PRINGSHEIM 



6334 



PRINTING 



poems were issued in 1828, under 

 the title Ephemerides, but his 

 finest efforts are to be found in his 

 South African Sketches, 1834, not- 

 ably the well-known lyric, The 

 Emigrant's Farewell. He died in 

 London, Dec. 5, 1834. 



Pringsheim,NATHANAEL( 1823- 

 94). German botanist. Born at 

 Wziesko, near Landsberg, Silesia, 

 Nov. 30, 1823, he was educated at 

 Breslau, Leipzig, and Berlin uni- 

 versities, and in 1851 was appointed 

 lecturer in natural science at Berlin 

 University. He founded the Year 

 Book of Scientific Botany, 1857, 

 was professor of botany at Jena, 

 1864-68, and returning to Berlin 

 occupied himself in research work. 

 The German Botanical Society 

 was founded by him in 1882. 

 Author of many authoritative 

 works on botany, he died in Berlin, 

 Oct. 6, 1894. 



Prinkipo. Turkish island in the 

 Sea of Marmora. It is the largest 

 island in the group of Princes' 

 Islands (q.v.), and came into prom- 

 inence in 1919 in connexion with a 

 proposed conference between 

 Soviet Russia and the Allies, but 

 no meeting was held. 



Prinsep, VALENTINE CAMERON 

 (1838-1904). British artist. Born 

 at Calcutta, Feb. 4, 1838, he studied 

 under G. F. 

 Watts in Lon- 

 don,andGleyre 

 in Paris, where 

 he was fellow 

 student with 

 D u Maurier. 

 He is intro- 

 duced into Du 

 Maurier's Tril- 

 by as Taffy. 

 One of the Ox- 

 ford Union frescoists, he drifted 

 away from pre-Raphaelitism under 

 Leighton's influence. He became 

 A.R.A. in 1878, and R.A. in 1894. 

 He painted history and genre,wrote 

 plays, and was an enthusiastic 

 volunteer. He died at Kensington, 

 Nov. 11, 1904. 



Print. Impression on paper 

 from an engraving on metal, stone, 

 or wood. The chief varieties of 

 engraving are etchings, mezzotints, 

 line-engravings, stipple, aquatint, 

 woodcuts, and lithographs, each of 

 which will be found described 

 under its title. Prints from en- 

 gravings are classified as states, 

 and vary with the condition of the 

 engraving at the time of printing ; 

 the number of states also varies 

 very greatly with individual en- 

 gravers. Changes constituting a 

 fresh state may take place in the 

 subject, in the handling, or in the 

 lettering, or in all three. Only 

 prints, however, from a completed 

 engraving are recognized as states. 



The engraver, while he is at 

 work, often takes a trial impres- 

 sion, called an engraver's progress 

 proof, in order to estimate his pro- 

 gress. When he is satisfied that the 

 work is finished, he proceeds 

 generally before lettering with 

 the first state. It is the first state 

 impression that generally offers the 

 greatest attraction to the col- 

 lector. When a plate has been re- 

 worked for the sake of restoring 

 etched or engraved lines that have 

 lost their sharpness, the resulting 



impressions do not reach the 

 same excellence. Sometimes, how- 

 ever, as in some of Whistler's 

 etchings, an alteration in the de- 

 sign, or in the balance of light and 

 shade, may result in the second or 

 third states being more satisfac- 

 tory than the first. In 1847 

 the Printsellers' Association was 

 formed in England, with the prin- 

 cipal aim of preventing more than 

 a definitely declared number of 

 impressions of each state from being 

 printed off. 



PRINTING: HISTORY AND PRACTICE 



Joseph Thorp, Author ot Printing for Business 

 In connexion with this subject see the articles Colour Printing; 

 Intaglio ; Lithography ; Offset, etc. ; also Book ; Journalism ; 

 Newspaper; Publishing; Stereotyping. See also Bible; Com- 

 positor ; Galley ; Proof Correction, etc., and the biographies of 

 Caxton, Gutenberg, and other printers 



It has long been accepted,though 

 disputed by some, that prints from 

 wooden blocks appeared in Europe 

 in the 6th century from China ; 

 but certainly not until the time of 

 Dutch wood-cutters of the 15th 

 century was the idea of duplicating 

 copies by a process of inking the 

 raised surface of a block realized 

 and exploited. It was an easy 

 transition from the cutting of de- 

 signs upon wood to the cutting of 

 lettering also. The next step was the 

 making of movable wooden types. 

 The movable metal types cast 

 from matrices or moulds appeared 

 between 1440 and 1450. 



It is a fair claim that printing is 

 the most important single me- 

 chanical revolution in human his- 

 tory. Fortunately the invention 

 .of printing came at a time when 

 calligraphy was at its best. Ex- 

 cellent models existed at the time 

 both for the form of letteiing 

 (the early types were quite natu- 

 rally modified imitations of the 

 written script) and for the arrange- 

 ment of the printed page. Nothing 

 finer has been produced than the 

 Gothic type " 42 line " Bible of 

 1455, attributed to Gutenberg of 

 Mainz, with its illuminated initials ; 

 and the modern renaissance of 

 printing under the inspiration of 

 William Morris and his companions 

 goes back to this early period for 

 its chief inspiration. 



Of the great early printers, Peter 

 Schoffer, also of Mainz, to whom 

 the invention of cast type is at- 

 tributed, and who introduced a 

 more legible simplified Gothic type ; 

 Sweynheim and Pannartz, of 

 Subiaco, whose type showed the 

 transition from the Gothic to the 

 Roman used first by Adolf Rusch, 

 and who was known as the " R " 

 printer from the peculiar shape of 

 the capital R in his fount of type ; 

 and the Frenchman, Nicolas Jen- 

 sen, working at Venice about 1470, 



all deserve special recognition for 

 their share in the development of 

 the art and craft of printing. The 

 Englishman, William Caxton, who 

 possibly learned his printing at 

 Cologne and certainly printed at 

 Bruges, began work, near West- 

 minster Abbey, in 1476-77, which 

 was continued after his death by 

 his foreman, Wynkyn de Worde. 

 To Germany and, some way after, 

 to Italy, in the 15th century, must 

 be given the greatest share of credit. 



In the early years of printing 

 printed books were mainly large 

 folios, following the practice of the 

 majority of MS. books. As tech- 

 nical efficiency and production be- 

 came cheaper, production in- 

 creased ; smaller books, purchas- 

 able by other than the rich, came 

 into being, and by the 16th cen- 

 tury the small book was no longer 

 a rarity. There were but 12 Eng- 

 lish towns with presses in the 16th 

 century to the 20 of Germany and 

 the hundred of Italy. Early in the 

 16th century France took the lead ; 

 and afterwards the religious perse- 

 cution in France drove some of the 

 finest French printers, who in these 

 early days were much identified 

 with the cause of liberty and pro- 

 gress, into the neighbouring coun- 

 tries. Plantin (q.v.), of Antwerp, is 

 the most famous of these refugees. 

 The appearance of the Italic type, 

 the sloping letter supposed to have 

 been modelled on the handwriting 

 of the poet Petrarch and first used 

 by Aldus of Venice in his Virgil, 

 1501, deserves to be noted. The 

 16th century also showed a superb 

 development of the art of the 

 wood-cutter, who was the normal 

 illustrator of the printed book. 



The 17th and early 18th cen- 

 turies may be considered the 

 period of decadence in printing. 

 To the Englishman, John Basker- 

 ville, must be attributed the per- 

 nicious example of exaggerating 



