In Great Britain the printer whose name would allow a pun has always been considered fortunate. John Daye, a London printer of 1560, had an elaborate device, paneled, in the center of which is a picture of a reclining man being aroused by a figure which, pointing to the sun, says, “Arise, for it is day.” (Example [535].)
Androw Myllar, who printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1510, used a device which portrayed a miller climbing to his mill (Example [535]). The arrangement of his name in the lower part of the design suggests de Worde’s, and the characters in the shields have meanings that may be determined by a study of the religious symbolism of the Middle Ages.
EXAMPLE 536-A
The printer’s device and imprint here occupies two-thirds of the title-page. From a book by Robert Estienne, Paris, France, 1544
The imprints of some of the notable printers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are interesting. The first mark in Example [536] shows one of the devices of Geofroy Tory of Paris from his “Champ Fleury” of 1529. It consists of a broken pot filled with instruments and the Latin phrase Non plus (nothing more). The Lorraine cross in the lower left corner is interesting in connection with the use made of it by the Venetian Society of Printers (Example [531]). Tory, an accomplished scholar and noted wood engraver and printer, was, according to an epitaph written by a compatriot, “the first man to discuss seriously the art of printing,” and “taught Garamond, chief of engravers.” His work on the derivation and formation of Latin characters had considerable renown. He claimed, according to Fournier, that all the letters are formed of I and O. Proportions are arrived at by dividing a square into ten lines, perpendicular and horizontal, forming one hundred squares completely filled with circles, the whole giving form and figure to the letters.
EXAMPLE 542
Use of the oval shape in the designing of printers’ marks
EXAMPLE 543
Modern imprints suggested by ancient forms
The troublous times of the Reformation, during which John Bebel was imprisoned, may have had some influence on his selection of a device. It consisted of a tree, in the branches of which was a prostrate man, and over him was a large flat thing representing the platen of a printing press (Example [536]). On the platen were words meaning “Do not press poor me to death.”