6. Design History

• incunabula (“cradle” or “baby linen”): Its connotations of birth and beginnings caused seventeenth-century writers to adopt it as a name for books printed from Gutenberg’s invention of typography until the end of the fifteenth century.
• broadsides: single-leaf pages printed on one side, which eventually evolved into printed posters, advertisements, and newspapers.
• ex libris: a bookplate pasted into the front of a book to identify its owner
• Nuremburg: Central Europe’s prosperous center of commerce and distribution, which also became the center for printing by the end of the fifteenth century.
• broadsheet: single-leaf pages printed on both sides, which eventually evolved into printed posters, advertisements, and newspapers.
• Martin Luther (c. 1483–1546): After he posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Saxony on October 31, 1517, his friends passed copies on to printers. By December, his proclamation had spread throughout central Europe and within a few months, thousands of people all over Europe knew his views.
• Anton Koberger (c. 1440–1513): Germany’s most esteemed printer, with a firm staffed by one hundred craftsmen operating twenty-four presses. He printed over two hundred editions, including fifteen Bibles.
• Albrecht Dürer: German painter, printmaker, and architect.
• Lucas Cranach the Elder: operated a printing office, a bookshop, and a paper mill. He turned his considerable energies to the Reformation by portraying the Reformers and their cause in books and broadsides including portraits of Martin Luther proclaiming his beliefs
• Hans Cranach (d. 1537) and Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–1586): sons of Lucas Cranach the Elder, they joined their father’s studio. Few examples of Hans’s work remain, but the younger son continued to work in the family style for many years after his father’s death