42 lines

After living in this fair city for over three years, it is a little embarrassing to admit that Saturday 8th January, 2011, was my first visit to the Gutenberg Museum. Visitors have such a lovely way of encouraging one to get out and about.

I had visited the print workshop for a language school excursion last year and had thoroughly enjoyed inking, rolling, rubbing, type-setting and pulling levers to transfer designs and words onto paper (see some of my handiwork below).




The museum is quite impressive - there were demonstrations of a Gutenberg-style press and an old school newspaper cylinder press, exhibits on books from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, printing presses throughout the ages and sections on paper making and book binding. The jewels, of course, are two copies of the Gutenberg Bible, (one complete copy and one old testament - vol. 1). These 42 line wonders of the 13th Century are quite beautiful works of art as well as a stunning technological advance.

So, thank you Herr Gensfleisch, I can't imagine a world without the printed word.