Page 16 - The Secret Museum

could, amazingly at the time, create as many identical copies of the same text as you

needed. Suddenly, anyone lucky enough to own a Gutenberg Bible, no matter where
they were in the world, could turn to page 20 and read from the same text.

Just imagine the work that went into this one book. For years, Gutenberg toiled in
secret in a little hamlet downriver from Strasbourg. He couldn’t risk anyone finding
out the techniques he was developing. He shaped each of the 200 or so letters he
needed for a Bible out of metal, by hand. Then, using the type mould, he made copies
of the letters. They were set into a form, covered with ink made in his workshop and
pressed, using a machine he may well have adapted from a wine press, on to either

vellum, as with this Bible, or paper. Vellum – calfskin – is more precious than paper,
which itself was worth almost as much gold. Gutenberg wanted all his Bibles to be
printed on vellum, but it was just too expensive.

The ink shimmers, because it contains metal compounds. It’s set off beautifully by
its decoration in rich golds, blues, greens and reds. As soon as a page of the Bible
was printed, it was handed over to an illustrator in Gutenberg’s home town who
illustrated the initials, and then to another in Bruges who completed the intricate
decoration of the Bible’s columns and borders. When the book was complete, it was

bound. It came out of the workshop and changed the world. In just 50 years, the
number of books printed with movable type went from zero to 20 million.

When, nearly five centuries later, Morgan bought the manuscript of Pudd’nhead
Wilson from Mark Twain, the author told Morgan, ‘One of my highest ambitions is
gratified – which was to have something of mine placed elbow to elbow with that
august company which you have gathered together to remain indestructible in a
perishable world.’ This is why the Morgan Library and Museum is so special. The

‘august company’ really is wonderful and each precious work is safe in the quiet
vaults below Manhattan. No wonder the muses love this place so much.