The Baskerville ‘ Virgil’, 1757

John Baskerville of Birmingham, a manufacturer of japanned ware, who took up printing as a hobby at the age of go, ‘lost money cheerfully on the books he printed, and revelled in the perfection of process’. He designed his own type, the first transitional face, invented ‘wove’ paper and the ‘kiss’ impression, and showed a mastery of typographical arrangement—particularly of spacing—which has never been surpassed. The quarto Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis of Virgil is Baskerville’s most famous book which, in Macaulay’s words, ‘went forth to astonish all the librarians of Europe’ .

Actual page size – 29cm x 23cm, printed on both sides. Mounted on grey board.

Original Leaf from a Famous European Book, each work with one-page letterpress index, the idea is that each leaf is mounted and subsequently framed to provide a unique wall decoration.

This was an old fund-raising exercise perfected by the Folio Society

 Printer and typographer John Baskerville’ deluxe edition of Virgil’s Bucolica, Georgica et Aeneis of 1757 was his first publication, a project which he began in 1754, after he had made a fortune as an industrialist in Birmingham manufacturing japanned goods. The edition became famous for its typography and overall design; some authorities consider it Baskerville’s finest work.

Baskerville’s Virgil was also the first book of which part was printed on wove paper     (velin) invented by English papermaker James Whatman. The edition was advertised for sale in the London Press on May 5, 1757. Because Whatman could supply only enough wove paper for part of the edition,

“the first 28 sheets (A-2E) were printed on an unwatermarked wove paper, the remainder (2F-3H, Π-b) on an unwatermarked laid paper. At some time after the change from wove to laid paper a number of sheets and individual leaves were cancelled, those in the wove sections being identifiable through the cancellantia being printed on laid paper. Some of these cancels are found in nearly all copies of the book, some in only a few” (Gaskell, John Baskerville: A Bibliography [1959] no. 1).

The wove paper Whatman produced for this edition was a preliminary form:

“Apropos of the claim . . . that Baskerville’s quarto Virgil of 1757 is printed on the first known specimen of western wove paper, it can be said without hesitation that the characteristics of this paper are unique. It is quite unlike the more successful wove papers that followed in having unmistakable wiremarks and flaws” (Balston, The Whatmans and Wove (Velin) Paper [1998] xxxv).

“In this Virgil, his first book, the ‘amateur’ Baskerville shows an assurance one would have expected from a highly experienced master . . . His use of his own, freshly created type, with its balance between the subtlety of the earlier printers’ designs and the harsh new French types, is exemplary. . . The skill seen here is especially remarkable, for such simplicity, even minimalism, was revolutionary. It was a defining moment in bookmaking, ridding it of the irrelevant, flowery decoration . . . The repercussions were to be felt not only in Britain, but in continental Europe, and even in America.” (Bartram, Five Hundred Years of Book Design, 70-71).

Though book historians draw attention to the first use of wove paper in the first Baskerville edition of Virgil, there is no evidence that Baskerville was especially interested in this innovation in paper. Most of his later books were printed on the traditional laid paper. Besides the innovative typography and book design involved, Baskerville’s first edition of Virgil was also known for the “glazed” surface of the paper. The exact method by which Baskerville glazed or hot-pressed his book-paper was a trade secret that Baskerville never revealed. As a result, extensive research by historians of printing and paper has been devoted to possible techniques involved; see Balston, op. cit (1998) 27-28, 217-224.

Eventually after the first edition of his 1757 4to Virgil was sold out, Baskerville published a second edition, produced in facsimile to the first. The precise date of this second edition, called by some a “forgery,” is unknown, but it has been estimated to be around 1770. Among the ways it can be distinguished from the first edition is that is printed entirely on laid rather than wove paper. Determining the original printing from the early facsimile edition also requires attention to subtle bibliographical details cited in Gaskell’s bibliography referenced above.

Wove paper is a writing paper with a uniform surface, not ribbed or watermarked. The papermaking mould’s wires run parallel to each other to produce laid paper, but they are woven together into a fine wire mesh for wove paper. The originator of this new papermaking technique was James Whatman (1702–1759) from Kent, England.

For 500 years European paper makers could only produce what came to be called laid paper. In 1757 John Baskerville printed his famous edition of Virgil on a new kind of paper, called Wove (known in Europe as Vélin). This paper is now known to have been made by the elder James Whatman. Twenty-five years later (1780s) the manufacture of wove paper spread quickly to other paper mills in England and was also being developed in France and America. All this took place over a decade before a machine to replace making paper by hand was conceived. With the establishment of the paper machine (1807), the manufacture of paper on a wove wire base would become the predominant standard in the world, with laid paper being relegated to certain specialist uses, such as being used as a support for charcoal drawings. Today more than 99% of the world’s paper is made in this way.

James Whatman (1702–1759), the Elder, was a paper maker, born in Kent, who made revolutionary advances to the craft in England. He is noted as the inventor of wove paper (or Vélin), an innovation used for high-quality art and printing. The techniques continued to be developed by his son, James Whatman the Younger (1741–1798). At a time when the craft was based in smaller paper mills, his innovations led to the large scale and widespread industrialisation of paper manufacturing.

Whatman was the last child and only son of Mary and James Whatman. His father was a tanner, and his son inherited the business in 1726 when his mother died. This Whatman continued the tanning business but in 1733 he was starting to make paper at the Old Mill in Hollingbourne. He assisted James Harris who built a new paper mill there. Harris died in 1739 and Whatman married his widow and gained Harris’s business.

This James Whatman had been approached by John Baskerville, who needed paper that would take a light impression of the printing plate; this was used for the edition of Virgil’s poetry, embellished with Baskerville’s typography and designs. The earliest examples of wove paper, bearing his watermark, appeared after 1740.

This James Whatman and his wife had a child in 1741 who was also named James Whatman and who would later be another innovative paper manufacturer. His wife Susanna Whatman would run his house; her writing on household management would come to notice about 200 years later.

The business, in addition to producing the finest paper, is probably responsible for the invention of the wove wire mesh used to mould and align the pulp fibres. This is the principal method used in the mass production of most modern paper. The Whatmans held a part interest in the establishment at Turkey Mill, near Maidstone, after 1740; this was acquired through the elder Whatman’s marriage to Ann Harris.

The “handmade” paper bearing the Whatman’s mark was still produced for special editions and art books until 2002.

The company he founded, Whatman plc, later specialized in producing filter papers and is now owned by GE Healthcare. Last production at Maidstone (Springfield Mill) was in 2014.

Whatman’s name has entered many languages, e.g. the French (le whatman) and the Russian, where ватман (vatman) is a generic word for heavy high-quality paper used for drawing and watercolours.