OF THE METROPOLITAN
BULLETIN
more surprised than ourselves would doubtless have been the armorer who completed
the harness. Fancy his skeptical expression if he had been told that the particular
plate which in 1554 he was fastening to the
leather would some day become detached,
and in I923, after various wanderings,
would again find its place-this, too, in a
city of more than five million inhabitants
and in a land beyond the sea, then a wilderness but little known even in tales of
adventure!
B. D.
FIG
5.
PEYTREL
MUSEUM OF ART
than probable that the volume was actually
printed in 1548 and not 568-a difference
which would be accounted for merely by
the change of the 1 x to an x 1 in the colophon. Errors of this kind were not infrequent in the cheap books of past times,
when proof reading had not as yet reached
any particular degree of accuracy.
The book is little more than a cheap reprint of one of the macabre texts which was
fitst issued in Paris shortly after 1490, and
later, with variations, many times both
there and at Lyons. The Lyons edition
OF HORSE
ARMOR
DATED
I554
of 1499 is one of the most important books
known to historians of printing, as among
its illustrations appears the first picture of
a printing press and of a composing room.
That edition unfortunately is not to be had
by any one who may want it, as of the
two known copies the perfect one now belongs to the French Government and the
imperfect one to the Prince of Essling.
The Museum, therefore, is to be congratulated on having acquired the very rare
little reprint of I568, in which the picture
of the press and composing room is based
immediately upon the illustration in the
edition of I499. What the actual date
of the block may be there is no way of
telling, but it may very well run back to
the early years of the sixteenth century.
It thus may be taken as being the most
primitive representation of a printing press
it will ever be possible to acquire, and
certainly as earlier in type than anything
reproduced by Madden in Bibliographica,
AN EARLY PICTURE OF A
PRINTING PRESS
In a group of illustrated books recently acquired for the print collection
is a copy of "La Grande Danse Macabre
des hommes & des femmes hystoriee et
augmentee de beaulx dictz en Latin,"
which was sold "a Lyon sur le Rosne, en
la maison de Pierre saincte Lucie, dict le
Prince, pres nostre dame de Confort,"
and was printed, according to the colophon,
in that city the second day of September
in the year "Mil. ccccc 1 x v i i j." The
name of the printer is not given. The
book is printed in black letter and is
copiously illustrated with woodcut copies
of fifteenth-century blocks of the Parisian
and Lyonnese schools. Although obviously a chap-book, a species of wares in
which typographical styles have always
lagged far behind those of the great world,
its character is so archaic that it is more
42
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BULLETIN
OF THE METROPOLITAN
balls on the surface of which the ink was
taken up from the slab on which it had
been rubbed out. The ink was distributed evenly on the two balls by rubbing
and rolling them around on each other. It
is easily to be seen that under such circumstances the even inking of a form was
a matter requiring much more skill than
is needed nowadays with our "improved"
machine presses, and it is also interesting
with the single exception of the 1499
cut.
The woodcut appearing in the reprint
in I568 is here reproduced, and will be
found of great interest by every one who is
the least interested in the history of printing. The figure of death walks across the
middle of the picture haling the printers
after him. Of these there are three. At
the left the compositor sits at his case,
WOODCUT
GRANDE
OF A PRINTING
DANSE
PRESS
MACABRE,
MUSEUM OF ART
AND A COMPOSING
PRINTED
picking up the type slugs with his right
hand and placing them in the stick which
he holds in his left hand. In the top of the
case stands the visorum (as Moxon called
it in 1683) on which is speared the copy
from which he is working. On the bench
beside him lies a chase, laid out for a
quarto, into which the compositor puts
the contents of his stick, the galley evidently not yet having been invented.
At the right the two pressmen are busy,
one of them working the press and the
other distributing the ink on his balls.
The use of ink rollers seems so simple and
obvious to us of today that it comes as a
distinct shock to learn that rollers were
first brought into use in England only in
1814, and that prior to that time all woodcuts and type forms were inked by being
dabbed or rather pounded with padded
AT LYONS
ROOM FROM LA
AND DATED
I568
to notice that when what was needed was
exceedingly deft muscular exertion the job
was often done better than it is now when
"just a little mechanical adjustment" is
supposed to suffice.
The verses which accompany the illustration differ from those in the edition of
1499, because while there death talks to
the printers and to the booksellers (who
are omitted from our picture) here he
speaks only to the compositor and the
pressmen. The alterations are as slight
as needed to make the verses fit the new
picture. Death invites the compositor
to dance a tourbillon, make a skilful jump
and leave his types and case, because he
has certainly got to die. And to that the
compositor replies that he is sorry to leave
the noise of the press and that he would
much rather set up his form, but neverthe43
BULLETIN
OF THE METROPOLITAN
less he admits that he has got to dance.
To the pressman death says that no longer
may he eat his breakfast so early in the
morning and that he must leave his press
immediately. And the pressmen reply,
"Alas, where shall we find succor now that
death has spied us; we have printed all the
courses of sacred theology, law, decrees,
and poetry; by our art have many become
most learned, the clergy is raised up on it;
but man is only food for worms."
W. M. I., JR.
FIG. I.
MUSEUM
OF ART
the throne in the person of Charles II, the
Merry Monarch.
The late Tudor table marks a high point
in the development of the long tables which
were used for many centuries in the great
halls of the houses of England and whose
use is still preserved in the dining halls of
her colleges.
The early form, the trestle table, commonly employed throughout the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, was revolutionized
by the invention of the draw-top. With
DRAW-TOP TABLE, ENGLISH
RECENT PURCHASES OF ENGLISH FURNITURE
this, the best construction demanded the
replacement of the trestles by legs at the
four corners, which formed an integral
portion of the supporting framework with
the skirt and the stretchers. The top was
composed of three pieces, an upper leaf
covering the whole table top, and two
smaller lower leaves between which, when
they were pulled out at each end, the upper
leaf dropped into place. By this means
the length of the table was practically
doubled.
From the point of view of construction,
our table goes a step further in its arrangement for convenience. Levers, attached
to the bottom of the two extension leaves,
easily lift the upper leaf and the closing of
the table is but child's play when compared
with the difficulty of closing the ordinary
draw-top table without the levers.
This draw-top invention probably originated in Italy but soon was taken up in
France, Flanders, and England. Likewise,
the decorative treatment of our table marks
the importation into England of motives
A group of English furniture, purchased
by the Museum, is shown this month in the
Room of Recent Accessions. It includes
examples of desirable types which the Museum lacked and exhibits an unusually high
quality of design and craftsmanship within
these types.
The fine oak draw:top table (fig. I) of
the end of the sixteenth century is a felicitous rendering of the carved and turned
tables which are descended from the long
trestle tables of Gothic times. The group
of five chairs of the last quarter of the seventeenth century testifies to the sumptuous
taste of the years succeeding the restoration
of the monarchy. Between the making of
this table of oak and these chairs of walnut
there had intervened the troublous times
of James I and Charles I, with the civil
wars between the Roundheads and the
Cavaliers, the ten years of the Commonwealth, and the restoration of the Stuarts to
44