Note 179 — Chapter IV · LETTER-FOUNDING AS AN ENGLISH MECHANICAL TRADE. 1477–1830.

Harleian MS. 5915, No. 201. The cut is undated. The following sentence from Mr. T. C. Hansard’s Treatises on Printing and Typefounding, Edinburgh, 1841, 8vo, p. 223, may possibly refer to the same device. “This evidence” (of the process employed by the early letter-founders) “is afforded us by the device of Badius Ascensius, an eminent printer of Paris and Lyon, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and also by that of an English printer, Anthony Scoloker of Ippeswych, who modified and adopted the device of Ascensius, as indeed did many other printers of various countries. This curious design exhibits in one apartment the various processes of printing, the foreground presenting a press in full work, the background on the left the cases and the compositor, and on the right the foundery; the matrix and other appliances bearing a precise resemblance to those at present in use.” If the above be a description of the block here shown (in which case Mr. Hansard has confused the matrix with the mould), we are able to fix the date approximately at 1548, in which year Scoloker printed at Ipswich.