Díaz de la Vega, José María:

$3,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

JUXTA. CRUCEM. JESU. STANTI AST. IN CRUCE. IPSA...[first lines of text]. On April 24, 1816, Díaz de la Vega stood to defend his Bachelor degree, and this letterpress broadside on silk is the official announcement of that. It is handsomely printed using several point sizes of roman and italic, with center justification in the top portion and full justification below.Degree defense broadsides were an important source of income for colonial-era printers in Latin America, and the printers offered "package deals" to the families of the graduate and post-graduate degree postulants. The packages were geared to the students' families' economic means. Broadsides could be large (folio) or small (octavo), have an engraving or not, have a border of type ornaments or not, and be printed on standard paper or colored paper (usually blue). If one splurged, one could get the announcement printed on silk, as here. The usual total number of copies printed for each candidate is unknown at this time, but is likely to have been only one or two dozen, and we do not know if more than one silk copy was printed when that top option was in fact ordered. In extravagant cases one can imagine one copy for the degree candidate, one for the parents, one for each godparent, etc.; still, such cases would probably have been few.Certainly the printers would have been willing to rake in as much money as possible on each happy occasion, and the richly beautiful silk mementos - doubtless proudly displayed for year

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