The Hunterian

Ingenious Impressions: The Coming of the Book
27 February - 21 June 2015
Hunterian Art Gallery
Admission free

A new exhibition at The Hunterian will reveal one of the UK’s most important collections of books printed in the 15th century or ‘incunabula’.

Ingenious Impressions is one of the first major exhibitions to explore the development and subsequent afterlives of these fascinating works. Many of them are beautifully produced, with interesting bindings and visually appealing decoration and illustrations.

The introduction of the printed book was a communication revolution, much as the internet has been in recent times. The invention of printing using mechanical movable type transformed bookmaking in Europe and was instrumental in the emergence of the Renaissance and the spread of learning across the continent.

The University of Glasgow’s collection is the largest in Scotland with over a thousand copies housed in the University Library. More than half come from the library of Hunterian founder Dr William Hunter (1718-83).

Showcasing the University’s rich collections and the results of new research from the Glasgow Incunabula Project, Ingenious Impressions charts the development of the early printed book in Europe, exploring the transition from manuscript to print culture, and focusing on unique features such as their provenance, decoration and use by early readers.

Ingenious Impressions features a number of key themes, including the identity and role of the first printers, the content and commercial nature of the earliest printed books, and finally book ownership and collecting.

Key Facts

1. ‘Incunabula’ are early printed books published over the fifty years from the invention of printing in the mid-15th century. Over 30,300 editions of different texts are known to have been produced during the 15th century, in print runs of anything from 100 to 1400 copies. The total number of books printed prior to 1501 has been estimated at being anything from 8 million to 20 million items.
   
   
2. They are compelling on many levels – as survivors of the first print revolution with its technological shift from manuscript culture, as late medieval texts available in duplicate to a mass market for the first time, and as cultural artefacts containing over 500 years of ownership history. 
   
   
3. The 64 works featured in Ingenious Impressions have been selected from the University Library’s richly diverse collections of 1050 incunables. 
   
   
4. Often printed in small editions of a few hundred copies, many incunables are now rare. Their numbers have greatly reduced over the centuries by usage and assorted calamities. The University of Glasgow collections have their share of rarities: 11 are unique and a further 67 are editions unrecorded in any other library in the UK.
   
   
5. The University acquired these rare books mainly by gift or bequest. 534 come from the collection of Hunterian founder Dr William Hunter (1718-83).
   
   
6. Each book has its own story to tell and the selection on display represents only a fraction of the riches waiting to be explored further in the University Library’s Special Collections.

Ingenious Impressions is supported by Friends of Glasgow University Library.

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First published: 29 January 2015