Anatomy of Printing: The Influences of Art and History on Its Design

Faber and Faber, London, first edition, 1970. Cloth, gilt cover figures and title, 4to, 29 cm,. 228 pp, 121 ills (some colour) on 80 plates and numerous text ills. From the blurb: "Anatomy of Printing is a detailed analysis of the various factors in art and history that have affected the design of the printed page. John Lewis describes the conditions of Western Europe that led to the development of a universal script and to the invention of the printing press and movable typesetting. He traces the work and lives of various printers and the development of the craft as a medium of communication from the time of Gutenberg's experiments with the adjustable typemould and the modified wine press of the Rhine vineyards to modern computerized typesetting and the web-fed multi-colour offset press. The constantly changing social, political, economic and artistic backgrounds are considered in some detail by the author, who shows how the printing press, as well as being a disseminator of ideas, has often been a mirror of its age, reflecting changing styles in art and architecture. These influences are traced from the time of the Italian Renaissance and the subsequent introduction of the roman typeface to the Reformation and Martin Luther's vast output of propaganda printing; to the use of the press by religious and social critics such as Erasmus, Thomas More, Rabelais, Calvin, Voltaire, Tom Paine and Karl Marx; to the effect on the design of the printed page of the writings of art critics and typographers such as J. J. Winckelmann, A. W. Pugin, John Ruskin, William Morris, D. B. Updike, Stanley Morison and Jan Tschichold; to the influence of artists and architects from Holbein, Dürer, Cranach, Rubens, Palladio, Inigo Jones, Vanbrugh and Wren, Hogarth, Flaxman and Bewick to the twentieth-century Cubists, Constructivists and Dadaists. In his final chapter John Lewis carries this stimulating examination of cause and effect into the future. Top edge spotted, otherwise Very Good in Very Good dustwrapper.