Lodge, Euphues, 1634 (A1r)

John Smethwicke's printer's device features a bird known as a smew holding a scroll reading "wick" in its beak: smew + wick = Smethwick.

Magnus, Compendium, 1478-80

The printer has left the two spaces in the text for an initial letter to be added later by hand. In this case of this alphabetical list, the letters would be “R” and “S”.

Marmion, Antiquary, 1641 (H4r)

Blank areas on a page are usually filled with type or spaces that won't print---without those extra pieces, the platen of the press will tilt unevenly as it's pushing down on the forme. On this copy, the quads used to fill the blank areas were accidentally inked and printed.

Marston, Antonio and Mellida, 1603 (A1r)

Thomas Fisher's printer's device, shown on this playbook title page, puns on his name by featuring a kingfisher bird.

Mattioli, Herbarz, 1562 (fol. CXXXVIr)

A hand-colored illustration of a lettuce plant from a Czech translation of Mattioli's herbal.

Meyerpeck, woodblock

One of the woodblocks carved by Wolfgang Meyerpeck to illustrate this 1562 Czech edition of Mattioli's herbal.

Molina, Vocabulario, 1571 (V10r)

The colophon being printed in both Spanish and Nahuatl suggests that the book was meant to be accessible equally to Spanish colonial and Indigenous audiences.

More, Utopia, 1518 March (u6v)

More, Utopia, March 1518 (b2v)

This famous illustration of Utopia appears in the earliest edition of the work, but like other preliminaries, its location in the book shifted in various editions.

Morley, Introduction to practicall musicke, 1608 (B4r)

Letterpress music was printed using metal pieces of type, so that music was easily able to be set and printed on the same press and at the same time as text. The downside, however, was that the lines of the staves were uneven, since separate pieces of type were needed to make a single line.