library: National Library of Medicine

The US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (USA)

Banckes, Herball, 1552 (A1r)

The bulk of this title page is taken up with a long, descriptive title for the work that today we often refer to simply as "Banckes's Herbal."

Banckes, Herball, 1552 (C7r)

This page uses a variety of typographical signals to set off the titles and accounts of the different herbs. From top to bottom you can see a fist, capitulum, fleuron, another fist and capitulum, and an initial letter.

Kats, Ma’aseh Toviyah, 1708 (40.2v)

This imprimatur, the only page in Italian in this Hebrew encyclopedia, verifies that the book may legally be printed because the Inquisitors have found it to contain no anti-Catholic, anti-government, or immoral content.

Kats, Ma’aseh Toviyah, 1708 (8.4r)

This decorative chapter title showcases several sizes and weights of Hebrew type. The use of both elongated and regular forms of several letters, including ה (he), ת (tav), and ם (final mem), is particularly visible in the triangle of text at the top of the page. Stretching letters with horizontal lines was a common convention in Hebrew printing used to justify lines.

Kats, Ma’aseh Toviyah, 1708 (π1r)

This title page combines both Hebrew and roman type, indicating its origin at a Hebrew print studio in Venice. The main part of the title reads, "Part one of the book of worlds or Ma'aseh Toviyah containing the four worlds. And it is divided into five parts. The first part describes the world above, that is the spiritual world. The second the world of the middle, that is the world of the planets. The third is the lower world that is our world. The fourth is the small world, that is The Man. The fifth in the foundations of the world."