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Dear list, A very good online example of older techniques is Jean Mabillon's impressive De re diplomatica (1681), at <http://x0b.de/mabillon/>. Imagine if scholars today were required to produce something like <http://x0b.de/mabillon/image_open.php?no=411&idx=9> by hand! Andrew Dunning PhD Candidate, Collaborative Program in Editing Medieval Texts Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto On 15 Aug 2013, at 9:58 PM, Giles Bergel <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Dear all, > > This is a fascinating topic: I'd agree that the importance of lithography needs to be recognised and am grateful for Hugh's references. I'd actually go back earlier still, to engraved representations of manuscripts such as in Astle's Origin and Progress of Writing (1784); Montfaucon's Palaeographia Graeca (1708) and much earlier for e.g. engraved facsimiles of epigraphic texts (Camden's Brittania, for one). OED gives 1662 as the earliest usage in English (can anyone give information on other languages?) and has the following examples: > > 1691 T. Hale Acct. New Inventions p. lxxxvi, A fac simile might easily be taken. > 1742 R. North & M. North Life F. North 59 He..made what they call a fac simile of the Marks and Distances of those small Specks. > [1782 T. Pownall Let. to Astle in Treat. Study Antiq. 178 Drawings copied per factum simile.] > 1795 W. Seward Anecd. (1796) III. 10 The annexed Engraving, a complete fac-simile. > 1815 R. Wedgwood in Commercial Mag. (1846) I. 259 Fac-similes of a dispatch, written..in London, may with facility be written also in Plymouth, Dover..by the same person, and by one and the same act. > 1824 J. Johnson Typographia II. xii. 434 One of the most..ancient of those manuscripts has been printed in fac-simile. > 1851 D. Wilson Archaeol. & Prehist. Ann. Scotl. (1863) II. iv. iv. 281 The inscription is produced in facsimile. > 1868 G. Stephens Old-Northern Runic Monuments I. p. vi, Masterly facsimiles. > > Some reproductive engraving processes involved taking an impression of a dampened copy of the exemplar, almost like a photographic contact print, which was then engraved - this was probably done, with destructive consequences, for the various facsimiles taken from the Declaration of Independence in the 19th century (for a quick history of those facsimiles, see http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/08/early-facsimile-copy-of-declaration.html). > > On recent photographic facsimiles of medieval mss, which seems to be the main focus of interest in this discussion, here are some interesting thoughts by a curator of an exhibition of them at Monash - http://www.unimelb.edu.au/culturalcollections/exhibitions/facsimile/essay.html > > Best, > > Giles > > > Dr. Giles Bergel > > Departmental Lecturer in Bibliography and Textual Criticism > Faculty of English Language and Literature > University of Oxford > > > > > > On 15 Aug 2013, at 08:16, Hugh Houghton <[log in to unmask]> > wrote: > >> Dear Peter, et al, >> >> On 15 Aug 2013, at 15:14, Peter Robinson <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> >>> More usefully, the facsimile is discussed by David McKitterick in his new Old Books, New Technologies: The Representation, Conservation and Transformation of Books Since 1700, published by CUP this year, on p.120, where he describes this as the 'first extended facsimile' of a manuscript, with reproductions of 16 pages from a Turin manuscript. >> >> This description may be correct for photographic facsimiles. But I suggest that the lithographic facsimile of St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 48 produced posthumously for H.C.M. Rettig in 1836, which reproduces each page of the gospel book, is an even earlier contender for "first extended facsimile" (as a printed volume). >> >> I gave references in my response to the original thread on 13th June 2008 (see below). >> >> Best wishes, >> Hugh >> >> >> Subject: Early facsimiles again >> From: Hugh Houghton <[log in to unmask]> >> Reply-To: The list of the European Society for Textual Scholarship and the Society for Textual Scholarship <[log in to unmask]> >> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:57:55 +0100 >> >> >> In November 2007, there was some discussion on this list about the >> earliest photographic facsimile, with the oldest examples being an >> 1855 edition of Ulrich von Richental "Das Konzil zu Konstanz" (in >> Hans Zotter, Bibliographie faksimilierter Handschriften, Graz 1976) >> and an edition of the Manuscript Sforza in 1860. >> >> I can't improve on these dates for a photographic facsimile, but I >> have spent the afternoon with something which may be one of the >> oldest lithographic facsimiles as it describes the process in the >> introduction. The volume is an 1836 edition of a bilingual Greco- >> Latin gospel manuscript in St Gall (ms 48), by H.C.M. Rettig >> (published posthumously by Frideric Schulthess), reproducing all 395 >> pages of the manuscript. >> >> Page v of the introduction runs as follows (a rough translation is >> given below): >> >> "dum igitur librum typis describendum vulgaribus, in modum Knittelii, >> praeparabam, accidit, ut redemtor libri honestissimus prela >> lithographica sibi pararet simulque artem transferendi (die Kunst des >> Ueberdruckes) scripta in lapides addisceret. Statim igitur consilium >> prius abieci. Pictorem nactus sum calligraphum, qui in charte >> pellucida, super codicem expansa, singulas literas, singulas >> lineolas, singulos literarum apices accuratissime perscribebat. Prelo >> lithographico pictura ex charta in lapides transferebatur et >> multiplicabatur. Ita codicis Sangallensis imago saepissime et >> accuratissime repetita et, ita quidem ut nulla alia via, nullaque >> alia arte accuratior apparari queat. Qui enim calamo omnis lineas >> ante ipsius oculos positos sequi debet, errores magnos admittere >> omnino non potest. Si vero vulgari vel arte lithographica vel >> incisione in aeneis tabulis libri repetuntur, errores aeque facile ac >> in typographia admittuntur." >> >> "While I was therefore preparing to present the book using normal >> type, in the manner of Knittel, it happened that the splendid >> publisher of the book acquired a lithographic press and learnt the >> skill of transferring writing onto stones. I therefore abandoned my >> earlier plan, and got hold of a calligraphic artist, who traced as >> accurately as possibly the individual letters, lines and character- >> forms on transparent paper spread over the manuscript. The design was >> transferred from the paper onto stones on the lithographic press and >> reproduced. In this way the form of the Codex Sangallensis was most >> frequently and most accurately rendered, and in such a manner that >> cannot be conveyed more accurately by any other means or skill. One >> who must follow with his nib all the lines before his eyes can in no >> way introduce substantial mistakes. If books are reproduced in the >> usual way by lithographic art or by engraving on bronze sheets, >> mistakes are introduced as easily as they are in typesetting." >> >> Of course, this is no substitute for the magnificent modern Codices >> Electronici Sangallenses (www.cesg.unifr.ch), but I hope the >> information may be of interest. >> >> Hugh Houghton >> -- >> www.itsee.bham.ac.uk www.vetuslatina.org www.iohannes.com >> -- >> Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing, >> University of Birmingham, Elmfield House, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 6LQ > >