McGill Library Exhibition: The Devil's Art
THE DEVIL'S ART
Selections from the William G. Colgate History of Printing Collection
Established in 1954 from a gift of books from the Toronto art historian, William G. Colgate (1882-1971), the Colgate History of Printing Collection has grown to over 12,000 titles. The Collection is noted for its extensive holdings of examples of printing including fine press productions; but it also includes significant holdings on the history and technique of printing; on calligraphy and letter forms; on the design of typefaces and typographical productions; on type founding and type founders' specimens; of printers' manuals and handbooks, including those for colour printing; on the history of book binding with selected examples; papermaking and paper specimens; and book design.
The current exhibition focuses on type design and printing techniques from the hand-press period; the history of printing and the work of the quintessential late eighteenth-century Italian printer Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813). There were a number of significant type designers in the eighteenth century including the English masters William Caslon (1693-1766) and Edmund Fry (1754-1835) and the firm of Fry Steele and Co. French designs of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, including those of the Didot family, were also to have a long heritage. Printing manuals document the technical improvements in press equipment since the fifteenth century, while histories of printing recount both the origins of printing in different countries and the controversies surrounding the credit for the invention itself.
Thanks to the generous support of the Friends of the Library, it has been possible to catalogue over 3,000 titles during the past year, thus making this exceptional collection more fully available to students and researchers.
This exhibition has been arranged by the staff of Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University Library.