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The Collation

Abbreviations and signatures

As Sjoerd Levelt guessed in the comments, this month’s crocodile image featured an abbreviation, rather than a letter, in the signature mark:

sig. 2[ter]2

sig. 2[ter]2

Here’s a longer look at what this character is and how it ended up being used in the signature. 1

First, the book in question is a “Book of Summer Sermons” (Santius de Porta, Sermones estiuales de tempore venerabilis Santij porta sacri ordinis predicatorum) printed in Lyon in 1513. 

  1. I would like to thank Ron Bogdan, who brought this example to my attention.
  2. We have not yet traced this hypothetical first volume. The Winter Sermons by Santius de Porta, or Sancho Porta, were also printed by the Lyon printer Joannes Clein in 1514. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich provides a fully digitized copy here: http://www.mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10165615-1.
  3. See Christoph Reske, “De invloed van techniek op het uiterlijk van letters in boeken”, in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 19 (2012), pp. 87–100, here 89.

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