Replicating the Mechanical Print Aesthetic in Manuscripts before circa 1500

While Curt Bühler’s well-known formulation sensibly posits that “every manuscript ascribed to the second half of the fifteenth century is potentially (and often without question) a copy of some incunable,” little is known about how scribes copied print and what effects that practice had on the look of manuscripts. Given that the mechanical processes of the printing press caused print page design to change, this essay examines some of the ways in which scribes responded to that change and argues that scribes, tasked with creating bespoke copies of mass-produced printed books, were quick to experiment with the new features of print. These were rapidly incorporated into their manuscripts, meaning that the mechanical aesthetic of print soon became part of the scribes’ repertoire.