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) 

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