Alciati, Emblemata, 1589 (Z5v)

This dense block of text is only the first page of commentary accompanying Alciati's emblem of "In astrologos," a sharp contrast to the spareness of the first edition.

Alciati, Emblemata, 1589 (Z6r)

The mise-en-page is cramped in this book---the main text extends right up to the headline, rather than leaving an empty line or two between them.

Alciati, Emblemata, 1589 (Z6v)

The tailpiece here, as it often does, serves both to mark the end of a section of text (the end of an emblem, in this case) and to provide some support for the platen when the sheet is pressed.

Alciati, Emblemata, 1661 (2E1r)

This is the first of five full pages of commentary on Alciati's emblem "In astrologus"---a marked expansion from its first appearance in print in 1531.

Alciati, Emblemata, 1661, (2D8v)

In the 1621, a printer in Padua published an edition of the Emblemata that included commentary from a handful of writers---Claude Mignault, Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas, Laurentius Pignorius, and Federicus Morellus---as well as additional emblems. This 1661 edition is a page-for-page reprint of the earlier Tozzi edition, attesting to the volume's popularity.

Ames, Typographical antiquities, 1749 ([A]1r)

This title page carefully uses a combination of gothic, roman, black, and red letters to evoke the earlier printing that is its subject while still looking enticingly contemporary.

Ames, Typographical antiquities, 1749 (4I3v)

Ames's history of English printing includes an alphabetical index of printers and other persons, followed by this single-page index of subjects. To our eye, this is curiously arranged---why is it not alphabetical? Perhaps because this organization allows the blocks of numbers for each subject heading to remain intact instead of being split over columns.

Ames, Typographical antiquities, 1749 (4I4r)

Since intaglio plates were printed separately from letterpress sheets, books often included notes to the binder describing where the illustrations should go. As is typical, these instructions appear on the very last printed page of the book, here facing the subject index; you can see the ink from the index text off-set in the blank areas of this page.

Ames, Typographical antiquities, 1749 (a1r)

Appropriately for a book about the history of printing, this list of subscribers marks out the two Caslons as letter-founders.

Apian, Cosmographicus, 1524 (π1r)

This title page for the first edition of Peter Apian's Cosmographicus has been printed in both black and red ink.