A printer and his devices

If you don’t already know, I’m writing two books on books. What started out as a relatively simple endeavour, has turned into an event bigger than Ben Hur. It’s not the writing; it’s the fact that I gathered so much information on the way, it is bursting out of my head. I want to use it all.

While I check over my information on watermarks, I thought I would include the printer’s name. I figured that would be a great way to perhaps correlated paper with region, usage and printer. Turns out that some printers go by variant of the same name.

Take Moritz Georgius Weidmann. This is his printer’s device:

 

Weidmann printer’s device of two globes on title page

His name appears in red. However in the book his name appears as Mauritius Georgius Weidmann. If you search the CERL database of European printers, you will find many other variants of his name. His son, bearing the same name,  continued his practice after his death; it is therefore hard to distinguish between one and the other.

Getting back to too much information. In researching printers, I then found out that they used particular type or particular alphabets. If I’d actually thought about it, this seems quite obvious. So here are some examples of Weidmann (Weidman) capitals:

E with dog?

T with camel

F with badger? wolf?

I with elephant

C with bird and snake

Now the use of small letter

These smaller capitals come furhter back in the text

And their size is much smaller

than the capitals at the beginning of the book

Just for your information.

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