
Figure 22.—TRaApE CARD printed by a process similar to Con- 
greve’s printing-embossing process. 
Reduced from 4 x 7!» inches. 
Unsigned, about 1825. 
(Original in Constance Meade 
Collection, Oxford University Press.) 
registration between their two colors, red and blue. 
Engraved ornament, printed in one color, completely 
surrounds the initial itself in the contrasting color. 
There may be a millimeter or less separating the 
two, but the colors never overlap. For some 19th- 
century printers the Psalter was a symbol of 
superb achievement and a challenge to their own 
ingenuity. Senefelder, in his Complete course of 
lithography (London, 1819) and William Savage, in 
Practical hints for decorative printing (London, 1818-23), 
chose to demonstrate their own prowess in color 
printing with reproductions of the initial ‘“‘B” from 
the first page of the Psalter. T. C. Hansard followed 
suit in his Typographia (London, 1825). Savage 
made a careful study of the original initials and 
decided that they were produced by exceptionally 
good registration of two impressions. It is now 
thought that a compound system similar to Congreve’s 
was used, and the two colors printed at a single 
pull.* Surprisingly, Congreve himself never 
attempted to make a facsimile, and there is no 
26 See the IPEX catalogue for the British Museum Exhibition, 
Printing and the mind of man (London: F. W. Bridges & Sons 
Ltd., and The Association of British Manufacturers of Printers? 
Machinery [Proprietary] Ltd., 1963), Part 1, p. 32. 
thoroughly reliable evidence to show that he even 
knew of the initials or their bearing on his own process. 
There is only the weight of probability. It is not 
likely that he was unaware of the work of his con- 
temporaries. Branston, at that time Congreve’s 
chief assistant, was concerned with the production of 
Savage’s Practical hints. A disparaging note in 
Congreve’s Analysis seems to refer to Savage’s color 
work: 
A very elaborate work has lately been published on this 
subject [color printing], which proves the impossibility 
of uniting two colours with any degree of accuracy, by 
the ordinary processes, where the forms of its adaptation 
are at all complicated.*? 
Some years later a French scholar-printer, J. H. H. 
Hammann, stated plainly that Congreve was well 
aware of the Mainz Psalter initials and their sig- 
nificance. Hammann, however, was writing thirty 
years after Congreve’s death, and he did not declare 
the source he was quoting: 
Le célébre imprimeur, M. Bensley, montrait un jour a 
M. Congréve comme un phénoméne typographique la 
grande lettre B, qui est la premiére du Psautier, et dont 
27 Sir W. Concreve, loc. cit. (footnote 10). 
86 BULLETIN 252: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 
