Damianus
Moyllus was a printer in Parma who, according to Stanley Morrison’s
introduction, only printed three books one of which is his Alphabet. Maybe book is the wrong description because
it was printed on one side of a sheet and not bound (the Q in this facsimile is
larger than the page and could support the unbound theory).
The Alphabet is based on lettering used on
inscriptions during the Roman Empire, so there is no J, U or W. The book is just over seven by five inches with
eighty-four pages and printed letterpress on a thick paper, I’ve included the
first page of Morrison’s introduction but not the following fourteen. The first eleven letters are on right-hand
pages followed by a blank spread with the remaining eleven on the left, the Z
is on a spread with the Y.
The only
curiosity is the T spread which has a rough drawing of the letter in a box on
the right-hand page. I assume this is on
the original Moyllus printing. The
imprint says that 350 copies were printed in Switzerland with 300 for sale in
1927, I was given a copy decades ago as a gift for getting my first job in
publishing.
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