on letters
accurately taken from a ³faithful and beautiful rendering in the finest
German gothic manuscripts of the period,² Extending to a designed set ³of
about two and seventy different characters, including punctuation,
ligatures, abbreviations, etc.,² about twenty-five hundred individual
pieces, all hand made to the smallest of tolerances and then  hand set, were
used for each page.
 Gutenberg needed a backer for  a magnificent  Bible he planned to produce.
He borrowed a large amount from a financier named Johann Fust. Needing a
second loan from Fust, Gutenberg took Fust ias a partner ³in the production
of books.²
 In 1455, just as the Bible was nearing completion and its sale would have
made Gutenberg a wealthy man in his own right, Fust foreclosed on the loans,
taking over the vellum, the paper, the presses and all the other
accouterments Gutenberg ³had spent his life building.²
 The sack of Mainz in 1462 probably rang the death knell for Gutenberg¹s
financial resources. An aging Gutenberg, possibly going blind,  received a
stipend from the Archbishop of Mainz until his death in February 1468.
 To add insult to injury, Fust formed a partnership with Peter Schoeffer,
who had been trained by Gutenberg and was his most valuable employee.  The
³Gutenberg Bible² was then printed with Fust and Schoeffer usurping the
profits. To further cement the partnership, Schoeffer subsequently married
Fust¹s daughter.
 Fate, however, took a revengeful hand in the person of the Archbishop Adolf
of Nassau, who banished all those who had not supported him in his bloody
battle for the post. Among those who were expelled were emloyees trained by
the ³Gutenberg and Fust and Schoeffer workshops,² thereby spreading all over
Europe the knowledge of how to run print shops.
 With Mainz in a turmoil after the clerics¹ battles and the printing
business a mess, Fust necessarily became one of the ³first ...traveling book
salesmen,² dying  in 1466 in Switzerland while hawking a newly published
Cicero.  
 
Ref. : Art of the Printed Book 1455-1955: Masterpieces of Typography through
Five Centuries from the Collections of the Pierpont Morgan Library : David
R. Godine, Boston ©1973 Lib. of Cong. Cat. Card # 73-82830 / ISBN
0-87923-259-5 SC
..........................
I thought there might be some "downtime" after Warlord and you'd need
something to brighten the newsletter up. If it's too long, let me know and I
personally will re-edit it, OK? The spelling and grammar are correct, I
believe.

Lete

----------
>From: Maeva Beiskaldi <maeva at timecastle.net>
>To: <steppes at ansteorra.org>, <jrush at taupro.com>
>Subject: [Steppes] Reminder: SteppesLetter Submissions
>Date: Mon, Jun23, 2003, 4:03 AM
>

>         Greetings, all!  The deadline for submissions to the SteppesLetter
>         approaches.  Please send your reports, articles, event announcements,
>         or whatever to maeva at timecastle.net within the next 48 hours.
>
>         In service,
>         Maeva
>
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