It’s quite often the case in early printed books that the same images reappear in different scenes, within books, and across different books. Woodblocks were expensive pieces of hardware, so better to reuse blocks already in-house than buy or commission new ones. That image of a courting couple, embracing outside on the ground, used in
A pedantic point: I think the king would probably have been cut out of the block, not covered up, else the type would not have sat level in the forme. A portion of his gown is still visible on the right.
It’s the ones that appear across publications by different printers that I find most intriguing. One cause is presumably stock being sold or passed on when someone dies or goes out of business. But in the early 1640s for example you find the same woodcuts appearing in close succession in rival printers’ works. I like to imagine someone popping round the corner to borrow one from a colleague: “I really need a bishop and a ghost to illustrate this quarto satire about Laud… have you got anything?”. Or perhaps the carvers retained ownership of the block in some cases and flogged them to various printers? I don’t have a sense of whether carving the woodblocks was a specialised trade in its own right or just something given to apprentices who had shown a knack for it.
A pedantic point: I think the king would probably have been cut out of the block, not covered up, else the type would not have sat level in the forme. A portion of his gown is still visible on the right.
Mike
It’s the ones that appear across publications by different printers that I find most intriguing. One cause is presumably stock being sold or passed on when someone dies or goes out of business. But in the early 1640s for example you find the same woodcuts appearing in close succession in rival printers’ works. I like to imagine someone popping round the corner to borrow one from a colleague: “I really need a bishop and a ghost to illustrate this quarto satire about Laud… have you got anything?”. Or perhaps the carvers retained ownership of the block in some cases and flogged them to various printers? I don’t have a sense of whether carving the woodblocks was a specialised trade in its own right or just something given to apprentices who had shown a knack for it.