the book collector
made my pitch to Michael Suarez, S.J., director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Suarez, who has done so much to enlarge the scope of bibliography, was sympathetic and the result was a commission to build a replica of an eighteenth-century press. I designed the press on the basis of the engravings published in Diderot’s Encyclopédie . 17 A number of constructional details were worked out by examining a press of very similar design which I had originally seen in the print shop of the Louvre, sadly no longer on public view but in storage at the Atelier des Arts, Chalcographie et Moulage at St Denis to the north of Paris. The replica press was built by John Milnes and myself in Oxford, shipped to Charlottesville and installed in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library in May 2017. In the same room is a replica of an eighteenth-century common press. In July 2018 students in my Rare Book School class printed intaglio images on separate sheets (and later folded and stitched them into a quarto section) as well as printing intaglios into spaces left in letterpress sheets that they had themselves printed. This is certainly a first for a bibliographical press. We are still some way from an adequate knowledge of the techniques, workshop practices and personnel involved in intaglio printing for book illustration. The re-discovery of Hanckwitz’s poem, recent research and the opportunity for practical experimen- tation get us a step closer. This will, it is to be hoped, encourage the development of the bibliographical analysis and description of book illustrations. Bibliography tells the story of production, human and cultural history in its own right, but this story is conspicuously lack- ing from the extensive and growing literature of book illustration which only starts with the image on the page. errata for Roger Gaskell, ‘Printing house and engraving shop: a mysterious collaboration’. The Book Collector 53 (2004) 213–251 Page 221, l. 10 for ‘1837’ read ‘1836’ Page 223, l. 18 for ‘Hauckwitz’ read ‘Hanckwitz’ 17 . ‘Imprimerieentaille-douce,’ EncyclopédieouDictionnaireraisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers , 8:620–623 (Paris, 1765); Planches, vol. 7, (Paris, 1769). The two plates are signed ‘Goussier Del. BenardFecit’ and are accompanied by 1 page of captions.
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