Art of the Printed Book, 1455-1955 (1973)

This fully illustrated volume is a fine contribution to the history of books concerned with typography and bookmaking. Neither a printing manual nor a technical treatise, it was written by an accomplished designer and printer. It includes descriptions of the lives of the important printers, Gutenberg, de Tournes, Baskerville, Aldus, etc., and presents the historical backgrounds under which their folios were made.

Art of the Printed Book was written by Joseph Blumenthal, a practitioner whose Spiral Press set a long-acknowledged standard among fine printers. It is, in one sense, a personal selection, dependent on his aesthetic standards and, in another, a testament to the discrimination and collections of the Morgan Library. The 112 books selected and reproduced range from the Gutenberg Bible to the 20th-century works of Rogers, Gill, Updike, Meynell, and Mardersteig.

Art of the Printed Book, 1455-1955: Masterpieces of Typography Through Five Centuries From the Collections of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
With an essay by Joseph Blumenthal
Publisher Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, and David R. Godine, Boston, 1973
Second printing, 1974
125 full-page black-and-white illustrations
192 pages

PDF (45 MB, no OCR)