October 24, 2004

• I don't know, PF. That title page might be nice, but it doesn't hold a candle to this in terms of sheer conveyance of the majesty of God. In all seriousness though, I'm always amazed that back when making books was a brutally long and difficult process they added additional toil by making them so intricately beautiful.
• My dad has a collection of old Penguin paperbacks of classics like Hobbes' Leviathan. As as a kid, I was always drawn to the reproductions of the cover engravings they used. Really beautiful stuff. Nowadays, the beauty in some publishing design has shifted to typographic detail, it seems.
• This author doesn't seem like an academic (it says he's a librarian somewhere), which makes this paper even more impressive; like a true labor of love. I'm looking forward to reading it more closely when I have time.
• I would guess the extra toil was invested precisely because printing was a long and difficult process; if you're going to do it, you may as well do it right.
• I think this is a case of technical limitations encouraging pretty good art. In those days, they didn't have 4-color priting. They had wood blocks, black ink, red ink (sometimes). And hand-activated presses. Oh, and the government controlled the mnfg of printing characters so publishing unauthorized books was harder. If I look at the sacred books I have here, I have a new testament with simple, stylized artwork, with a 70s-orange cover, and a deep-blue-plastic-bound bible I found forsaken in a newspaper distribution bin. Next to a The Closing Of The American Mind copy. I swear.