Spine of book showing the six paneled embellishment

Close up image of paper showing texture left over from the paper's manufacture

Physical Description:

Binding: The book is approximately 20.9 cm tall, 15.7 cm wide, and 4.2 cm thick. The cover is made out of calf leather wrapped around a press paper core. The binding is not original to the book, as the pressed cardboard core was not generally used until the early 18^th century. The original binding would have most likely been leather (either calf or goat) stretched over a wooden board[1]. Still, the binding appears to be hand-made because upon examining the spine of the book, one of the raised bands is crooked. Also, this book has six cords to bind but only 5 showing as raised bands. The raised bands usually correspond to the thread used to bind the spine together. One of the binding cords has been worked so as to not show through the spine and disrupt the 6 paneled decoration.  The cover is very plain on the front and back with only an imprinted gold double edging around the perimeter. The spine and the edges of the cover are another matter. The edges of the cover - including top, bottom, and sides - are imprinted with an alternating twist and flower pattern. The spine is a six paneled decoration separated by the raised bands. It alternates geometric and floral designs, leaving open one section for the book’s title, “Secretes of Alexis 1559.” All of this detail is done with the same imprinted gold work.

It is not clear whether both parts were bought and bound together or if the parts were bought by separate people and bound later by some subsequent owner. Having a book bound apart from the printing was a common practice. At the time, “buying a book was something of an event in a man’s life, calling for as much forethought as the buying of furniture for his house,” and the binding was chosen to indicate wealth and status[2]. One conclusion that can be made is that whoever originally purchased these parts would have taken care of them with an equally well made binding.

Paper: Inspection of the book’s contents reveal that it was printed by two different printers, approximately one year apart. The styles of printing differ in the details but the paper is very similar between the two. Paper of the day was made with either linen or cotton. Linen made a high grade, white paper; cotton made a more brownish paper and was used for cheaper printing and wrapping paper. Though the book has dulled over the time, the paper is still very white and is therefore probably high quality, linen paper. Inspection reveals closely spaced vertical (.1 cm apart) and more widely spaced horizontal (2.5 cm apart) indentations in the paper, especially on pages that were not worked as hard in the printing press (i.e. leading and trailing blank pages). This is left over from the making of the paper in which the linen pulp is pulled from a water bath and is flattened on a wire mesh. The water is then pressed out and then placed on strings to dry[3]. These indentations are not uniform throughout the book. Some are more prevalent than others. This reveals that the book is made up of papers from multiple sources that would have been hand-sorted to find the best paper. After inspecting the book, noted historian and authority on paper manufacturing Leonard Rosenband of Utah State University, concluded that the paper was imported, most likely French or Italian, and of very high quality[4].

Print: The print between the two books is uniform, and no significant fading of the ink has occurred. The used the same style of font, but in the second part the ink has bled through the pages more, which results in a fuzziness around the edges of the letters as well as the print showing more prominently on the page reverse. This could be explained with either the age of the typeface used or the moisture content of the paper or ink during printing.

The forging of type was as much an art as industry at the time, which made it very expensive and hard to come by. The best type was coming out of Normandy at the time, and there is some evidence that the first printer used at least one French typeface. In his publishers tag at the end of the first part he uses a double V in place of a W. In French and Latin the character W is not required, so a double V was commonly used. W’s were used throughout the rest of the type. This type could have been cut domestically; however, there is little evidence that type was being caste in bulk in England prior to the 17^th century. The type was therefore most likely of French origin and the W’s a special order. Given that type is about 4 lbs. per square inch (it being made of lead), the shipping cost would have been considerable. The same type was therefore used throughout the career of a printer out of necessity. Type was even inherited from master to apprentice[5]. These factors suggest that the second printer could have been using older, more worn typeface.

The second issue may have been moisture in either the ink or the paper. The moisture content of a linen-based paper would have been heavily influenced by humidity in the air and could vary widely by the time of year or the weather. Manufacture of ink in the 15^th and 16^th centuries would have been done by the individual printers. It was an involved, multi-stage process requiring long hours of boiling oils, resins, and pigments together. Throughout this process the boiling would remove the water from the product as well as mix and chemically combine the ingredients. This boiling process would require precise heat control of the fire and a very experienced eye to know when it was just right. The inconsistency that would arise in such a process could be significant and directly correlate to the quality of the printing.

The reputation of John Kingston, as will be discussed more thoroughly later, was very high amongst printing circles. He was even listed among the original members of London’s most successful book making guild, the Stationers’ Company[6]. This would suggest that the quality of the printer should not be in doubt. Therefore, the combination of moisture in the paper and wear of the type would be the most likely cause of the bleed through and the fuzzy look to the type.