Printing! Gutenberg’s Europe

The exhibition aims to put Gutenberg’s invention into context by pointing out, among other things, that printing methods already existed. In China and Korea, xylography was practised as early as the 8th century, and it is from Korea, with Jikji, that comes from the oldest preserved work printed with movable metal type, similar to the process used in Mainz more than seventy years later. Although Gutenberg was probably unaware of this Korean invention, he was able to look to techniques and practices that also existed in Europe, where it was possible to print and reproduce images from around 1400 onwards using an engraved matrix, first on wood, then on copper.

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The need for multiple copies in order to allow for wide distribution was also a problem that occupied the metal craftsmen with whom Gutenberg spent time during his stay in Strasbourg. His innovation was not only to combine three pre-existing techniques in the metal and graphic arts – coining, casting and transfer printing – but also to apply it to a work of unprecedented textual scope spanning nearly 1,300 pages – the Bible – with the immediate aim of putting a large number of copies on the market; more than 150 according to the accounts of the time.

In Gutenberg’s wake, printers, humanists and artists took up his process, resulting in an unprecedented burst of experimentation. The rapid development of the letterpress also guaranteed 15th century printers a high level of efficiency.

With nearly 270 items, witnesses of this trial and error and technical experiments, the exhibition aims to show the prowess and progress made possible by this innovation by following the process of book production, from the printer’s workshop to the bookseller’s stall, and from the craftsman to the reader, highlighting its collective dimension. The letterpress workshops of the 15th century were genuine laboratories of experimentation, making it possible to overcome certain technical difficulties and encouraging the spread of printing processes throughout Europe. These techniques will be presented and explained in a space dedicated to the printer’s workshop, organised around an exceptional press on loan from the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz.

Printers were quickly confronted with a variety of technical challenges: perfecting the press and typefaces, page layout, printing non-Latin typography (Greek and Hebrew in particular), music, inserting illustrations and producing both text and images in colour. The exhibition explores responses to these challenges, some of which would be short-lived, others of which would last a long time. The exhibition focuses particularly on the challenges of print illustration, a technique that enabled books to be made more attractive and understandable. Several avenues were explored and specialised centres such as Venice, Basel and Nuremberg soon emerged. Artists also took up this new field of production, such as Albrecht Dürer who, in the last years of the 15th century, revolutionised the art of the illustrated book by publishing the Apocalypse in which the primacy is given to the image, presented on the recto, while the text is relegated to the verso.

Although the first printed books remained very close to the manuscript tradition, technical innovation gradually led to formal innovation and the new medium gave rise to new markets and new products in a new relationship with the present time. At the beginning of the 16th century, the book lost its medieval characteristics and gradually took on its modern form: a small-format book with a title page, increasingly in the vernacular. A new book market was established. Booksellers developed commercial strategies to make a name for themselves in order to better distribute their goods and sell their stock. A wider readership was gradually won over. Finally, the socio-cultural phenomena of humanism and the Reformation spread massively and rapidly owing to this medium.

Curation

• Nathalie Coilly, Curator, Rare Books Reserve, BnF
• Caroline Vrand, Curator, Department of Prints and Photography, BnF