The printing ink of the fifteenth century, as we now see it, is of unequal merit. In the books of Jenson it appears as an intense, velvety, glossy black; in the Bibles of Gutenberg it is a strong, permanent black, without gloss; in the Psalter of 1457 it appears in some places as a glossy black, and in others as a faded color which had to be retouched with the pen; in the works of the unknown printer it is a dingy and smearing black; in the book of some printers it is a paste color which can be rubbed off with a sponge; in nearly all, it is uneven, over-black on one page and gray on another.[1]
The general impression that early printing ink is blacker and brighter than modern ink is not always correct. Early ink seems blacker, because it is shown in greater quantity, for the early types were larger, of broader face, without hair lines, and could be over-colored without disadvantage.[2] The same ink applied to the small thin Roman types of our time,
- ↑ This unevenness does not prove the use of two distinct inks. In some instances, it was caused by the negligence of the pressman who applied an unequal quantity of ink upon different pages. In many instances, it was produced by the variable qualities or conditions of the paper or vellum. If the paper laid out for one form differed from that used for other forms in being too coarse or too dry, or over-wet, or if the vellum had been polished too much or too little, or had not been entirely freed from lime and grease, it would take up from the types, during each condition, a variable quantity of color, and produce prints of a different degree of blackness. These variations in color are most noticeable in books of vellum. In a prayer book printed by Kerver in 1507, the ink is black wherever the vellum is smooth, and gray where it is rough. In another edition of the same book on paper, printed by Kerver in 1522, the ink is not so black as it appears on the smooth vellum, but the color is more uniform. Equal carefulness seems to have been taken with each book, and the ink was, no doubt, substantially the same. Some of the early printers sorted their sheets after printing, separating the under-colored from the over-colored and binding each together.
- ↑ In trying to avoid the gloominess of early printing, modern printers have gone too far in the opposite direction. The fault of imperfect blackness which is justly censurable in many modern books is largely due to what Hansard calls the "razor-edged" hair lines and thin stems of modern types which give the printer no opportunity to show black color. Readers have been taught to prefer a feminine elegance in types, a weak and useless imitation of copper-plate effects, to the masculine boldness, solidity and readableness of the old-style letter of the last century.
