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This second alternative does not logically preclude the possibility of double-sized paper, if it was the long dimension of the paper that was doubled, but McKerrow does not take note of this possibility. See also note 32 below.
He had apparently not noticed Edward Heawood's discussion of a 1696 quarto with vertical chainlines, in which “all the fore-edges (apart from some trimming) correspond to the original margins of the sheets as shown by the smaller intervals between the extreme pairs of chain-lines.” See p. 45 of Heawood's “The Position on the Sheet of Early Watermarks,” Library, 4th ser., 9 (1928-29), 38-47. (It is true that Heawood thought this instance demonstrated the use of moulds with chains running the long way; but if Hazen had known of this example, he would—after eliminating this explanation—have been forced to consider moulds with central cross-bars and tranchefiles.)
“Turned Chain Lines,” Library, 5th ser., 5 (1950-51), 184-200 (quotation from p. 187). The motivation for using double-sized moulds was economic, since a larger amount of paper could thus be produced with little more effort or cost than making a smaller quantity. Hazen had come to the same conclusion; but since he was dealing only with double-sized sheets that were cut in half for the printing of newspapers, the real explanation in those cases was somewhat different, as Graham Pollard pointed out in 1941: the Stamp Act of 1712 imposed a duty of one penny per sheet for newspapers but did not specify the size of the sheet. Pollard asserted that double sheets were “created solely to satisfy the requirements of the Commissioners of Stamp Duties under the Act of 1712.” See pp. 125-129 of his “Notes on the Size of the Sheet,” Library, 4th ser., 22 (1941-42), 105- 137.
Povey and Foster (see the preceding note) confirmed this fact in the way Hazen did, by consulting a contemporary papermaker; but they made clearer than Hazen that the direction of the laid-wires, not the chain-wires, was the decisive factor (the close wires had to run perpendicularly to the edges grasped by the vatman if the pulp was not to clog against them).
Two-sheet moulds were also sometimes constructed so that the two sheets lay end to end rather than side by side. Given that the chains always ran parallel to the shorter sides of the mould, in these cases the chainlines would be parallel to the shorter edges of the paper, as in ordinary paper made from single-sheet moulds; and thus paper from end-to-end (in contrast to side-by-side) two-sheet moulds cannot be distinguished from ordinary paper by chainline direction. However, since two-sheet moulds did not always have tranchefiles beside the central cross-bar, a sheet made in an end-to-end two-sheet mould can sometimes be identified by its having a tranchefile at only one end. Moulds of this shape could also be used without the central-bar deckle to produce single long sheets of the kind found in some “oblong” music books; see p. 322 of D. W. Krummel's “Oblong Format in Early Music Books,” Library, 5th ser., 26 (1971), 312-324.
In drawing this inference, I am concluding that he did not consider, or ruled out, the possibility that folded sheets were placed on the press. I likewise infer that when he spoke of sheets “previously cut in half” he was referring to a cut before printing, not merely before folding. (Thus “sewn as one” would make sense here only if it assumed the printing of complete double-sized sheets; presumably Greg was trying to cover the theoretical possibility that such printing did occur.) These considerations are further indication of what an impenetrable muddle this passage of Greg's is. Of the twenty items in his Bibliography where “(4°-form) 8°” is employed (locatable through the very useful “Notabilia” index in the third volume), only one (153/154 b) is gathered in 8s—and there is every reason to expect that analysis would reveal it to have been printed either on the cut halves of large sheets or on sheets made in two-sheet moulds (therefore “sewn as one” would in this instance mean only “gathered together”).
See The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library: English Literature 1475-1700 (1940), entries 212, 224, 304A, 426 note, 772, and 773, for example. The corresponding phrase “Sextodecimo in eights” occurs in entry 786.
One might perhaps argue, since Jackson called the book simply “Quarto,” not “Quarto and octavo,” despite the printing of G, H, and I on “octavo paper,” that he was therefore giving greater weight to imposition than to the original paper size; but such an inference is belied by his practice in the other relevant entries cited above.
Another bibliographer who used the same kind of expression, but in connection with music printing from engraved plates, was Richard J. Wolfe: see his “Parthenia In-Violata: A Seventeenth-Century Folio-Form Quarto,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 65 (1961), 347-364. In this case he identified the “commonplace practice” of using “double” or “oversize” plates, which could print two “oblong” page-units of music at the same time (p. 358); to accommodate these plates, “half-sheets were printed as though they were whole sheets and were then folded once over” (p. 348). But because Wolfe assumed that “format is dependent upon whole sheets” (p. 353), he felt that the format had to be quarto, and he labeled it “2°-form 4°” (p. 348).
Bowers appended a note to his discussion, calling attention to quartos with chain-lines in the usual horizontal direction but with watermarks in the octavo position (top inner corners). He concluded, with advice from Greg, that watermarks were no doubt placed differently in some moulds and that such books should be called quartos despite “the abnormal position of the watermark” (p. 195). The trouble with this kind of comment is that it seems to confuse the essence of format with the characteristics that are its usual by-product. That is, format refers to a relationship, not to chainline direction or watermark placement.
See Oliver, “Single-Page Imposition in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, 1570,” Library, 5th ser., 1 (1946-47), 49-56; and Dunkin, “Foxe's Acts and Monuments, 1570, and Single-Page Imposition,” Library, 5th ser., 2 (1947-48), 159- 170.
Except when, as in the early days of printing, only one type-page or a part-sheet forme was on the press at one time (see section V below).
In some late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century books there are also “sheet numbers” that can be used in the same way (since these are consecutive numbers labeling sheets in cases where more than one gathering came from each sheet). For further information about these various techniques, see G. T. Tanselle, “The Treatment of Typesetting and Presswork in Bibliographical Description,” Studies in Bibliography, 52 (1999), 1-57. See also B. J. McMullin, “Press Figures and Format,” Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin, 7 (1983), 109-119. Some kinds of potentially useful evidence do not often survive, such as the rules that were sometimes printed to mark where the binder should make the cut in small formats: on 12° and 24°, see Giles E. Dawson, “Guidelines in Small Formats (about 1600),” SB, 14 [1961], 206-208; on 18°, see McMullin, “`La Collection des petits formats in-18, édition de Cazin': Some Preliminary Observations,” in The Culture of the Book: Essays from Two Hemispheres in Honour of Wallace Kirsop, ed. David Garrioch, Harold Love, Brian McMullin, Ian Morrison, and Meredith Sherlock (1999), pp. 105-119 (see pp. 111-113).
See, for instance, Heawood's article cited in note 29 above. Other variations have also been noted: James Russell, for example, reported a book printed on paper in which every nineteenth wire-line was as heavy as a chainline (see “Cross `Chain Lines' in Early 18th Century Paper,” International Paper History, 3 [1993], 44- 46).
The use of such a combination of evidence is illustrated by Pamela E. Pryde in “Determining the Format of British Books of the Second-Half of the Eighteenth Century Gathered in Sixes,” Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin, 23 (1999), 67-77. For tranchefiles, see Annemie Gilbert and Sylvia Ransom, “The Imposition of Eighteenmous in Sixes, with Special Reference to Tranchefiles,” ibid., 4 (1979-80), 269-275. Point-holes and watermarks enter into Curt F. Bühler's discussion of a 24° gathered in 8s, in “The Printing of a Valerius Maximus Dated 1671,” SB, 7 (1955), 177-181; cf. Kenneth Povey, “Twenty-fours with Three Signatures,” SB, 9 (1957), 215- 216.
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