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By Elizabeth Savage, Senior Lecturer in Book History and Communications, School of Advanced Study, University of London

The British Museum houses one of the world’s most significant collections of early modern German colour prints. In 2015, Elizabeth Savage curated a display on the topic. Continuing research led to a wonderful new publication, Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum. In effect, this is the first major study of these rare milestones of cultural heritage and technology, including previously unidentified examples like the ex libris of Anton Woensam. The book, which pans medieval printing in the late 1400s through the Renaissance and Reformation of the 1500s in the German-speaking lands, does justice to the material through the detailed descriptions and reproductions it offers.

On Facebook, I recently came across a book that I never expected to see for sale outside of an auction or a fancy rare-book dealer. The book in question was one of the four volumes of the first edition of The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola, printed in 1689. The book’s author, Janez Vajkard (German spelling: Johann Weikhart) Valvasor, used to gaze at Slovenians from the 20-tolar banknote; nowadays we have the euro, but a bunch of places across Slovenia, ranging from libraries to restaurants and mountain cabins, continue to carry his name. It makes sense: Glory is an unprecedented magnum opus that summarized just about everything there was to know about the Slovenian heartland province of Carniola. A full set of the recent Slovenian translation will cost you several thousand euros, as will a well-preserved set of the 19^th-century reprint. However, the seller of this…