Creating Grand Gargantua
An ambitious project by Paul Dijstelberge
Initials and ornaments
Until the 18th century and for brief periods in the 19th and early 20th century, books were often decorated with initials and ornaments. The earliest printed books were decorated by hand, like their written ancestors; but soon printers began to use little woodcuts that could be used year after year in thousands of copies.
Grand Gargantua
And so a grand project begins: with John (the editor of this blog), we are building a website to bring these rare treasures to everyone. Grand Gargantua — a history of typography will chart the course of typography from the incunabula. For some time, I have been photographing (in high resolution) books of the Amsterdam Special Collections, and uploading them to Flickr. Grand Gargantua will take this one step further, by organising and tagging these very high-resolution images, in addition to providing some commentary and historical perspective.
Sounds like a fantastic project, can’t wait to see the results! Good luck Paul!