Genesis Gutenberg Bible Illuminated Facsimile Leaf 1961 Cooper Square Publishers.

Perfect for framing and visual display! My grandfather, Sidney B. Solomon, published these leaves with the Library of Congress in 1961. All leaves shipped via U.S. Priority Mail and I always offer combined shipping. Genesis: For the first word of the first book, there is a most elaborate fifteen inch initial I running the length of the left column. Within the initial are scenes of the creation. Across the entire bottom margin and upwards of the right column is an intertwining display of birds, a peacock, a stork and known and imaginary flowers. The Cooper Square 42-line Gutenberg Bible is far more than a beautiful facsimile edition of the first complete evidence of the success of movable type created by Johann Gutenberg between the years 1450 and 1455. It is the culmination of a painstaking quest after the finest and most enduring modern processes of printing, engraving and binding available from the combined efforts of American craftsmen. In 1956, the directors of Cooper Square Publishers, Inc. undertook to recreate this book for posterity, as a lasting tribute to the Art of mankind. The edition, published after five years in the making, in 1961, is derived from the first facsimile ever reproduced, the 1913-14 edition by Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, Germany. Sources for this edition were Gutenberg Bibles from the Berlin Staatsbibliothek and the Fulda Landesbibliothek. Measuring 12 by 18 1/2 inches, these leaves are perfect for framing and visual display and are wonderful gifts. This famous Cooper Square edition is the first American facsimile edition ever published, and at the time, only the second in the world. Each color sheet was fed through the press seven separate times to assure faithful reproduction of the many subtle colors of the original leaves. All process inks were tested in a fadeometer for 200 hours, the equivalent of 200 years of exposure to direct June sunlight. The permanent pigments in the color inks, the lacquer-protected copper-bronze powder and the specially-made hundred-per-cent cotton fiber paper should endure for centuries.