The earliest printing for the blind was the embossed lettering system developed by Valentin Haüy, the founder, in 1784, of the first school for the blind in Paris. In 1819 Louis Braille entered this school. This is an 1806 French grammar by Lhomand, printed in Haüy's lettters. 1/
"Elémens de la grammaire française, adoptés par le Gouvernement, pour les lycées et pour les écoles secondaires. Nouvelle édition [...], par un chef de lycée. Ces Elémens ont été imprimés par les aveugles et à leur usage, en l’hospice impérial des Quinze- Vingts." Paris 1806. 2/
A bibliographic mystery is the rarity today of early imprints in Louis Braille's dot system. While books in predecessor systems like Haüy's turn up now & then and books in the Moon system are found frequently, one almost never sees a 19th cent. example of actual Braille printing.
Histories of writing for the blind usually say that after some initial resistance, widespread adoption of Louis Braille's system began in the 1850s and was near universal by the 1880s. If this is really the case, where are the books? One simply doesn't see pre 1900 Braille books.

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More from @incunabula

2 Aug
Which European language am I reading? Image
HT Reddit r/geoguessr
Yiddish, as some have noticed, is written backwards in error here - it should of course be ייִדיש. As anyone who has struggled with formatting Hebrew and English text together in a Word doc will know, this is an all too frequent type of software glitch.
Read 6 tweets
31 Jul
This heartstoppingly beautiful 15th century Timurid Qur'an copied on Ming Dynasty gold-painted colored paper, was sold to an unknown buyer by @ChristiesInc in London in July 2020 for just over £7 million. Only 4 similar Qur'ans written on Chinese paper like this are known. 1/
The @ChristiesInc hammer price was over twelve times the estimate: £6 million pounds. This equates to £7,016,250 after buyers fees, which is about $9.76 million - the highest price ever reached by a Qur'an. Christies has not released the name of the buyer. 2/
Although coloured paper was used in the Islamic world for many centuries, Chinese paper had a particular appeal with its luscious finish, vibrant colours and exotic designs. The silky texture is achieved through the technique of permeating the paper with lead white. 3/
Read 11 tweets
30 Jul
Collecting 18th century Basque books (books printed in Basque for a Basque readership, not bilingual grammars etc) is a low cost hobby - not because the books are cheap, but because one comes along only every 10 years or so, so you can really spread the cost out...😎 1/ Image
This "Testamen çaharreco eta berrico historoa" - a collection of historical stories from the Bible - was printed in Bayonne, in the French Basque country, in 1777. 2/ Image
Until the 19th century, Basque was primarily a spoken language only, and although a number of dictionaries and grammars were published by Spanish philologists, books printed entirely in the Basque language for a local Basque readership are few and far between. 3/ Image
Read 8 tweets
29 Jul
Some extraordinary prices on the wildly successful Genazym Judaica auction yesterday. Genazym are innovators - their catalogues - packed with punchy graphics, tag lines & exclamation marks - look quite unlike any other book & manuscript auction at all. 1/
…pirit-uploads-1.global.ssl.fastly.net/genazym/auctio…
Genazym unashamedly target a devoutly religious market, rather than traditional book collectors. This paid off handsomely - this broadsheet, which seemed expensive to me at the estimate of $30-$50k, fetched $130 000. Hard to see it realising the same at Kestenbaum or Kedem. 2/
INCUNABLE!
Rather fun to imagine @ChristiesBKS or @Sothebys selling their 15th century books like this.... 😅 3/
Read 4 tweets
28 Jul
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, London 1868.
An especially wonderful 'Cosway' binding (circa 1910-1913), with miniatures by Miss C.B. Currie. The scenes depicted are Alice with flamingo & croquet mallet and the Duchess on the front cover, and Alice and the Dodo on the rear. 1/
In the early 1900s, John Harrison Stonehouse, the managing director of @Sotherans, began to commission these distinctive fine bindings by Rivière & Son, featuring inset miniatures on ivory by his in-house miniaturist, Miss Currie. 2/
Many of her excellent miniatures imitated the style of the earlier painter Richard Cosway, hence the term Cosway binding. Over nearly 40 years she produced miniatures for over 900 bindings. 3/
Read 4 tweets
25 Jul
JEWISH PRINTING IN HEBREW, IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL, IN 1578.
This is third book printed in Eretz Israel, Rabbi Samuel Aripul's "Sar Shalom", printed in 1578 by Abraham & Eliezer Askkenazi at Safed (צְפַת Tsfat), the highest city in the Galilee, in what is today northern Israel. 1/
In 1553, the population of Safed consisted of 1121 Muslim households, and 716 Jewish households, which rose to 945 households in 1567. There were more than 7000 Jews in Safed in 1576 when Murad III issued an edict for the forced deportation of 1000 Jewish families to Cyprus. 2/
A Hebrew printing press was established in Safed in 1577 by Eliezer Ashkenazi and his son, Isaac of Prague. In 1584, there were 32 synagogues registered in the town of Safed. 3/
Read 9 tweets

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