Purty Gutenbergs

Also in this week's Nature is a piece on a paper (Tracy Chaplin et al) in Analytical Chemistry on a study of the pigments used to illuminate the Gutenberg bibles. Seems the Gutenbergs, despite being the first mass-produced book (180 copies in three years, which, sure, ain't much for a modern Heidelberg, but still beat those poor monks doin' it the pen-and-ink way silly), went first to workshops where they were lavishly hand-illuminated. The Chaplin team used a laser technique called Raman spectroscopy to identify the compounds in the pigments used, toward reconstructing 15th century techniques for illumination.

Love pretty old books. Gave myself an excuse, not long ago, to do some research into old press and hand-illumination techniques and technologies. But the image in the Nature paper in the digital edition was pretty low-res, for some reason. So here's a nicer one.