“One of the main motives of artistic creation is certainly the need to feel essential towards the world.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)

Gutenberg Bible

Around the middle of the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg invented letterpress printing with movable type. His largest and most famous work is the 42-line Gutenberg Bible. Two of the world's 49 surviving copies can be admired in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz.

 

The Gutenberg Shop, which is part of the museum, sells reprints of individual pages of the Gutenberg Bible, which are decorated with classical book illumination in addition to the printed text, just as in the original. For this I provide the pages with painted initials, tendrils and real gilding on the leaves. The pages are available in the Gutenberg store in Mainz or on its website: www.gutenberg-shop.de/gutenberg-bibel

In the episode "How to make a Christmas print" of the series "SWR Handwerkskunst" you can see how a sheet ist first set and printed by Christoph Sünder from the print shop of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz and then illuminated by me.