FRANÇOIS REGNAULT.
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DE MARNEF.J. DU PRÉ.
PIERRE LE ROUGE.PHILIPPE LE NOIR.
THIELMAN KERVER.

In many respects Jean or Jehan Petit is one of the most remarkable of the early French printers, whilst from the time he started to the final extinction of his descendants as printers covers a space of 336 years—a record which is probably unrivalled in the history of typography. Jehan Petit kept fifteen presses fully employed, and found a great deal of work for fifteen others. The family as a whole makes a good show with their marks, in which the founder is more extravagant than any of the others, having used, at one time or another, at least half-a-dozen more or less different examples. In addition to reproducing one of the finest, we give, on [p. 9], also a reduced facsimile of a title-page of a book, the joint venture of Petit and Kerver; the combination of the two names on one title-page is distinctly novel and curious. He was on several occasions associated with others in producing a book, his connection with Josse Bade extending from 1501 to 1536. Of Bade or Badius it will be necessary to give a few particulars. He was born at Asche, near Brussels, and was a scholar and a poet as well as a printer. About 1495–7 he was engaged as a corrector of the press for Treschel and De Vingle at Lyons. He left about 1500 for Paris, where he started a press in 1502, which he called “Prelum Ascensianum.” In reference to this term, “the Ascension Press,” the word “prelum” was applied to the ancient wine presses, after which, in fact, the earliest printing presses were modelled. His Mark, which he first used in 1507, is the earliest picture of a printing-press. Thirteen years after, he adopted another device with the same subject, but differing in many important particulars. In the second, the composing-stick used by the figure in the act of setting type is changed from the right to the left hand; the press shows improved mechanical construction, indicating greater solidity and strength. In the latter example also the figure sitting at the case on the right side of the engraving is intended to represent a woman, instead of a man as in the earlier illustration. Contemporary with both Petit and Bade, Gilles or Gillet Hardouyn, 1491–1521, was both a printer and a bookseller, and used two Marks, of which we give the more striking. Germain Hardouyn, possibly a son of the preceding, confined himself more particularly to selling books during the first forty years of the sixteenth century.

PHILIPPE PIGOUCHET.