[FUGGER, Wolfgang.] 
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[Ein nutzlich und wolgegrundt Formular manncherley schöner Schriefften. Als teutscher, lateinischer, griechischer, unnd hebraÿscher Buchstaben …] [Nuremberg: Katharina Dieterichin for Wolffgang Starck. Not before 1576.]
Small oblong 4to. Recased in its original eighteenth-century binding reusing a ?fourteenth-century German manuscript fragment on vellum (see below); ff. [97] of [104]; wanting ff. A1 (title), A2–B1 (dedication, note to reader), L2 (italic minuscule) and 2C4 (colophon); rear hinge cracked, final quire loose, quire B reinforced at inner margin; numerous woodcut illustrations and diagrams in the text; light marginal dampstaining at head (heavier to quire B), light spotting and toning; else a good copy; small booklabel removed from front pastedown at an earlier date, eighteenth-century German bibliographical note to front free endpaper. Rare second edition – the contents unchanged save for the colophon – of the Nuremberg printer Wolfgang Fugger’s (1519-1568) extremely important calligraphic manual (first 1553), printed by Katharina Dieterichin (d. 1605), widow of Dietrich Gerlach. Fugger’s manual is ‘supreme as an example of engraving. The specimens are cut in relief, apparently on soft metal, with extreme accomplishment, and in this respect it surpassed earlier writing-books in beauty and clearness […] the book was intended, secondarily, as an aid to cutters of printers’ types, and it has a place in the history of typography as the earliest to deal in any way with the design of types' (Carter, preface to 1955 reprint). In his dedication to Joachim Tetzel, Fugger writes, ‘How could art and knowledge exist if there were no art of writing? […] Any language which is not well written (being ugly or illegible) is a disadvantage; for a clumsy hand appears ugly to all men’ (ibid., trans. Plaat). The present writing manual describes how to properly cut a quill and the appropriate position of the hand and the arm for writing (showing examples of ‘clumsy’ and proper techniques) before detailing a variety of German (Kurrent, Kantzlei, Fraktur), blackletter (Textura and Rotunda, the description of the latter making reference to the Schwabacher and Wittenberger types), Roman (italic, antiqua, Roman capitals), Greek, and Hebrew scripts. A significant portion of the text is dedicated to Hebrew, including passages from the Book of Esther, an explanation of the theory of gematria, and three pages of sheet music; Fugger also makes reference to the work of Hebraist Sebastian Münster. The eighteenth-century German bibliographical note mentions the earlier calligraphic work of Johann Neudörffer the Elder – Fugger’s teacher (to whom he refers in the present text) and the author of the first notable German calligraphy manual in 1519, who in turn had collaborated with Durer – adding a reference to Doppelmayr’s 1730 Historische Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematicis und Künstlern. Fugger also owes much to Dürer, his geometric Roman capitals in the final portion reminiscent of Dürer’s 1525 Unterweysung der Messung. The second edition reuses the plates of the first and the content of the text is unchanged, the date of 1553 from the first edition appearing as a part-title to both editions. Gerlach (also known as Dieterichin) likely acquired the plates from the heirs of the printer of the 1553 edition, Valentin Gessler (d. 1576). In this edition, however, Gerlach employs a variety of sizes of text and distinctly more elaborate woodcut initials than Gessler, replacing his fleurons with elaborate woodcut tailpieces. The binding reuses a fragment of German manuscript waste (?first half fourteenth century), comprising c. 11 lines of visible text in three columns, from verses 34 and 35 (front board: ‘qualitate factor[um]. iudex ver[us e]t iustus […] non putam[us] ite[randa]’; rear board: ‘[complec]tatur velut quib[usdam] fid[e]i sue brachiis […] Prophetavit itaq[ue] Simeon’) from St Ambrose of Milan’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke, this portion, on the Nunc Dimittis, cited by Aquinas in his Catena aurea. Both the first and second editions are rare both institutionally and in commerce. Collectively, OCLC finds ten copies in the US (Columbia, Harvard, Huntington, Illinois, LoC, Morgan, Newberry, SMU, Stanford, Yale) and only two in the UK (BL, NAL). Becker 56; BM STC German, p. 327 (imperfect); Brunet II, col. 419 (1553 edition but not mentioning printer); Graesse II, p. 645 (‘Nürnb. 1553’); Jessen 2269; VD16 3336/3338. Not in Adams.
5850,- EUR
Differenzbesteuert/Subject to margin taxation
Sachgebiete: Alte Drucke 16. Jahrhundert , Typographie
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