Facsimile illuminated leaf from the Gutenberg Bible: St. Jerome’s Introduction. Cooper Square Publishers. 18x12.25”.

From the accompanying document:

This masterpiece marking the birth of printing has long been coveted around the world. Because only 46 copies of the great Bible exist and because of its supreme impor-tance, Cooper Square undertook the enormous task of printing a full size, full color edition of the Gutenberg Bible in facsimile.

The Cooper Square 42-line Gutenberg Bible is far more than a beautiful facsimile edition of the first complete evidence of the success of movable type created by Johann Gutenberg between the years 1450 and 1455. It is the culmination of a painstaking quest after the finest and most enduring modern processes of printing, engraving and binding available from the combined efforts and talents of American craftsmen.

The new edition derives from the 1913-14 facsimile edition printed by Insel Verlag, Leipzig. Sources for this edition were Gutenberg Bibles from the Berlin Staatsbibliothek and the Fulda Landesbibliothek. The Leipzig facsimile, now virtually unobtainable and costly, preserves some of the loveliest illuminated pages in existence.

As soon as it became known that the Cooper Square GutenbergBible facsimile edition was available, there was a great demand for individual illuminated pages. In order to comply with the many requests, 28 of the most representative and superbly illuminated pages were made from the same plates as the Gutenberg Bible facsimile. They are exactly the same size as the pages in the original Gutenberg Bible itself. A limited number are now made available for purchase.

- PAGEANT BOOK & PRINT SHOP