In the mid 15th century a German magician, Dr. Faust, was accused of witchcraft because of his accused dissatisfaction with the "limits of human knowledge and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power."
The legend refers not to Dr. Faust but Jan Fust (1400-1460), a wealthy merchant and a burgher of Mainz Germany who lent money to an inventor in 1450. The inventor was a goldsmith named Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg (1387-1468). The son of a wealthy patrician Friedle Gensfleisch, Johann Guttenberg became in evolved with the trade guilds. In 1428 the newly landed nobility of Mainz created animosity with the guilds, a struggle between the burghers representing the guilds and the nobility led to Guttenbergs relocation to Strasbourg. In Strasbourg Guttenberg became a successful gem cutter and metal smith.
During his career, Guttenberg would be involved in the development of three important technologies, the mirror, copperplate engraving and movable type print processes.
In 1438 Guttenberg went into partnership with a Strasbourg gem cutter (who had once been Guttenbergs apprentice) and a paper maker to develop mirrors. The process included melting lead over glass which hardens into a reflective surface when cooled. Mirrors were extremely rare because it was very difficult to execute this process without the glass breaking under the heat. Guttenberg had been experimenting with this process and was prepared to share his knowledge to sell at an Aachen pilgrimage fair the following year. Unfortunately before the fair came, his former apprentice and new partner died (possibly of the plague). The brothers of the deceased partner sued Guttenberg. Guttenberg won the suit due to a prior agreement. However, the trial notes much evidence that Guttenberg was already deeply involved in movable type as early as 1438. Guttenbergs affars for the next 10 years are unknown.
The earliest copperplate engravings are found in this area of Germany during the 1440's. Copperplate engravers were usually metal smiths by trade. However, scholars believe it was a highly skilled illuminator, or artist, who created these early "masterful" drawings and designs. Scholars have also speculated Johann Guttenberg could have been the metal smith collaborator with the unknown illustrator.
Most European Master metal smiths (goldsmiths, silversmiths especially) were both highly knowledgeable of their medium and highly skilled designers. As Master artisans they were great manipulators of their medium. However, there at least a few who were either great designers or great inventors, and not necessarily both. Johann Guttenberg was passionate for experimenting the broad possibilities of metal. Perhaps the brilliance of Guttenberg was that he didn't act as both designer and inventor, neither did he hire artisans to execute his ideas. But evidence shows that he may have consistently collaborated with acclaimed designers to carry out his inventions with the highest quality available.
By 1450 Guttenberg found his way back to Mainz and twice borrowed a substantial sum from the merchant Jan Fust to set up his publishing business. At the time, printed works were considered a joke, it was a poor mans object and of gross inferior quality to the hand work of the scribes. While Westerners had toyed with breaking up wood blocks to reuse the type, and the Chinese had been printing moveable type for hundreds of years, no one had found an efficient method to allow printing to be commercially viable as well as taken seriously by the Guilds, merchants, the Church or the nobility of Europe. The most popular printed objects were novilty playing cards produced for the working classes. At the time a mass printing process would have been futile without the recently acquired Chinese invention of paper, finally spreading at this time to the west after 1,000 years of use in the east.
Guttenberg surrounded himself with quality. He imported the highest quality paper from Italy, mixed inks to an oilier substance that would offer a "tact" on the metal type. Most important, he converted a wine press into a printing press, and using his metal skills came up with a process to create type. For Guttenberg, the type, the pressure of the press, the paper and the ink, all needed to be compatible for both quality comparable to the work of scribes, as well as the process had to be able to pull large editions. Without perfecting all of these processes, his work would only be worth the cheap peasant books that the wood blocks were already producing.
The problem with wood type was that it wore down quickly so that a large edition couldn't be pulled. While the Chinese used "lighter" printing pressure techniques, thinner paper, less ink and less tacky ink enabling their process to be successful without a press for so long, however their language with over 3,000 characters didn't offer the process to have the same flexability as the European alphabet.
Guttenberg used his jewelry skills to cut letters roughly out of steel and refine them with engraving tools, letter by letter. He would then hammer (or "punch") those bits of steel into the softer metal of brass, creating a negative. He then needed to heat a soft metal to pour into the brass molds (or "matrices"), a metal that needed to be hard enough to hold up to thousands of prints, but softer than the brass. The problem was most metals contracted when cooled into a solid state, therefore the letters would loose their intricate form. However he knew of a white metal antimony which expanded when cooled. Guttenberg then developed an alloy of 80% lead, 5 percent tin and 15 percent antimony which allowed the lead to hold it's form throughout the cooling process. This initial process of creating movable type was never improved until it was replaced in the 19th and 20th centuries with photographic processes.
Before the Guttenberg Bible was issued, in 1454 Guttenberg published several other works. Four surviving examples include a "a German poem on the Last Judgment", several calendars, many editions of "Latin Grammar" and "Letters of Indulgence" all editioned in Mainz by 1454. The last document was commissioned by Pop Nicholas V, it was "a pardon of sins" to anyone who had donated money to the war efforts against Turkey. This act by the Pope immediately promoted the power of the printing technique and orders began coming in for the famous, yet unfinished 42-line bible. The 12x 16", 1,282 page volume took 6 presses. Each page had over 2,500 characters probably designed by Guttenbergs associate Peter Schoeffer, an acclaimed master scribe of his prior to working for Guttenberg. Their alphabet was an exact reproduction of the most popular esteemed gothic hand lettering, or fractur lettering (picket fence lettering), including ligatures and all special characters, possibly making Peter Schoeffer the first type designer. Spaces were left for illuminators to hand color each of the 210 copies. 180 bibles were produced on manufactured paper while 30 copies were printed on fine vellum (using 5,000 prepared calfskin's).
In 1455, after years of work, and promised commissions from prestigious clients including the Pope, Jan Fust, Guttenbergs investor sued Guttenberg for the 2,026 guilders of accumulated loans and interest. On November 6 1455, the courts found in favour of Fust and Guttenberg found himself locked out of his own print shop. Jan Fust went into partnership with Peter Schoeffer where they sold the 42-line bibles and by 1456 became the most important printers in the world. The name Fust and Schoeffer would establish a dynasty of successful printers outlasting their lifetimes, selling extraordinary bibles, psalters, Cicero's "De officiis" and the "Rationale divinorum officiorum." Peter Schoeffer would later marry Jan Fusts daughter Christina. In 1466 when Fust unexpectedly died, probably of the plague, another business associate, Conrad Henkis, married Fusts widow.
Johann Guttenberg had always established secrecy with his inventions in the hopes of creating a monopoly of his ideas. This attitude was translated through Fust and Schoeffer and only the apprentices spreading throughout various print shops opening in Mainz. The secrecy of the new medium led Fust to reluctantly give away some printing secrets to avoid hearsay charges of witchery while traveling in France trying to sell books. Authorities and merchants from all over Europe would soon send their artisans to Germany to learn this new secret process.
However in 1462 Adolf of Nassau descended upon the town and several thousand soldiers and horsemen trampled Mainz. All commerce stopped and merchants, crafts people and artisans fled and along with them their printing secrets "scatter(ed) like seeds in the wind." The next 40 years or so, named the incunabula period (cradle) of the book, the quality, craft and substance behind printing books almost disappeared amongst the watered down knowledge scattering all over Germany and other areas of Europe. In 1468, Guttenberg died a mainstream Mainz printer who produced inferior designs to that of Fust and Schoeffer. However before he died, in 1465, the town Archbishop appointed him "nobleman" in respect to his achievements entitling him to food and clothing for the next three years of his life.
Nuremberg soon replaced Mainz as the capitol for printing, drawing resources from its' large population. Three of Nurembergs most famous "masterpieces" are by Anton Koberger, "Schatzbehalter", "The Nuremberg Chronicle" and "The Apocalypse". Koberger hired Michael Wolgemuth who was the famous illustrator and painter of "Schatzbehalter" (a religious treatise). Koberger was friends with a goldsmith and became godfather to his son, Albrecht Durer. The young artist became an apprentice engraver for Kobergers illustrator, Wolgemuth. Durers illustrations of "The Apocalypse" would make him a famous engraver and begin his career as an artist. During his apprenticeship he may have been one of the several hands who worked on the "Nuremberg Chronicle" an incredible fully illustrated outline of the history of the world.
During the incunabula period, Germans would spread printing techniques outside Germany. Three Germans would be commissioned by the Sorbonne in Paris to "banish the plague of the laboriously copied texts", as well as the errors that came with the uncertainty of the hand. Charles VII would also send a Frenchman, Nicolas Jenson, to Mainz to also learn of the new craft so he could bring the technique back to France.
Legend says that Jenson didn't want to return to the France of newly ascended Louis XI. Jenson instead met up with another Mainz goldsmith Johannes de Spira (born Johannes von Speyer). Whether the two men met in Mainz or in Venice is unclear, however the two men found themselves in Venice by 1469. In Italy, printing was being snubbed by the emerging Renaissance of Florence, and the craft found a home instead in the mercantile town of Venice. Johannes de Spira worked with his brother Vindelinus and apprenticed Jenson. Jenson probably gave him the task to design the humanistic typography for their 1470 edition of "De Civitate Dei." Unusually, de Spira held the exclusive right to printing in Venice until he unexpectedly died the next year. de Spira's apprentice, Nicolas Jenson almost immediately became the godfather to printing in the new Venetian printing capitol of Europe. He combined the technical accomplishments of Mainz Germany with "beautiful legibility" of humanistic typography becoming a commercial success producing approximately 150 books in five years. In 1475 Jenson died in Rome on a trip where the Pope honored him with the title Count Palatine. Jensons type designs are the first legible fonts based on handwriting still visible today in the modern version of Palatino.
1. A History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs, Van Nostrand, 1992.
2. The Art of the Printed Book 1455-1955 by Joseph
Blumenthal, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1984.