The printers’ marks found in books represent a whole pictorial world, and the earliest examples date from the first decade of printing (1450).
Printers’ marks are trade marks of the work of a particular publisher, serving as a warranty of the reliability of the recension, and they also draw attention to distinctive features of the typography and the techniques used in the typesetting and printing generally.
In the early years of typography these were designs that framed or supplemented the colophon, thus carrying on the manuscript tradition of codices: the identity of the book continued to be defined by the colophon, the list of publication particulars at the end of the book naming the author, the title, place of publication, printer and date of completion of the printing.
Gradually, however, from 1500 on, it became normal for these particulars and the printer’s mark to be printed on the page that came to be known as the title page, though this did not mean that the colophon was necessarily dispensed with. The earliest complete title page in a Greek book appears in an edition of Pindar’s Odes edited and published by Zacharias Kalliergis in collaboration with Cornelio Benigni in 1515.
There is no record of any statement giving the specific reasons for making it standard practice to include a printer’s mark. It simply made it easier for the reader to recognize the publishing house at a glance and symbolized the full identity of the book, reflecting the amicable collaboration of a large number of scholars, craftsmen and those handling the new technology for reproducing books, the typesetters. The marks served as identification labels for printing and publishing houses and also for bookshops, which often worked with one particular publisher and sold excusively his books.
K.Sp. Staikos, "Printers’ & Publishers Marks in Books for the Greek World”, Athens, Aton/Oak Knoll Press/Hes & De Graaf, 2009, p. xiii.
The exhibition contains items from the following institutions:
