Minnesota Center for Book Arts

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I had decided in the beginning that notwithstanding its size of page the composition should not be ponderous or too formal – "monumental," I believe, is the word for the appearance I wished to avoid. I wanted this book to appear as though I were accustomed to knocking off large folios daily, or at least weekly, as mere routine work.

So my first sketch for the title-page was as conventional as that of any ordinary octavo Bible. It was made merely to get the copy on the page and as a point of departure. To avoid the formal monumental effect mentioned I decided that as the headings throughout the book were to be composed largely of lower-case type the title-page too should be set mostly, if not wholly, in that kind of letter. It would be wearisome to detail the various transformations through which the page went on its way to its final form. At one point I even abandoned lower case and sketched a page entirely of capitals. (I shall never be quite sure it wouldn’t have been better than the existing one.) The words HOLY BIBLE were drawn and re-drawn six or eight times – in outline letters, in shaded letters, in red letters. They were photo-engraved on copper, they were cut on wood and finally on brass. NO size of Centaur was exactly the right size for the large block of lower case, so it was set in 60-point and reduced by photo-etching to its present dimensions. (The practiced eye will note that the final word "Command" was placed out of center to avoid the unpleasant proximity of the "d" to a "y" in the line above.) The letters for the one italic line were cut especially in that size from the Arrighi italic patterns, though the swash letter at the beginning of the line was furnished later by the Ludlow Typograph Company from one of their italic founts, as it seemed to have just the right decorative quality to relieve the more rigid effect of the Roman type.


			The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testament: Translated out of the Original Tongues and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised by His Majesty’s Special Command Oxford: The University Press, 1935. ____________________ The Oxford Lectern Bible was made because the King of England could not find an English Bible of appropriate grandeur as the gift of the English people for the chapel which the Canadian government would build in Flanders’ fields where in World War I, so many of their young had died. The Oxford University Press immediately undertook to correct the situation and commissioned Bruce Rogers to design a suitable volume to be produced in their own printing house. After four years of planning and production, Rogers and the Oxford press completed what I believe is the greatest Bibles that have appeared during five hundred years of printing history. It combines the quintessential elements of typographic greatness: scholarship, craftsmanship, clarity, beauty, nobility. Joseph Blumenthal ____________________ I had decided in the beginning that notwithstanding its size of page the composition should not be ponderous or too formal – "monumental," I believe, is the word for the appearance I wished to avoid. I wanted this book to appear as though I were accustomed to knocking off large folios daily, or at least weekly, as mere routine work. So my first sketch for the title-page was as conventional as that of any ordinary octavo Bible. It was made merely to get the copy on the page and as a point of departure. To avoid the formal monumental effect mentioned I decided that as the headings throughout the book were to be composed largely of lower-case type the title-page too should be set mostly, if not wholly, in that kind of letter. It would be wearisome to detail the various transformations through which the page went on its way to its final form. At one point I even abandoned lower case and sketched a page entirely of capitals. (I shall never be quite sure it wouldn’t have been better than the existing one.) The words HOLY BIBLE were drawn and re-drawn six or eight times – in outline letters, in shaded letters, in red letters. They were photo-engraved on copper, they were cut on wood and finally on brass. NO size of Centaur was exactly the right size for the large block of lower case, so it was set in 60-point and reduced by photo-etching to its present dimensions. (The practiced eye will note that the final word "Command" was placed out of center to avoid the unpleasant proximity of the "d" to a "y" in the line above.) The letters for the one italic line were cut especially in that size from the Arrighi italic patterns, though the swash letter at the beginning of the line was furnished later by the Ludlow Typograph Company from one of their italic founts, as it seemed to have just the right decorative quality to relieve the more rigid effect of the Roman type. BR

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