What is the incunabula period?

1440 – 1500
Incunable/Periods

Why is the incunabula significant?

The Incunabula period ranges from about 1450 to 1550 as it marks the beginning of the spread of printing within Europe, the development of font families and printed books. This led to the removal of the human hand style and was accessed by many people for printing purposes which spread throughout many areas of Europe.

What font is used in 16th century?

Gothic and Roman were two major types used for incunabula, while italic type came into use in the 16th century.

What are transitional fonts?

Transitional font styles are a very common serif type. Examples of famous transitional typefaces include Baskerville, Bookman, Georgia and Times New Roman. Characteristics of a transitional font are that it stands upright, the thick and thin strokes have ample contrast, and the serifs are wider and bracketed.

What do you mean by incunabula?

Incunabula is the plural of the Latin word incunabulum, a cradle. Evolving from its original meaning, incunabulum came to mean “place of birth” or “beginning.” In the world of books, the word incunabula refers to books that were printed using metal type up to the year 1500.

What is the former term of Incunable?

A former term for incunable is fifteener, in the meaning of “fifteenth-century edition”. The term incunabula was first used in the context of printing by the Dutch physician and humanist Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe, 1511–1575), in a passage in his work Batavia (written in 1569; published posthumously in 1588).

How many types of incunabula are there?

There are two types of incunabula in printing: the block book, printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page, employing the same process as the woodcut in art (these may be called xylographic); and the typographic book, made with individual pieces of cast-metal movable type on a printing press.

What type classification became popular in the late 15th and early 16th century?

The Old Style or Humanist serif typefaces developed in the 15th and 16th centuries and are characterized by a low contrast in stroke weight and angled serifs. Example: Garamond.

What is Caslon font?

Caslon is the name given to serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (c. 1692–1766) in London, or inspired by his work. He worked in the tradition of what is now called old-style serif letter design, that produced letters with a relatively organic structure resembling handwriting with a pen.

What font did Romans use?

Popular roman typefaces include Bembo, Baskerville, Caslon, Jenson, Times New Roman and Garamond.

How many incunabula exist?

Currently, there are 26,550 known incunabula titles and they are collected in every region of the world.

What are the typefaces used in the incunabula?

A distinctive feature of incunabula is that the typefaces used are rich in variety. Incunabula started by creating something similar to medieval manuscripts. Gutenberg’s 42-line Bibleused a script called “textura quadrata,” which had been used for bibles and liturgies of those days.

How did the incunabula people make their paper?

During the incunabula period, Europeans used rags to make paper by the following method: the rags were cut into small pieces; fermented; ground by watermill; and scooped into a mould to dry. Therefore handmade paper does not have a uniform thickness; it varies in thickness according to the mesh of the mould.

Are there any incunabula where there is no ink?

In some incunabula, there are portions of pages with no ink applied even though types were set for the pages, and only the traces of the types pressed are visible. A study on incunabula claims that this blind printing is found in at least 200 titles of incunabula.

What’s the difference between a block book and an incunabula?

From these woodprints emerged printed broadsides that contained not only pictures but also text, and eventually, people started to bind several broadsides together to make a booklet. These booklets are called “block books” or “xylographs,” which are distinguished from incunabula.