If you want to read Fust and his Friends by Robert Browning (Gutenberg’s former partner, Faust was called the Devil with the ink-bottle -> the black art)
In Germany we speak about the Black and the White Art:
“Von der Schwarzen und der Weißen Kunst”.
The Black Art is printing, the White Art is paper production.
Chris, probably the phrase ’black art’ as you & I know it is an English specific literary/poetic device coined by an overwrought romantic Victorian. Or something similar. I’ll look into it.
“The OED’s first example is from Christopher Marlowe’s Faust in 1591: “I have heard strange report of thy knowledge in the black art”. Obsolete usage from the same time period: lock-picking. “I can set downe the subtiltie of the blacke Art, which is picking of lockes”.”
> “The OED’s first example is from Christopher Marlowe’s Faust in 1591
This is not right. The first one was in 1587 — Frankfurt am Main — Das Faustbuch’ (The Faust Book). That inspired Christopher Marlowe to write the play ’The Tragicall History of D Faustus’ .
David: My pal has reminded me that “the OED doesn’t necessarily present the “first usage” of a word, but does try to track significant examples of “original” usage.”
Kris, clearly there is some prescedent for associating the phrase ’The black art’ with printing. I don’t see anything that associates type design per se with “the black Art”. Of course type design is pretty useless without printing but they are not the same thing. I think the distiction is valid.
There are many things which even a dedicated scholar cannot completely reveal. Some things were never that clear and some facts are simply lost. But I do like John’s reminder in that thread of yet another meaning. He says:
” So just why did the Church refer to printing as the “Black Arts”.
Did the term originate in the Church? Where and when? The term black art is used even today, in reference to anything that is understood only by initiates. At a recent Unicode conference, one of the text encoding gurus referred to digital type development as ’something of a black art’. He was not suggesting that there was anything negative, let alone diabolical, about type design, only that it was something that the majority of people don’t understand very well. ”
What aspect or idea were you hoping to point to David?
It might mean a pun on that Ricardo. Black ink might have been used in a black art to achieve the magic of the written word casting its spell on the masses.
Black Art has to do with printing and Pre press. In Switzerland, Typographers and Printers get a certificate in Black Art when they graduate, but first they throw them in a fountain to baptise’ em.
Yeah, I wasn’t taking that definition literally. :-) When I was at university, one of my profs told us that printing was known as “the black art” in its early years. I like the church reference made above too, because I’m sure the catholic church felt threatened by the “spell” printing cast on the masses... :-)
And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go change a toner cartridge. ;-D
I am am making paint today with red pigment ( really!) and painting with it. I might get a little colored in the process. Does that make it a ’red art’? I am all for poetics & history but there is some part of this which is just silly.
Wikipedia has an entry for the term “printer’s devil” which also talks about printing being called a “black art”... It mentions three possible sources for the association...
Back then, black cats were thought to be related to witchcraft, too, if I’m not mistaken. So maybe “black” meant mysterious or evil rather than covered in ink — but who can really say?
I wasn’t previously aware of “the black art” term being applied to printing and/or type design. But the Catholic church connecting printing to evil makes sense considering it’s influence in spreading the words/ideas of Martin Luther.
Ricardo : It seems that for these folk who were concerned about books getting made too easily, communication being made too easy was the thing to worry about. So the logical extensions are the ’black arts’ of letter writing, faxing, emailing, web site making, IMing, p2ping, texting, handwaiving, eyebrow raising and let us not forget - smoke signals.
“But the Catholic church connecting printing to evil makes sense considering it’s influence in spreading the words/ideas of Martin Luther.”
This does need to be said. Martin Luther was a Catholic, to his dying day. He was not a proponent of the use of the printing press in spreading his “word.”
The Catholic church did not connect printing to evil. It was the sponsor for, and proponent of, the development of “mechanical writing.”
My point was strictly conjecture, and I don’t wish to get into any theological debate, but it is clear that Luther’s ’words’ did inspire the Reformation and the development of Lutheran and other Protestant sects of Christianity.
“The mystery thrown over the operations of a Type foundry [says Vincent Figins II in 1855] within my own recollection (thirty-four years), and the still greater secrecy which had existed in my father’s experience, testifies that the art had been perpetuated by a kind of Druidic or Masonic induction from the first. An anecdote of my father’s early struggles may illustrate this. At the death of Mr. Joseph Jackson, whom my father had served ten years as apprentice and foreman, there was in progress for the University Press of Oxford a new fount of Double Pica Greek, which had progressed under my father’s entire management. The then delegates of that Press—the Rev. Dr. Randolph and the Rev. W. Jackson—suggested that Mr. Figgins should finish the fount himself. This, with other offers of support from those who had previously known him, was the germ of his prosperity (which was always gratefully acknowledged). But when he had undertaken this work, the difficulty presented iteself that he did not know where to find the punch-cutter. No one knew his address; but he was supposed to be a tall man, who came in a mysterious way occasionally, whose name no one knew, but he went by the sobriquet of ’The Black Man’. This old gentleman, a very clever mechanic, lived to be a pensioner on my father’s bounty—gratitude is perhaps the better word. I knew him and could never understand the origin of his sobriquet, unless Black was meant for dark, mysterious, from the manner of his coming and going from Mr. Jackson’s foundry.”
—quoted in T.B. Reed’s A History of the Old English Letter Foundries
My ITU lessons in printing put it down to the church’s opposition to there being large amounts of bibles in circulation, where before the onset of printing bibles and other works were available only to the wealthy and the church. They realized that books would be availbale to the masses.
Additionall they could see that printing was going to make scribal work completely unncessarey.
Once printing was in full flower it was only a matter of a few decades before literacy spread over Europe, and at the same time books were printed in other than strictly Latin.
Those opposed to change dubbed it the Black Art, suggesting that it was the work of the devil. In the early years printers were thrown into prison and some were executed.
A bible prior to printing would have cost the equivalent of 1.5 million dollars in today’s money. They were only available to nobility and the church because no one else had any money whatsoever.
The development of Western printing also did two other things. Immediately, the block book was introduced, which provided access to whoever who wanted at a very low price. Which resulted in the decline of printing as represented by B42 and the Mainz Psalter. Also, it raised the price of the manuscript book (“scribal work”), which became the high end in the market for over a century. It did not in any way immediately eliminate the work of the scribe.
The dubbing of the Black Art thing, is really questionable. Printers were thrown into prison and executed, along with any others who violated the laws of the time. Very little to do with the devil, unless you were in Spain or France. Then it hardly mattered what your crime was.
The Inquisition, in Spain, began in 1492, an interesting date don’t you think? The day Columbus sailed all Jews had to be out of Spain. Guess what he had on board?
All very interesting, thanks folks. Would the “public” consider printing to be the black art these days, or would type design be more of a contemporary black art?
“We [Bureau of Education, International Typographical Union] are indebted to the research work of John Clyde Oswald, Bruce Rogers, Walter Dorwin Teague, William Edwin Rudge, Douglas C. McMurtrie, Walter C. Blelock, Henry Lewis Bullen, Wallace Rice, Gustave Enald Hult, N.J. Werner, Metropoolitan Museum of Art, The Inland Printer, The American Printer, and the Bulletin Official of Paris, for the material appearing in the first three lesson bearing on the history of the art.”
Yeah, this is from Simon Wiesenthal, “the Nazi Hunter,” in his writings on Columbus.
Columbus was a converso, so had affiliation. I have a copy of a map he drew of the New World (the first) that was sent to his son, with the special code “sign.”
But I was in error, while the “uncoverted” Jews were expurgated in 1492, the Inquisition in Spain began twelve years earlier.
I’ve never been able to find the connection but it was suggested once that the trial and execution of Joan of Arc 1431 had some kind of impact (socially/culturally) on the development of printing.
Oh yeah. To get back to you. No, the “black art” is an obsolete term. It would have originally referred to printing in some regard rather than type design.
Type wasn’t even referred to as such until the early 18th century. Moxon never used the word type, he called them letters. And just who would have qualified as the first “type designer”? Schoeffer or Griffo or ?
Hardly. I was fortunate enough to see your book at Richard’s table during CODEX. Very impressive. If my sales would have been much better I’d have picked it up for sure.
A little posting blather is not something to be all that concerned about.
28.Apr.2007 11.33pm
Wikipedia says “from the 1400s through the victorian era, typesetting was referred to as the “black art”.”
Perhaps is has to do with ink...
Looks like it... also from Wiipedia
“In Germany, the art of typesetting was termed the “black art” in allusion to the ink-covered printers.”
29.Apr.2007 12.53am
Interesting. I thought that “the black art” referred to type design rather than typesetting.
—K
29.Apr.2007 1.53am
If you want to read Fust and his Friends by Robert Browning (Gutenberg’s former partner, Faust was called the Devil with the ink-bottle -> the black art)
29.Apr.2007 3.27am
In Germany we speak about the Black and the White Art:
“Von der Schwarzen und der Weißen Kunst”.
The Black Art is printing, the White Art is paper production.
http://cgi.zvab.com/SESSz133977815711177842305/cgi-bin/n_xsearch.cgi?uc=...
Georg
29.Apr.2007 4.53am
Is there a connection to “Black Art” as in alchemy, sorcery, and witchcraft along the way?
ChrisL
29.Apr.2007 6.11am
no that is the Dark Arts at Hogwarts School. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogwarts_subjects#Defence_Against_the_Dark_...
29.Apr.2007 1.05pm
Thanks Georg!
Chris, probably the phrase ’black art’ as you & I know it is an English specific literary/poetic device coined by an overwrought romantic Victorian. Or something similar. I’ll look into it.
29.Apr.2007 1.21pm
There is also this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer’s_devil
I suspect that there is no simple answer. Still I will see if I can find an origin point.
29.Apr.2007 3.42pm
My Prof pal says:
“The OED’s first example is from Christopher Marlowe’s Faust in 1591: “I have heard strange report of thy knowledge in the black art”. Obsolete usage from the same time period: lock-picking. “I can set downe the subtiltie of the blacke Art, which is picking of lockes”.”
29.Apr.2007 4.47pm
Thanks Eben! So “The Black Art” does not refer to type design at all?
—K
29.Apr.2007 4.54pm
> “The OED’s first example is from Christopher Marlowe’s Faust in 1591
This is not right. The first one was in 1587 — Frankfurt am Main — Das Faustbuch’ (The Faust Book). That inspired Christopher Marlowe to write the play ’The Tragicall History of D Faustus’ .
29.Apr.2007 10.57pm
David: My pal has reminded me that “the OED doesn’t necessarily present the “first usage” of a word, but does try to track significant examples of “original” usage.”
Kris, clearly there is some prescedent for associating the phrase ’The black art’ with printing. I don’t see anything that associates type design per se with “the black Art”. Of course type design is pretty useless without printing but they are not the same thing. I think the distiction is valid.
30.Apr.2007 3.38pm
See that thread: http://typophile.com/node/1702
30.Apr.2007 4.49pm
There are many things which even a dedicated scholar cannot completely reveal. Some things were never that clear and some facts are simply lost. But I do like John’s reminder in that thread of yet another meaning. He says:
” So just why did the Church refer to printing as the “Black Arts”.
Did the term originate in the Church? Where and when? The term black art is used even today, in reference to anything that is understood only by initiates. At a recent Unicode conference, one of the text encoding gurus referred to digital type development as ’something of a black art’. He was not suggesting that there was anything negative, let alone diabolical, about type design, only that it was something that the majority of people don’t understand very well. ”
What aspect or idea were you hoping to point to David?
30.Apr.2007 8.54pm
Ye Olde Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary sez...
black art n (1590): magic practiced by or as if by conjurers and witches
1.May.2007 4.55am
It might mean a pun on that Ricardo. Black ink might have been used in a black art to achieve the magic of the written word casting its spell on the masses.
ChrisL
1.May.2007 6.04am
Black Art has to do with printing and Pre press. In Switzerland, Typographers and Printers get a certificate in Black Art when they graduate, but first they throw them in a fountain to baptise’ em.
It’s a tratitional term.
1.May.2007 6.06am
In the ink fountain? :-)
ChrisL
1.May.2007 6.09am
Yes sure!
1.May.2007 7.44am
Hey Chris,
Yeah, I wasn’t taking that definition literally. :-) When I was at university, one of my profs told us that printing was known as “the black art” in its early years. I like the church reference made above too, because I’m sure the catholic church felt threatened by the “spell” printing cast on the masses... :-)
And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go change a toner cartridge. ;-D
1.May.2007 9.47am
“I have to go change a toner cartridge”
LOL!!!
Things have not changed so much afterall :-)
ChrisL
1.May.2007 10.57am
I am am making paint today with red pigment ( really!) and painting with it. I might get a little colored in the process. Does that make it a ’red art’? I am all for poetics & history but there is some part of this which is just silly.
Nice posts Christian!
1.May.2007 11.03am
“there is some part of this which is just silly.”
Yup! :-P
ChrisL
1.May.2007 4.52pm
Wikipedia has an entry for the term “printer’s devil” which also talks about printing being called a “black art”... It mentions three possible sources for the association...
Back then, black cats were thought to be related to witchcraft, too, if I’m not mistaken. So maybe “black” meant mysterious or evil rather than covered in ink — but who can really say?
1.May.2007 5.25pm
Black is as old as Night.
hhp
1.May.2007 8.57pm
Black is as old as Fright.
_________
Hiro
1.May.2007 9.06pm
Kris
The OED is really your only reliable reference for word origins.
The Wikipedia, well, test it once with a topic you really know something about. Dismal. Don’t know much about a topic, it will do.
Printing was termed the black art. Don’t know the origins. There were at least two journals with that title that focused on printing history.
Gerald
2.May.2007 2.02pm
I wasn’t previously aware of “the black art” term being applied to printing and/or type design. But the Catholic church connecting printing to evil makes sense considering it’s influence in spreading the words/ideas of Martin Luther.
2.May.2007 5.08pm
Antoine Augereau was burnt for heresy but it was apparently a big political stitch-up rather actual devil worshiping.
http://www.amazon.fr/Maître-Garamond-Augereau-imprimeur-libraire/dp/2253109959
2.May.2007 6.14pm
Hey, look, here’s a book that mentions it: excerpt courtesy of Amazon.
2.May.2007 10.40pm
Ricardo : It seems that for these folk who were concerned about books getting made too easily, communication being made too easy was the thing to worry about. So the logical extensions are the ’black arts’ of letter writing, faxing, emailing, web site making, IMing, p2ping, texting, handwaiving, eyebrow raising and let us not forget - smoke signals.
Yes?
SUCH nice people! ;-)
3.May.2007 5.40pm
SUCH nice people! ;-)
Heh-heh.
3.May.2007 10.28pm
“But the Catholic church connecting printing to evil makes sense considering it’s influence in spreading the words/ideas of Martin Luther.”
This does need to be said. Martin Luther was a Catholic, to his dying day. He was not a proponent of the use of the printing press in spreading his “word.”
The Catholic church did not connect printing to evil. It was the sponsor for, and proponent of, the development of “mechanical writing.”
For Christ sakes.
Gerald
4.May.2007 10.53am
My point was strictly conjecture, and I don’t wish to get into any theological debate, but it is clear that Luther’s ’words’ did inspire the Reformation and the development of Lutheran and other Protestant sects of Christianity.
fer criminy sake.
4.May.2007 11.25am
“The mystery thrown over the operations of a Type foundry [says Vincent Figins II in 1855] within my own recollection (thirty-four years), and the still greater secrecy which had existed in my father’s experience, testifies that the art had been perpetuated by a kind of Druidic or Masonic induction from the first. An anecdote of my father’s early struggles may illustrate this. At the death of Mr. Joseph Jackson, whom my father had served ten years as apprentice and foreman, there was in progress for the University Press of Oxford a new fount of Double Pica Greek, which had progressed under my father’s entire management. The then delegates of that Press—the Rev. Dr. Randolph and the Rev. W. Jackson—suggested that Mr. Figgins should finish the fount himself. This, with other offers of support from those who had previously known him, was the germ of his prosperity (which was always gratefully acknowledged). But when he had undertaken this work, the difficulty presented iteself that he did not know where to find the punch-cutter. No one knew his address; but he was supposed to be a tall man, who came in a mysterious way occasionally, whose name no one knew, but he went by the sobriquet of ’The Black Man’. This old gentleman, a very clever mechanic, lived to be a pensioner on my father’s bounty—gratitude is perhaps the better word. I knew him and could never understand the origin of his sobriquet, unless Black was meant for dark, mysterious, from the manner of his coming and going from Mr. Jackson’s foundry.”
—quoted in T.B. Reed’s A History of the Old English Letter Foundries
4.May.2007 5.26pm
Q: Who knows what darkness lurks in the hearts of men?
A: The Printer knows.
;-)
4.May.2007 10.02pm
Ken
True enough about the “influence” of Luther. But conjecturing on “evil” is theological.
Gerald
“self-excommunicated” Missouri Synod Luthern
5.May.2007 3.18pm
Nick, that was awesome. :-)
5.May.2007 3.38pm
My ITU lessons in printing put it down to the church’s opposition to there being large amounts of bibles in circulation, where before the onset of printing bibles and other works were available only to the wealthy and the church. They realized that books would be availbale to the masses.
Additionall they could see that printing was going to make scribal work completely unncessarey.
Once printing was in full flower it was only a matter of a few decades before literacy spread over Europe, and at the same time books were printed in other than strictly Latin.
Those opposed to change dubbed it the Black Art, suggesting that it was the work of the devil. In the early years printers were thrown into prison and some were executed.
Jim
5.May.2007 8.56pm
Jim
ITU probably isn’t the best source.
A bible prior to printing would have cost the equivalent of 1.5 million dollars in today’s money. They were only available to nobility and the church because no one else had any money whatsoever.
The development of Western printing also did two other things. Immediately, the block book was introduced, which provided access to whoever who wanted at a very low price. Which resulted in the decline of printing as represented by B42 and the Mainz Psalter. Also, it raised the price of the manuscript book (“scribal work”), which became the high end in the market for over a century. It did not in any way immediately eliminate the work of the scribe.
The dubbing of the Black Art thing, is really questionable. Printers were thrown into prison and executed, along with any others who violated the laws of the time. Very little to do with the devil, unless you were in Spain or France. Then it hardly mattered what your crime was.
Gerald
5.May.2007 9.36pm
Robert
The Inquisition, in Spain, began in 1492, an interesting date don’t you think? The day Columbus sailed all Jews had to be out of Spain. Guess what he had on board?
Gerald
6.May.2007 11.31am
Tell us! :-) A printed bible? A press?
6.May.2007 11.33am
Eben, pay attention man - he means Jews!
hhp
6.May.2007 2.58pm
All very interesting, thanks folks. Would the “public” consider printing to be the black art these days, or would type design be more of a contemporary black art?
—K
6.May.2007 4.27pm
“ITU probably isn’t the best source.”
“We [Bureau of Education, International Typographical Union] are indebted to the research work of John Clyde Oswald, Bruce Rogers, Walter Dorwin Teague, William Edwin Rudge, Douglas C. McMurtrie, Walter C. Blelock, Henry Lewis Bullen, Wallace Rice, Gustave Enald Hult, N.J. Werner, Metropoolitan Museum of Art, The Inland Printer, The American Printer, and the Bulletin Official of Paris, for the material appearing in the first three lesson bearing on the history of the art.”
(but not such a bad source, all considered)
Jim
6.May.2007 11.12pm
A bit back dated Jim. There have, ahem, been recent developments in the research.
Gerald
The Bieler Press
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com
6.May.2007 11.43pm
Hrant
Yeah, this is from Simon Wiesenthal, “the Nazi Hunter,” in his writings on Columbus.
Columbus was a converso, so had affiliation. I have a copy of a map he drew of the New World (the first) that was sent to his son, with the special code “sign.”
But I was in error, while the “uncoverted” Jews were expurgated in 1492, the Inquisition in Spain began twelve years earlier.
I’ve never been able to find the connection but it was suggested once that the trial and execution of Joan of Arc 1431 had some kind of impact (socially/culturally) on the development of printing.
Gerald
The Bieler Press
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com
7.May.2007 1.01am
Kris
Oh yeah. To get back to you. No, the “black art” is an obsolete term. It would have originally referred to printing in some regard rather than type design.
Type wasn’t even referred to as such until the early 18th century. Moxon never used the word type, he called them letters. And just who would have qualified as the first “type designer”? Schoeffer or Griffo or ?
Gerald
The Bieler Press
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com
7.May.2007 6.26am
Yeah, Gerald, I have come to realize that I am also dated.
You will have no further bother me.
Jim
7.May.2007 6.35am
I wonder what Wiesenthal’s motivation was...
hhp
7.May.2007 9.57am
Hi Jim
Hardly. I was fortunate enough to see your book at Richard’s table during CODEX. Very impressive. If my sales would have been much better I’d have picked it up for sure.
A little posting blather is not something to be all that concerned about.
The Bieler Press
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com
7.May.2007 9.59am
Hrant
Investigation? Lineage? Historical accuracy?
Can’t recall.
Gerald
The Bieler Press
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com
8.May.2007 12.24am
Yeah Jim!
Keep on postin’...
9.May.2008 1.32am
Edit ( spam )