Prelo Prints’ latest release is a middle-English version of the popular Aesop Fables. The edition is based on the translation from French to English made by William Caxton (ca. 1422 – ca. 1491), considered to be England’s first printer. The text is adapted from the book printed at Westminster in 1484 by Caxton himself.
This edition was hand-printed in Maribo, Denmark, on Prelo’s 15th-century reproduction wooden Printing Press, from February to October 2021. Released in an edition with a total of 34 copies, each book is hand-bound in goat parchment, which makes every copy unique.
Prelo’s Aesop Fables were printed on handmade laid paper made at the Paper and Watermark Museum (”Museo della carta e della filigrana”) in the city of Fabriano, Italy, the oldest paper mill still in function, since the 13th-century. The text was composed with moveable type (Nürnberger Schwabacher) cast by Mr. Rainer Gerstenberg in one of the last European type foundries, in Darmstadt, Germany. All of the images and capital letters are woodcuts entirely made by hand, with 3 types of wood: boxwood, cherry, and limewood.
The small “smudges and blots”, uneven pressure, and small details throughout the pages, show the results of 9 months of printing work — spanning through late winter, spring, summer, and autumn — where all the changes in temperature and humidity (and at one point also the location of the printing works) translates in how the Press behaves and the very result of each print.
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