[FUGGER, Wolfgang.] [Ein nutzlich und wolgegrundt Formular manncherley schöner Schriefften. Als teutscher, lateinischer, griechischer, unnd hebraÿscher Buchstaben …]

£5,000 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

‘How Could Art and Knowledge Exist if There Were No Art of Writing?’ [FUGGER, Wolfgang.] [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’ ty

• Binding: Hardcover

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