#mainz psalter

[9to5buzzcom]

On Aug 15, 1457, Mainz Psalter was published, making it the first book with a printed publication date on it.

[art124spring2019]

Week 12 Supplemental  - Colophonic Spree

Image credit: https://www.rct.uk/collection/1071478/the-mainz-psalter

Pictured above is the Mainz Psalter, the first text to combine movable type with woodcut images and the first to include a colophon describing the typeface.

If there were a name for the people who stay in their theater seats until the end of the closing credits, then there might also be nomenclature for people who read to the very last page of a book, including the index, the endnotes and sometimes a colophon “About the Type”. When there were names for those people, I will know what to call myself. I have always looked for the colophon, and sometimes try to guess the typeface before I read “About the Type”.  Until this week, I was under the mistaken impression that most, if not all, fiction books had a colophon on their final page describing the typeface.  Since I am fortunate to work at a library, I was searching through our collection for a variety of colophons and discovered that they are not as common as I imagined.  Encyclopedia Britanica.com describes The Mainz Psalter published in 1457 as the first printed work to feature a colophon.  The Psalter was also important as the first work to combine movable printed type with woodcuts Eskilson (2007 p. 15).  

The colophon text reads

The present copy of the Psalms, adorned with beauty of capital letters and sufficiently picked out with rubrics, has thus been fashioned by an ingenious method of printing and stamping without any driving of the pen, and to the worship of God has been diligently completed by Johannes Fust, citizen of Mainz, and Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheym, in the year of the Lord 1457 on the Vigil of the Assumption (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.)

 To those who question the sense of reading colophons, I can offer no better explanation than this one offered on the idea exchange.com: “It takes care to choose something that enhances the reading experience and doesn’t distract the reader.  The wrong font could be disastrous.  Could you imagine reading a Pulitzer Prize winner set in Comic Sans?” ("About the Type" | Reading + Entertainment | Idea Exchange. (2016).  And Julie Harrison makes similarly convincing arguments for staying put in the cinema until the final credits scroll off. The first is to acknowledge the time and effort exerted by the hundreds of people who names won’t appear on publicity posters and the second is that “staying put allows the audience time to digest the film and let it settle, the same way a devoted reader might sit for a few minutes contemplating a book they’ve just finished.” (Harrison, J. 2017).

"About the Type" | Reading + Entertainment | Idea Exchange. (2016). Retrieved from https://ideaexchange.org/reading/idea/about-about-type

 Eskilson, S. (2007). Graphic design: A new history. New Haven: Yale University Press.

 Harrisson, J. (2017). Should cinema audiences stay put for the credits?. Retrieved from https://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/movie-credits/53941/should-cinema-audiences-stay-put-for-the-credits

 Mainz : Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer - The Mainz Psalter. (2002). Retrieved from https://www.rct.uk/collection/1071478/the-mainz-psalter

 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Colophon | visual arts. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/art/colophon-visual-arts

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