Liber Librorum

We remember the very first time we saw a copy of this. It was in Boston. At the shadow antiquarian book fair. Maybe 2001 or 2002. We found it very inspiring. it’s possible that it even moved us—and we were once told that we were immovable and had no joy in our heart. We can still see in our mind’s eye where we were in the room. This was the sort of thing we were looking for. But we digress. 

Before any of that, it was 1955. Five hundred years had passed since Gutenberg had first done his thing and it was time for typographers to mark the occasion by designing a page or two or four from the Book of Genesis. We love seeing different approaches to the same thing. And because there are some awful designs here, it makes the excellent designs seem that much better because one has to know suffering in order to know pleasure. Anyway, if you’ve ever wanted to know how the following designers would design a bible, this is for you. This is a thing we love to show people even though it’s a little weird to be showing people the Bible. We have to explain that we’re only in it for the typography and not their eternal soul.
 

• Raul M. Rosarivo
• Friedrich Neugebauer
• Carl Dair
• Viggo Naae
• C. Volmer Nordlunde
• Alan Dodson
• H.P.R. Finberg
• Hans Schmoller
• Berthold  L. Wolpe
• Alberto Tallone
  
• Gotthard de Beauclair × 3
• Josef Käufer
• Richard von Sichowsky
• Hermann Zapf × 3
• Horst Erich Wolter
• Jan van Krimpen
• S.H. de Roos
• Colm O. Lochlainn
• Henri Friedlaender
• Kjell Armand Johansen
• Juan Truchot-Blanchard
• Anders Billow
• Johan W. Hillbom
• Karl-Erik FOrsberg
• Max Caflisch × 2
• Jan Tschichold
• Joseph Blumenthal
• Grant Dahlstrom
• Ismar David
• Frank T. Kacmarcik × 2
• Richard N. McArthur
• Algot Ringstrom
• Ward Ritchie
• Jack Werner Stauffacher
• William Stone