EARLY BILINGUAL TEXT

 #bilingultext #early print book  #german #latin 

Here's another example of an early printed book with bilingual text. The coloring may have been added by hand or by woodblocks over the printing. 

1499 PRINTED PSALTER

 #psalter #earlyprintedbook #german #latin

GERMAN PSALTER - EARLY PRINTED BOOK 

 

This one caught my eye while browsing for new images to share because it was printed in Latin but with a German translation. It is a beautiful example of typeface design and a practical legible layout !

Note though while the font includes W the printer or writer has used V for u as well as umlaut U and the "LONG" form of S but v if the v is initial in some words ! 

The Hand that writes ...

 While I was looking for Christmas art I came across this 

Can you guess what painting this is a closeup from showing more detail? 

Hint 15th century Florence Influenced many British "PreRaphaelites"

I also chose it because it shows us the process of writing an an actual pen being dipped into an old style ink pot so its relevant to this blogs themes!

You'll have to wait to the next post for a full view of the painting and some more details !

Join me! 

Carolingian Manual Layout

CAROLINGIAN LAYOUT 

This image from a Carolingian manuscript caught my attention due to its layout.

This is from an era with no concept of type setting. The letters were written on paper. 

You can see traces of ruled lines on the page since they didnt have the option of deleting bottom layers or grids that can be turned on and off. This is also perhaps tells us this was a copy for reading not display. The spacing between lines would also be useful for interlineal notes.

Note also the 2 forms of S - one for titles and another for lower case word endings and in the medial position.

There are a few errors Sed intra looks like one word. 

The spacings between sentences are not consistent and it looks as if the scribe was thinking too much about where to put the full stops?

Overall however its quite readable and those variances remember us of the differences between handwritten and printed documents and hte advantages for final edits of a computer?

Perhaps just for practice and after checking the modern Latin forms try typesetting this in a word processing program? Then study the differences?

Augustus Mosaic Lettering

#roman #mosaic #lettering #augustus

Adding letters to mosaics tells us something rather disconcerting about levels of literacy amongst craftsmen in the Roman Empire. The designer of this mosaic had excellent layout skills but his letter forms suggest he was not a scribe himself and probably recited letters and got a scribe to write them down for him and his team to copy. 

The letter forms are more like written text preserved on papyri than the forms we see on carved inscriptions and the last 2 letters ... whether thats a delibarate abbreviation or some one running out of the right tesserae color ...

Really Roman ABC Announcement

#roman #latin #abc #alphabet #deviantart

Okay I have fixed the layout bugs in both Roman ABCs and uploaded them to my DEVIANT ART

Please visit my  DEVIANT ART GALLERY to get free downloads of this and other typography

and do consider a paypal donation?

These are PNGS with transperent backgrounds so you can edit them further. They are free to use but please let people know about the links or encourage them to follow the blog? Thank You

O Virtus Sapientiae

#sapientia #antiphon #hildegardeofbingen #latin #holywisdom

for many Catholics and Protestants its Holy Wisdom Day December 16 / 17

You may be aware of the standard Latin Antiphons but here's a hymn / antiphon created by Abbess Hildegarde of Bingen and yes its one of my #Xmas #freebies you can download it! Its a png file so you should be able to enlarge to match A4 and larger sheets of paper or other materials.

I hope I got the layout right. My aim was to suggest an Interlinear Gloss effect as seen in many manuscripts with the English translation  in a smaller font size in red.

About the translation. Those who know Latin may quibble I could have may the translation more poetic but I was striving to capture or echo both Hildegardes simple elegance and the spirit as well as the meaning hence sudat as works and virtus as excellence.

I choose a uncial font as that seemed to be the closest I could get to the originals.

Hildegarde's scribe probably would have used something closer to a half uncial?

Enjoy!



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