Title copper
A title copper is a copper engraving that is added to the title page and that makes or explains an object in the book. If this is the case, the page number can be noted on where you can find this point in the text; But if the copper is a mere addition to the decoration of the work or if it contains the portrait of the author or another eminent or distinguished person, then any comment relating to the book is missing; it is then to be regarded as a mere addition to the decoration of the work.
The same is also the case with the title vignette , a rather smaller copper engraving on the title page that comes between the main title and the name of the city and the publisher (trading company) etc., i.e. it is on the title page itself. The vignettes usually relate to a point in the work.
If this copper engraving is on the second page, opposite the title page (page 3) , it is called a frontispiece .
If the entire title page is an engraving, one speaks of an engraved title or copper title .
A copper title can be bound with reduced title information in front of the actual title page.
Since book blocks were mostly sold unbound, i.e. without a book cover , until the emergence of industrial book production , these illustrations on the top of the book block had an advertising role in sales.
Examples
Title copper surrounds the set title, from Maier Michael: Atalanta Fvgiens , 1618
Copper title Front page of the Schleswig Bible (1664) in front of the title page
Giovanni Battisti Manzini: Encomium Noctis , Basel 1672, printed and hand-colored title vignette: Laßberg's coat of arms
literature
- Michael Trenkle: Technical terms in the second-hand bookshop - A glossary . In: Handbuch 2009/2010 of the Verband Deutscher Antiquare e. V.
