Type to Print: The Book & The Type Specimen Book

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BIBLE. Biblia Latina
Judges 21:12-24, Ruth 1.1-4.22

Mainz: Printer of the 42-Line Bible (Johann Gutenberg and Peter Schöffer?), ca. 1454-1455, Not after August 1456

The Gutenberg Bible was printed with type cut following the model of the book hand used in western Germany during the fifteenth century to write liturgical manuscripts. It is known as textura and is a formal upright and angular hand, the letters having pointed feet and little curvature.

The font of the 42-line Bible consists of nearly three hundred characters, including variant forms of letters, ligatures, and abbreviations to better simulate manuscript conventions. It presents a vigor and sense of interwoven harmony that has seldom been equaled.

Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust