My visit to the Musée de l’imprimerie et de la communication graphique in Lyon (France)

Luckily for me, due to lack of space and a fixed place, my bibliophilia is limited to only a few very beautiful books and many museum and library visits. After visiting the museum Gutenberg in Mainz, the museum Plantin in Antwerp, here I am in Lyon at the museum of printing and graphic communication. I hope you enjoy this article because we paid an arm and a leg for a room during the Rugby World Cup, just so I could have time to visit this museum before our return to Paris.

Given the time I spent in the museum, even JB realized that I like it a lot, a lot. Indeed, it complements the information I read in the two previous museums. Plus, it’s a French museum, so they have more books printed in France than the other two.

I have a recent passion for beautiful books, and even more recent, for parchment.Honestly, I considered buying a vellum folio just for pleasure, and when I realized that the religious content (since parchment was often used for religious texts) didn’t appeal to me at all, I concluded that I had to create my own manuscript on vellum.That’s when I heard about illumination and illumination courses! I learn from reading the explanatory panels at the museum that the ink used for vellum is special and must be mixed with a mordant (to adhere to the vellum). Similarly, the vellum is prepared beforehand (smoothed and powdered to remove grease, also fixed to a wooden board).

In the meantime, it’s at the museum that we can admire the manuscripts.

Bookbinding would not have existed if we hadn’t transitioned from the scroll to the codex. The codex is a set of quires bound together with a central fold. It’s better than the scroll because it’s manageable, compact, facilitates writing, and allows for quick and easy reading. Before paper, they used parchment (which is leather, but not tanned in the traditional way). Each leaf (recto/verso) is called a “folio”. Vellum is a parchment made from calfskin; parchment uses skin from other animals. Invented in China, paper conquered Europe via the Silk Road. Less expensive, lighter, easier to transport, it became very popular.

Now, there are paper this, paper that, some papers of better quality than others. Handmade papers, papers with cellulose, papers without cellulose, rag papers, cotton/linen papers, etc. Depending on the value you want to give the book and what you want to print/write on it, you need to know which paper to use. It would be wasteful to use handmade paper for a weekly magazine, for example. There’s a section on bookbinding tools, but I’m skipping it because I’m actually going to take a bookbinding course.

Until the 18th century, books were often sold with a temporary binding (provided with a simple stiff paper cover). The buyer would then have their purchase bound according to their tastes, means, the value of the work, its use… at their favorite bookbinder’s. Thus, everyone can have a harmonious library with the same style for all their books. But it’s expensive. This explains why, for books still in temporary bindings, some pages aren’t even cut, because normally the binder will trim the three edges, and all pages will be accessible and freed.

After reading the book Remarkable Books (Amazon link), I’m now a bit more knowledgeable about rare books worth millions and millions of euros (and knowing how to appreciate them).

We have 2 pages of the famous 42-line Gutenberg Bible and a leaf from the famous Nuremberg Chronicle. Both are exceptional in terms of layout: the Gutenberg Bible for its hand-justified text (which required printers to file down certain characters), and the Nuremberg Chronicle for its careful layout and illustrations (which aren’t very varied, admittedly, for example the same print is used for Lyon and Mainz). To learn more about the Gutenberg Bible, read my article here.

Thanks to the Italians, we moved from Gothic letters to Roman letters. There are several famous typographers in Venice, including Jenson, who inspired the printer and typographer William Morris 4 centuries later. Italic letters were also invented by Italians, and we could fit more letters on the same sheet thanks to italics and sell the book for less.

In France, every king wanted his own typeface. Moreover, the Imprimerie nationale still preserves the matrices of those typefaces, and it deserves a visit from me in the near future.

We then move on to engravings: etching and mezzotint. The technique isn’t very well explained at the museum, I think, or because I already know it, I skip…

In any case, I was very happy to see several leaves of Diderot’s Encyclopedia and see a volume of that collection. It was printed on rag paper from a paper mill not far from Lyon, which we visited a few weeks ago.

What a surprise to discover private presses, fashionable among high society members. They printed for educational, leisure, or publication purposes. These presses are smaller in size and I like them a lot because I also had the bad idea of wanting to buy one of these mini presses (influenced by Instagram videos). But I quickly gave up the idea because I would have needed too many typefaces, in all sizes.

The part you don’t find in the other two museums is about lithography , and color printing.

I had already heard of lithography and more or less knew what it was, but this is where I got to see a demonstration video and the tools.

I really liked this because a week later, I had a chat with a publisher of fine art books, who explained that lithography can print up to 12 colors at a time (30 for luxury books, but that was a very very long time ago), but for his 60-color illustrations, he prefers to use stencils.

At the museum, I confess I didn’t understand the difference between chromolithography and chromotypography. I think both print one color at a time.

Theoretically, with just 3 colors, you can get millions of colors. That’s the principle of trichromy. In trichromy, you make three halftone plates inked in three colors. If you add a fourth plate inked in light black, you get four-color printing, which is still used in today’s printers.

I was really really excited to see a Linotype, which I’d seen in a video by an American printer. Instead of picking out one letter at a time, this machine lets you type an entire line on a keyboard and the letters are cast on the spot. It cuts the printer’s work time down enormously.

Then they got rid of lead altogether with this machine, the Lumitype , which I saw for the first time in my life.

Eight typefaces are stored as negative images, arranged concentrically on a glass disk spinning at 8 revolutions per second. The characters, selected via an electric keyboard, are exposed onto photographic film by a stroboscopic flash that “captures” each letter in mid-flight. Letters are flashed one line at a time. The lens turret allows for enlarging the characters, with 12 sizes available. The optical system positions the letters on the photographic film.

The resulting film is used to expose a printing plate, which is then mounted on an offset press for printing. I think a picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s how you print with a printing plate (the plate in the video was made using a computer):

The last section covers the first paperback book (from Penguin, UK) and the changes brought by the computer, but well, we already know all that. There’s a section on newspapers, but I was too eager to go see the Linotype and Lumitype and completely skipped it.

Anyway, those were the best 6 euros I’ve ever spent. I loved this museum so much that I can’t wait to go back. Especially to better understand the “color printing” section, which I rushed through. If you’ve been to Mainz and Antwerp, the museum in Lyon will still bring you a ton of new info. Everything is so beautiful, the explanations are so well done, and there are books of priceless value. I’m so happy I got to see them in real life.

Practical Information

MUSEUM OF PRINTING AND GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION

13, rue de la Poulaillerie
69002 Lyon (Cordeliers metro)

Getting there
Metro line A, Cordeliers stop
Bus: C3, C5, C9, C13, C14, 27, 171
Coaches: drop-off zone, quai
Jean-Moulin (Rhône side)

T. 04 78 37 65 98
[email protected]

Individuals:
– Wednesday to Sunday, 10:30 AM to 6 PM (ticket office closes at 5:30 PM)

Groups (reservation required):
– Tuesday to Friday, 9 AM to 6 PM (closed Tuesday from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM)
– Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM to 6 PM
– self-guided tours possible Wednesday to Sunday, 10:30 AM to 5:30 PM

Closed on Mondays and January 1, May 1, November 1, December 25