[DCRM-L] Folio format question

[Noble, Richard]

I'm reluctant to say much about books I haven't seen, but in this case the correspondence leads me to believe that what Silvana has in hand is a folio printed on paper consisting of large sheets cut in half to fit on a press that held folio formes, and thus having, incidentally, horizontal chainlines.

The argument is hedged about with historical caveats and some mind-bending exceptions based on the exact reasons why the printer cut paper before printing, but the general conclusion in G. T. Tanselle's article "The concept of format" in SB 53 (2000) is (pace Bowers et al.) that format is based on the imposition of the type pages, not the leaf as a certain fraction of the original sheet--that is, that format has to do with printing, not papermaking. I have seen a few quarto-like books of the C15 that were gathered in 6s, and treated them as folios, since they were clearly printed with two pages in a forme (a true quarto in 6s being an unlikely critter, awkward to bring into being). Paper therefore does not dictate format; it merely provides evidence that must be interpreted in the course of reconstructing the printing surfaces, the chief purpose of the bibliographical analysis that underlies the description of a book's structure--a process for which, in the earliest and the later periods, the evidence may be, alas, inconclusive.

RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-2093 : RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU 

-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Deborah J. Leslie
Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 6:18 PM
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Folio format question

I just looked at paper sizes in Gaskell, and among the super royal paper, he lists an exemplar of 14th century Italian paper at 74 x 50 cm. (p. 73). It may be he hadn't come across any 15th or 16th century Italian super royal paper, but since Holland, France and England also produced huge paper during the 17th and 18th century, I will believe that late 15th/early 16th c. Italian paper existed at such sizes.

Taking our 74 x 50 cm paper, cutting it in half leaves two sheets 50 x 37 cm each. When imposed two leaves per cut sheet, we would end up with a book 37 x 25 cm, a quarto looking for all the world like a folio. Thanks, Silvana, for bringing this up.