EXAMPLE 531
The most popular imprint-device as early used by printers, and modern interpretations
Emblems and devices seem always to have had place in human history. The sign of the Cross in the eleventh century led the Crusaders against the followers of the Crescent. The cross of St. George (+) furnished inspiration for the English in their warfare with the Scots, who rallied around the cross of St. Andrew (❌), and the combined crosses of St. George, St. Andrew and St. Patrick now inspire the patriotic Britisher.
It would seem that printers could do better work if they were to select some device which would represent an ideal, and then attempt to live up to it.
While the Gutenberg Bible of Forty-two Lines, generally accepted as the first book printed with separate metal types, contained neither device nor printer’s name, the Book of Psalms, or Psalter, of 1457, not only has the names of Fust and Schœffer and the date, but an imprint device which has the distinction of being the first ever used on a book typographically printed. This famous Psalter was the product of Johann Fust and Peter Schœffer, who succeeded to Gutenberg’s printing office. At the end of the book, printed in red ink, is the colophon of the printers (Example [528-A]), a translation of which follows: “This book of Psalms, decorated with antique initials, and sufficiently emphasized with rubricated letters, has been thus made by the masterly invention of printing and also of type-making, without the writing of a pen, and is consummated to the service of God, thru the industry of Johann Fust, citizen of Mainz, and Peter Schœffer of Gernszheim, in the year of our Lord 1457, on the eve of the Assumption.”
The colophon contains a typographic error, perhaps the first to be made by a typesetter, the second word showing “spalm-” for “psalm-.” On several of the Psalters still in existence (one is without it) the colophon is accompanied by the decorative device shown in Example [529], consisting of a pair of shields suspended from the limb of a tree. The significance of the characters on the shields is not definitely known. Humphreys, in his “History,” asserts that the shields contain the arms of Fust and those of Schœffer. It is conceded that the shield on the left is Fust’s and the shield on the right Schœffer’s. In Rietstap it is found that one branch of the old German family of Faust bore a coat-of-arms containing on a shield two crampons in saltire (crossed). Bullen claims the character in the Fust shield is the Greek letter Chi (Χ) and that in Schœffer’s shield the Greek letter Lambda (Λ), and that they had some connection with secret societies to which Fust and his son-in-law Schœffer belonged.
EXAMPLE 532
Arms supposedly granted the Typothetæ, a society of master printers, by Frederick III
Schœffer’s device was used for many years by his descendants, Example [529] showing its use as late as 1747 by Peter Schœffer, of Bois-le-Duc, in the Netherlands.
EXAMPLE 533
The imprint-device of England’s first printer, its probable derivation, and two notable devices evolved from it