When started woodcut printing?

baba-prague said:

You told me your doubts. I told you why in research terms they make absolutely no sense. I certainly have given you the kind of advice that anyone interested in real research would give.

Let's leave it at that shall we. But please - no more dissing of current print research without basis. I'm not sure anyone here has shown themselves in a position to write off other people's work as "assumptions", expecially without having read it!

You did indeed make it quite clear that you are a novice in this field. Can I respectfully suggest again that you consult or read someone who isn't before coming to any "conclusions"?

Oh, by the way, I'm just curious. When you say you "deal with your energies" what do you mean? Are you saying that you do some of your research based on hunch?

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Well, I may reassure you, that in my personal evaluation of incoming information my personal mind with all its limitations, which has the defined job to correlate just this incoming information with that data, with already has been gathered and sorted in my life, is simply the final instance.

Well, not unusual, I would guess, I assume that for everybody else as far I feel some right to assume some selfresponsible activity from him/her. When you now tell me: "I told you why in research terms they make absolutely no sense", you may be right for the state of everybodies else mind (and surely most likely they do not care, what I think, and naturally that's not a blasphemy, communicative misbehaviour or something like this, but just the normal well acceptable pragmatic thinking), .... but not in mine naturally.

So, when I tell you about my doubts, these doubts are not intended to be relevant in somebodies else research, but in mine, as I've to watch about my energies ... and even if you as person would have greatest doubts about my mental sanity, the involved conclusions of my inner logic or whatever, you may perhaps once realise, that I've some patience and endurance with this strategy .... , and as far this manifested opinion about early woodvcut printing is concerned ... well, I don't will predict anything in this case, but it wouldn't be the first thing, which my eyes saw once looking very solid, becoming weaker with the time, stumbling finally and suddenly being a theory of yesterday ... or even something which never really existed.

"I'm not sure anyone here has shown themselves in a position to write off other people's work as "assumptions", expecially without having read it! "

I made plainly clear, that I refered to contradicting informations collected somewhere in the internet. And I definitely opened myself in the start of the thread for explaining facts, to judge myself, if the main line of these observed contradicting opinions "about 1400" is somehow correct. I would accept any better information. You didn't offer better informations, but only a place and a activity, which would lead in your opinion to better insight. So you not identified yourself as somebody who could really give good advices in this case.
So why I should have talked suddenly about "assumptions" of other people in a negative way? Either there are facts, which make the whole statement plausible, or there are no facts, which solidify the whole matter.

I just want to know the central fact, which justify the assumptions and informations, which I've seen somewhere in an insecure context. You said: "Go to England ..." and I : "I've to care for my energies ...", that are practical decisions, not decisions about other people qualities, which I can't see and know. And I talked about that, what was controllable by myself and that was my own private attempt with internet resources, which gave me the evaluation, that German internet articles are by far better than anything what I've found in English articles ... so I don't think, that I will find Rome somewhere in London.

And what we as trionfi.com do and if we work solid or not, and if we get with our methodes good results or not, that you can evaluate, when you read our site.

As far the word "assumptions" is concerned, so my English/German wordbook knows a neutral and a negative reading of it. The correlating German word "Annahme" is possible much more neutral than the English common use. I can't judge. Is English your mother language? Naturally Annahmen are used in research and they are normally justifiable as "the best one can do in an insecure, not further researchable situation".
However, communication from mouth to mouth and mind to mind often enough have the simple human effect, that once justifiable "Annahmen" become "reality as manifested opinion: it was so and so.", although the once really researching mind never stated that. My initial request was simply aiming at bringing light in this dark forest about the factual conditions.

So, and now I would like to finish this, as far it doesn't belong to the research request.
Is there something with the planets? Too much Mars somewhere?

Huck - I never said "go to England". That is a complete misrepresentation. I said - consult the experts, not just what you can find on the web. Read a decent book, read a research paper - do some decent research if you want decent answers. Or don't complain if you can only get vagueness from vague sources. I suggested one good research lead - you don't have to GO there physically! But I also suggested contacting somewhere like Ulm, if you are more comfortable with that. They must have a decent library surely (the graphics courses there used to have a strong historical base).

I really see any input that I can make on this thread as an enormous waste of time now, if your "energies" tell you all sorts of what seems to me (with respects) illogical stuff. So I won't offer any more advice, but do offer you good wishes in your searches.

Research is research, and has a certain methodology - it begins by reading the current research in the field (in summary if nothing else). If you don't want to do that, it's fine. But please in that case don't, as I've said before, make sweeping statements about the standard of research in a field about which you say you are a novice.

I rest my case. Have fun with Mars!

Huck said:

So, and now I would like to finish this, as far it doesn't belong to the research request.
Is there something with the planets? Too much Mars somewhere?

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Mercury is retrograde until March 25, traditionally connected with communication problems, New Moon in Feb was conjunct Uranus and Full Moon in March will be square Pluto bringing into power too planets associated with stress and difficulties, Jupiter too is retrograde. For potential influences of these aspects see here:

http://www.stariq.com/NewMoonReport.HTM

Kwaw

Kwaw,

just as you show some flexibility with astrological data, we've a problem to determine, if it's true, that the 6th of April 1327 was a "Good Friday" and the
6th of April 1348 was a Good Friday, too. Do you know a way to determine that?

Huck said:

Kwaw,

just as you show some flexibility with astrological data, we've a problem to determine, if it's true, that the 6th of April 1327 was a "Good Friday" and the
6th of April 1348 was a Good Friday, too. Do you know a way to determine that?

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Easter Sunday was on:
Sunday 12 April 1327 JULIAN calendar
Sunday 20 April 1348 JULIAN calendar

Kwaw

kwaw said:

Easter Sunday was on:
Sunday 12 April 1327 JULIAN calendar
Sunday 20 April 1348 JULIAN calendar

Kwaw

Click to expand...

Equivalent in terms of Gregorian [though obviously not in operation then]:

Sunday 20 April 1327
Sunday 28 April 1348

Kwaw

A good summary of the history of woodcut impressions is given by Bennett Gilbert, in "The Art of the Woodcut in the Italian Renaissance Book: A Catalogue and Historical Essay from the Grolier Club/University of California, Los Angeles Department of Special Collections Exhibit." (New York: The Grolier Club; Los Angeles: UCLA, 1995).

http://www.gilbooks.com/exhibit.htm#20-30

See especially this paragraph (the numbers 22-31 in the text refer to the notes in the original essay)

"The First WoodcutsThe first images printed in Italy were single-leaf woodcuts. No more than 200 Italian single-leaf woodcuts survive from the fifteenth century, as opposed to the thousands extant of German origin. Many are fragments. This fact has led earlier scholars to believe that few were made or that there was no production or trade at all until printing had become well-established in the last quarter of the century.22 Yet as early as 1838 William Chatto had correctly concluded that the importation of German woodcut playing cards and saints' images was a competitive factor in an established market. He discussed the 1441 edict of Venice's Council of Ten, well-known for a century, forbidding these imports in order to protect the trade of the native craftsmen.23 Kristeller in 1922 cited documents establishing the existence of vendors of reproduced images of saints on paper in Bologna in 1395 and Florence in 1430.24 Schizzerotto has described an inventory of more than 3,500 prints sold by a dyer at Padua in 1440.25 To this the recent discovery of H. D. Saffrey must be added: a description, dated 1412, of the use since 1396 of an "ymago de facili (sic) multiplicabilis in cartis" for the cult of Catherine of Siena.26

This evidence implies a wider context of similar objects put to similar uses, of which there are a few traces. From the earlier literature there are sightings of now-lost woodcuts dated 1418, 1423, and 1437. But we still have today, in a side-chapel in the Duomo of Forli, the marvelous woodcut of the Madonna del Fuoco, named for having survived a fire in 1428.27 Finally, Erwin Rosenthal not only convincingly dated two woodcuts to before 1450 and two others to before 1420 or 1430 but also suggested in 1962 what Saffrey's discovery of 1984 tends to confirm: that early Italian woodcuts have an air of the Trecento about them.28

The likely story is this. Sometime in the late fourteenth century, the demands of a renewed and augmented popular devotion created a large market for images. The press and the woodblock served this market with images of the saints. By the 1440's there was a flourishing trade in these images in Venice and probably in most of Northern Italy29, which began to show their influence even in other lands.30 Late medieval popular culture and painting produced a trade in the woodcut imagery that flooded fairs and marketplaces and thence onto the walls, cupboards, chests, and books of homes on the eve of the introduction of printing into Italy.31"

There is one early date that Gilbert has missed. "... we noted that playing cards were known in Sicily in the late fourteenth century; by at least 1422, they were not only being used, but made, there. Professor Antonino Giuffrida, of the Archivio di Stato in Palermo, has informed me that the Archivio three fifteenth-century notarised documents, discovered by Professor Bresc, referring to playing cards. The earliest is a contract, dated 31 August 1422, whereby one Petrus de Matrona, aged 16, engages with one Petrus de Florito of Palermo, to print, collate, colour and sell playing cards ('ad stampandum nayppis, incollandum, colorandum, et vendendum')..."
(Dummett, "Game of Tarot", p. 31).

Thierry Depaulis told me he also overlooked this entry while writing a history of early card-printing, and confirmed that it is the oldest record of printed cards anywhere.

kwaw said:

Equivalent in terms of Gregorian [though obviously not in operation then]:

Sunday 20 April 1327
Sunday 28 April 1348

Kwaw

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The difference between Gregorian and Julian Calendar might have been 8-9 days in early 14th century, I guess.

How did you find it out? Can you describe the way?

Well, both fits with the suspicion, that the connected story is legendary and not real.

There is another Easter date, the year 1300. And the Easter date 1484 and 1485 - which would be interesting to know.

Huck said:

How did you find it out? Can you describe the way?

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Try this "Calculation of the Ecclesiastical Calendar"

http://www.smart.net/~mmontes/ec-cal.html

Easter 1484 was 18 April.
1485 was 3 April.
1300 was 10 April.

All dates Julian of course.

Ross G Caldwell said:

A good summary of the history of woodcut impressions is given by Bennett Gilbert, in "The Art of the Woodcut in the Italian Renaissance Book: A Catalogue and Historical Essay from the Grolier Club/University of California, Los Angeles Department of Special Collections Exhibit." (New York: The Grolier Club; Los Angeles: UCLA, 1995).

http://www.gilbooks.com/exhibit.htm#20-30

See especially this paragraph (the numbers 22-31 in the text refer to the notes in the original essay)

Click to expand...

Hi Ross, nice, it becomes realistic ...
I've read the article before ... and the question is, how realistic is this general
"about 1400" for the start of woodcut printing. My argument is the wave of documents about playing cards in the 20's still missing in the earlier period (which is presented in one of the current threads) - and the actual really srange point is a line in Schreiber's book about the first noted Kartenmoler" in Nurremberg in 1414, who is according to Schreiber's analysis a "single" Kartenmoler (although the likely single German paper mill is round the corner) ... which doesn't really give evidence for a greater German card production, at least our doubts are really raised. When the big production was not in Nurremberg, where was it then in Germany? And when it was not in Germany, where was it then in Europe? The only explanation out of this contradiction seems to be, that the general assumptions about early woodcut printing and playing cards are far too optimistic, taken once out of the sleeve as a 5th wrong ace.
The assumption of a late developing playing card industry on the base of woodcut engraving fits with the existence of the really extant woodcut prints (since 1418/23) and also with the existence of real extant playing cards (still handpainted since 1427, perhaps given with the Liechtensteiunschen Deck 1440).
Earlier playing cards would have been in such a case more or less all "painted playing cards" and in the reach of poor people likely "selfpainted".

Well, it's a striking idea and it demands to control on which facts and documents the theories dealing with "about 1400" are based on. Generally it's of course a possibility, that woodcut existed without touching the broad stream of playing card production, perhaps kept as a mystery by few producers.

The article contains the following points of interests:

"23 Kristeller in 1922 cited documents establishing the existence of vendors of reproduced images of saints on paper in Bologna in 1395 and Florence in 1430."

### this seems to be the punished card producer in Bologna and it seems not be sure evidence for woodcut printing.

24 Schizzerotto has described an inventory of more than 3,500 prints sold by a dyer at Padua in 1440.

### Surely of interest generally, but has no influence on the "about 1400" question.

25 To this the recent discovery of H. D. Saffrey must be added: a description, dated 1412, of the use since 1396 of an "ymago de facili (sic) multiplicabilis in cartis" for the cult of Catherine of Siena.

### This sounds interesting

27 Finally, Erwin Rosenthal not only convincingly dated two woodcuts to before 1450 and two others to before 1420 or 1430 but also suggested in 1962 what Saffrey's discovery of 1984 tends to confirm: that early Italian woodcuts have an air of the Trecento about them.28

### should be researched, too.

The likely story is this. Sometime in the late fourteenth century, the demands of a renewed and augmented popular devotion created a large market for images.
### and this form of globalization creates the perhaps wrong picture.


There is one early date that Gilbert has missed. "... we noted that playing cards were known in Sicily in the late fourteenth century; by at least 1422, they were not only being used, but made, there. Professor Antonino Giuffrida, of the Archivio di Stato in Palermo, has informed me that the Archivio three fifteenth-century notarised documents, discovered by Professor Bresc, referring to playing cards. The earliest is a contract, dated 31 August 1422, whereby one Petrus de Matrona, aged 16, engages with one Petrus de Florito of Palermo, to print, collate, colour and sell playing cards ('ad stampandum nayppis, incollandum, colorandum, et vendendum')..."
(Dummett, "Game of Tarot", p. 31).

### 1422 is an acceptable date for a playing card wave in the 20ies induced by a broad stream of a rather new techniue of wood engraving.

Thierry Depaulis told me he also overlooked this entry while writing a history of early card-printing, and confirmed that it is the oldest record of printed cards anywhere.

### Which would fit in our suggested scheme.