Company
DissolvedThe Aldine Press
Venice · 1494 – 1597
The press closed in the 1590s. The dolphin and anchor remained the most imitated printer's mark in Europe.
Aldus Manutius set up his press in Venice in the 1490s with a scholarly purpose and a commercial one. He would print Greek, which almost nobody else could do well, and he would print it in a size a reader could hold, not a size that had to lie on a lectern.
The dolphin and anchor became the mark. The italic type, cut for him by Francesco Griffo, became the way a page could hold more text without looking crowded. Erasmus came to Venice to work with the correctors. A printing house had become a place scholars traveled to.
The book as a product
Aldus sold by catalogue and across borders. He standardized formats. He printed cheaper octavos of the Latin classics so a student, not only a college, could own them. The shop employed Greek compositors, a scarce skill, and correctors whose names sometimes appeared in the books. The payroll was small. The reputation was the distribution.
After Aldus
Aldus died in 1515. His father-in-law, Andrea Torresani, and later his son Paolo carried the press. The quality declined, as inherited presses often do, and the firm closed by the end of the century. Other printers forged the anchor. The idea that a publisher could be a brand, with a series and a reader who trusted it, outlived the shop.
The work it organized
- Scholar-printer
- Greek compositor
- Typecutter
- Corrector
On the timeline
Related
- The House of ElzevirDissolved