Fig. 410.—Mark of Plantin, Printer, at Antwerp, 1557.
“Christ the true Vine.”
Fig. 411.—Mark of J. Le Noble, Printer at Troyes. (1595.)
and bound together. After the register came the catchwords, which, at the end of each quire or of each leaf, were destined to serve an analogous purpose; and the signatures, indicating the place of quires or of leaves by letters or figures; but signatures and catchwords existed already in the manuscripts, and typographers had only to reproduce them in their editions. There was at first a perfect identity between the manuscripts and the books printed from them. The typographic art seems to have considered it imperative to respect the abbreviations with which the manuscripts were so encumbered as often to become unintelligible; but, as it was not easy to transfer them precisely from the manuscripts, they were soon expressed in such a way, and in so complicated a manner, that in 1483 a special explanatory treatise had to be published to render them intelligible. The punctuation was generally very capriciously presented: here, it was nearly nil; there, it admitted only of the full stop in various positions; the rests were often indicated by oblique strokes; sometimes the full stop was round, sometimes square, and we find also the star or asterisk employed as a sign of punctuation. The new paragraphs, or breaks, are placed indifferently in the same line with the rest of the text, projecting beyond it or not reaching to it.
Fig. 412.—Border from the “Livre d’Heures” of Anthony Vérard (1488), representing the Assumption of the Virgin in the presence of the Apostles and Holy Women, and at the bottom of the page two Mystical Figures.
The book, on leaving the press, went, like its predecessor the manuscript, first into the hands of the corrector, who revised the text, rectifying wrong letters, and restoring those the press had left in blank; then into the hands of the rubricator, who printed in red, blue, or other colours, the initial letters, the capitals, and the new paragraphs. The leaves, before the adoption of signatures, were numbered by hand.
At first, nearly all books were printed in folio and quarto sizes, the result of folding the sheet of paper in two or in four respectively; but the length and breadth of these sizes varied according to the requirements of typography and the dimensions of the press. At the end of the fifteenth century, however, the advantages of the octavo were already appreciated, which soon became in France the sex-decimo, and in Italy the duo-decimo.
