A Load of Unicorn

Caxton's Unicorn paper watermark






"In the middle of the workshop stood the press, a great wooden erection secured between two upright posts that ran from floor to ceiling.  Bendy gazed at it, full of awe.  He had seen a press before; the binder who bound books for the Crowing Cock had one of the same shape -- with a heavy board that moved up and down by a big vertical screw.  But the binder's press was tiny.  This was a monster."

" 'Of course the press is no new thing,' said Caxton. 'It is the type which is new.  The old way of pressing paper on to a carved block is useless for books; you need a new block for every page. Now we have all the letters of the alphabet cast in metal, each letter separate, and we build up a page word by word and letter by letter.  When we have printed enough copies we pull the type to pieces again ready to set up for another page.  Come and see for yourselves.'  "

The Load of Unicorn  Cynthia Harnett  (text and illustrations) 

Mr. Yatman's writing cabinet

The Yatman Cabinet, writing desk designed by William Burgess, painted by Edward Poynter, 1858
©  Victoria and Albert Museum.

The decoration shows the story of Cadmus of Thebes, who is credited with introducing the alphabet to Greeks,  and three images below show the cutting of cuneiform letters, Dante writing and Caxton printing, on the drop-down writing flap.

Pigeon Post

"He picked up the birdcage and walked in a stupor to the sweltering warehouse where he was to work. In a corner was a rough table, papyrus rolls, pens and ink.  Other clerks were stacking ingots of copper in piles and morosely tallying them on the strips of papyrus.  He looked at the thin papery strips, the pens and the ink; then at the bird.  What about the sign-game he had played with his sister?  How much of it, he wondered, did she remember?

Perhaps it was not too late to get a message through to Gebal -- a message that would tell his sister what had become of him.  At the same time it might warn the King of Gebal of the danger that threatened the city.  But it was unheard of, to send a message through the air a distance of many weeks' marches.  Fearful doubt told him it was preposterous, but he had to believe it was possible, and that was enough to make him forget the oppressive heat and the hopelessness of his situation.

He put the birdcage inconspicuously in a corner and set immediately to work with the other clerks, piling ingots, checking and tallying them, packing them in panniers ready to be sent off by ass-train to the armourers in Egypt.  It was exhausting work, physically and mentally, yet he kept a corner of his brain alive and apart, and through it paraded the signs that meant nothing in the world to anyone but him and his sister -- the twenty two letters.  Could he remember them himself?  He said their names over:
     Aleph - the ox
     beth - the house
     gimmel - the stick
     daleth - the door ....."

The Twenty-two Letters   Clive King

An Icelandic ABC

"As is known, the ability to read and write was almost as common in Iceland before the days of printing as it has been since;  and actually I think that my grandmother was closer to the people who lived before the days of Caxton.  Spelling books were never used in Iceland.  My grandmother said she learned to recognise the letters of the alphabet from an old man who scratched them for her on the ice when she had to watch over sheep during the winter.  She learned writing from an old woman by making letters with a knitting needle on a piece of smoky glass; they used to tinker with this unobtrusively in the evening sometimes, by moonlight."

The Fish Can Sing   Halldor Laxness
translated by Magnus Magnusson