The First 20 Years, 1450-1470: Earliest specimens in print

We do not know when Gutenberg succeeded in creating a workable version of his first printing type, a large, square gothic commonly referred to as the “DK” (Donatus and Kalendar) type. It is probable but not provable that fragmentary survivals of the Latin grammar Donatus, and of a German prophetic text, the Sibyllenbuch, which display the DK type in a primitive, unperfected state, were produced and sold by 1453 and possibly a little earlier. By the fall of 1454, where our exhibition begins, Gutenberg’s shop had succeeded in creating a much improved version of this first European printing type.

Gutenberg’s earliest printings were multiple editions of the Donatus grammar, destined for schoolmasters in secular, conventual, and cathedral schools. They were printed with the first European printing type, commonly known as the DK (Donatus and Kalendar) type. A few of them are in an early, primitive state of the font. In this fragment the DK type is in a significantly improved state with even, sharp lines. The unusually large size of the fragment allows us to visualize what a copy would have looked like when new and fresh from the hands of the rubricator who supplied the initials.  

Besides the large Gutenberg Bible project, the Bible shop produced numerous editions of the Donatus grammar. They were printed on vellum for long life under heavy use. When new, these were attractive tall pamphlets of a dozen or so leaves. This fragment is one of the earliest such Donatuses, printed in the earliest state of the Gutenberg Bible type, as used for setting the first, 40-line pages. It was recovered from the binding of a late 1470s book bound for one of the great monasteries of the Austrian Danube valley. One other Donatus fragment in this earliest state of the Gutenberg Bible, preserved in Cracow, was used as material in a binding made in Leipzig in the 1470s. The two fragments together suggest that the Mainz printers had organized a significant long-distance trade in printed schoolbooks a year or more before their large Bible was ready for the market.

Credit: Paul Needham and Eric White - Gutenberg & After exhibition https://dpul.princeton.edu/gutenberg/

Further Reading: EricMarshall White, ‘Binding Waste as Book History. Patterns of SurvivalAmong the EarlyMainz Donatus Editions’, in Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500. Fifty Years that Changed Europe, ed. C. Dondi, Studi di Storia 13 (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2020), pp. 253-78. DOI 10.30687/978-88-6969-332-8