DON'T READ the ARTICLE YET![Steppes] Reminder: SteppesLetter Submissions

[Elaine Crittenden]

Sorry. This was to have been privately sent. My eyes didn't work as fast as
my fingers!

Lete

----------
>From: "Elaine Crittenden" <letebts at earthlink.net>
>To: "Barony of Steppes - SCA, Inc." <steppes at ansteorra.org>
>Subject: Re: [Steppes] Reminder: SteppesLetter Submissions
>Date: Mon, Jun23, 2003, 11:50 PM
>

> 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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Steppes mailing list
>> Steppes at ansteorra.org
>> http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/listinfo/steppes
> _______________________________________________
> Steppes mailing list
> Steppes at ansteorra.org
> http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/listinfo/steppes