An early modern title page
The 1476 Kalendario is often described as the first decorative modern title page. Its title, author, place, date and printers appear in red and black inside a woodcut border of flowers and foliage.
Not antique. Antiqua.
In 1476 Erhard Ratdolt of Augsburg opened a press in Venice with the painter Bernhard Maler and the corrector Peter Löslein. Their first book, the Kalendario of the astronomer Regiomontanus, opened with one of the earliest modern title pages: the title, author, place, year and printers appeared in red and black inside a decorative woodcut border.
The roman type inside that book is the one revived here. Scholars file it as Type 109R (twenty lines measure 109 millimetres). Cut only six years after Nicolas Jenson's celebrated roman, it refused Jenson's calm perfection and kept its manuscript accent: dark in colour, angled in stress, full of letterforms that never became standard. Zyrian Obelisk returns to that moment before roman type became polite: dark and upright as its name promises, the strokes of the pen still standing in the metal.
- c. 1447
Born in Augsburg into a family of craftsmen.
- 1476
Opens the Venice press; the Kalendario carries one of the earliest modern title pages.
- 1482
Publishes the first printed edition of Euclid's Elements, with more than 400 geometric diagrams.
- 1485
Prints the first book known to include an illustration in three colours: a lunar eclipse.
- 1486
Issues the earliest known printer's type-specimen broadside while preparing his return to Augsburg.
- 1528
Dies in Augsburg before 23 January, after a career of more than 200 editions.