Ornamentation of Prague Hebrew Books during the first Half of the 16th Century as a Part of Bohemian Book Design

The original study employs the unique collection of decorative material assembled during the research to show the high level of collaboration of Prague Jewish printers of the first half of the 16th century with their Christian counterparts. Czech historians have tended to overlook domestic non-Czech book printing during the Jagiellonian era, considering it representative of a foreign enclave among the era’s Utraquist, Catholic and Brethren print shops focused on the production of texts in the Czech language. But foreign researchers had noticed that the visual side of Jewish and Christian book production showed certain interrelationships. This observation was based on the identification of woodblocks by Prague printer Pavel Severin of Kapí Hora in several Hebrew publications. The occasional borrowing of printing material was not a fundamental feature of domestic book culture. A more important factor to pay attention to is Prague’s role as a multicultural center that after the mid-1510’s provided the printing trade with more opportunities than before. The shopkeeper Severin’s workshop, which he had previously rented out exclusively to the Utraquist Printer of The Prague Bible, apparently began to have alternating tenants. During the interval that the Printer of the Prague Bible was not working, other publishers could ply their trade: Jewish publishers after 1512, Jan Moravus in 1513 and later (1517 – 1519) the Belarusian doctor, translator and publisher Francysk Heorhij Skoryna. A more important phenomenon than the journey of three of four woodblocks would appear to be the fact that the unprecedented increase in and coexistence of several printing shops resulted in a natural demand for woodcutting workshops. The demand was further increased because publishers no longer ordered only illustration cycles for their publications, but in line with ongoing changes in artistic style began to apply book ornament as well (ornamental band, frame, border). The previous practice adopted by the Printer of the Prague Bible – which from 1488 to 1505 relied on cooperation with Augsburg, Nuremberg and Strasbourg – was no longer possible. We thus observe the development of a previously unknown feature of the era’s book art industry: the distribution of all artists’ work into multi-year stages and among several printing houses simultaneously. Like book illuminators during the Hussite and post-Hussite eras, book artists of the early 16th century worked on commissions regardless of the denominational or ethnic background of their employers. After 1507 seven artists worked in Prague. The typographically conservative printer Mikuláš Konáč instigated the late-Gothic book art of the Master of Burleigh’s Border (1507) and the Master of the Brick Background (1510). The first works by the Master of Skoryna’s Ornament (1514), Master IP (1514), and the Master of Broad Hatching (1525) appear in Jewish commissions. The Master of Fine Hatching was discovered by Francysk Heorhij Skoryna (1517), and the Master of Kohen’s Haggadah was encouraged to work in publishing by Pavel Severin (1525). Master IP and the Master of Fine Hatching worked for Utraquist and Jewish printers and Skoryna. The Master of Fine Hatching and the universal Master of Skoryna’s Ornament even associated themselves with Brethren printers in Litomyšl (Pavel Olivetský) and Mladá Boleslav (Jiřík Štyrsa). The Master of Burleigh’s Border, the Master of Kohen’s Haggadah, and the Master of Broad Hatching worked for Konáč, Severin, and Hebrew printers. The Master of the Brick Background worked with Konáč and Jewish printers as well. The need to work with several book artists at once is documented not only by Skoryna’s Biblia ruska, but also by the Haggadah of 1526, whose publishers hired the Master of Kohen’s Haggadah, the Master of Skoryna’s Ornament, as well as the Master of Burleigh’s Border. The year 1527, when Pavel Severin founded the country’s first artistic workshop dedicated entirely to meeting the needs of his printing house, marks a certain turning point in the history of book design. ISBN 978-80-200-2197-7 (Academia). 978-80-87366-15-8 (Jewish Museum in Prague).