IN 1951, Lord Bilsland, a public figure of the era, was captivated by Liber Chronicarum, otherwise known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the many treasures held by the Special Collections department of Glasgow's Mitchell Library. The book was going on show in an exhibition, Putting It in Print.
This rare German woodcut book from 1493 is – according to the Boston Athenaeum, which holds a copy – one of the most celebrated books to be issued during the early years of printing, “mainly because of its 1,809 glorious images”. The Mitchell’s collections, owned by Glasgow City Council and managed by Museums and Collections, has two copies, one in black-and-white, the other in colour. A caption used whenever the book goes on display reads: “Few German woodcut books are better known than this.... It is perhaps the most sumptuous of the publications of Anton Koberger of Nuremberg, who was the first early printer on a grand scale, employing more than 100 people to work on 24 presses at one time. Some 2,500 copies of the Chronicle were printed, some in Latin and some in German, and these were distributed all over Europe. This large folio contains woodcuts of maps, town plans, and portraits, illustrating the history of the world from Biblical times: only 645 blocks were used to provide over 1800 illustrations, with 72 blocks providing portraits of 576 individuals. The blocks were produced by Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and Michael Wohlgemut, who was the master of Albrecht Durer.”
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