XIX century book on typography: Paleographie by Silvestre

[resurepus]

There is an excellent library at our school. Besides the contemporary department there is also a department for the ancient books. You have to take an appointment and you have to wear white gloves while working with the books, but you can actually touch the books that you normally see in museums. So I've been there earlier today to do some research in old typography and I've come accross this book: PALEOGRAPHIE UNIVERSELLE edited by Silvestre. It's a collection of typographic works from all over the world, I've been looking at the fourth part which is called Modern Europe. Well the book was published in 1840 and "modern" is like back to XIIth century Anyway, I took some pictures. Some of them are uploaded to my flickr album. If you need link to higher resolution image, let me know and you can get them as the ones I post here (click on images to get full size). It might be of use to those of you who is interested in typography.



English:
Cyrilic:

[jecrt]

WOW! That is great - how awesome is it that they let you handle those books in person?! That knot/linework on the cyrillic page is incredible.

[Chung Dha]

Its interesting looking back on old techique I've been to belgium to see some old presses and to see the mold they use to print is all hand carved and very intersting cause they know back then how to get gradient like effect with thin and thick or crossed lines.

[resurepus]

yep, they definitely knew their stuff, unlike many of today's printers

[Dave K]

Really cool Stuff you have there! I'd really like to have one of those librarys near my place . Especially looking at the fact, that old typographys and overall vintage is coming again.

[LPC]

beautiful!