8vo (200 x 122 mm). Half-title; 18 engraved plates (one folding); 8 specimens of different papers used in printing including yellow, brown, blue, green and rose, with central printed vignettes, including one printed in gold and one printed in blind; also including 4 sheets of printing sampling different colors of ink, including red, green, brown and blue.  (Some minor spotting.) Contemporary French calf-backed boards, smooth spine gilt, red morocco lettering-piece gilt (a few repairs, some minor chipping to spine, joints starting). Provenance: A.L.D. (bookplate); Robert Grabhorn (monogram stamp on front free endpaper); The San Francisco Public Library (sold May 1975 with newspaper clipping about the sale laid in). 

FIRST EDITION. Vinçard's dissertation on the origin of printing describes the fundamental principles of the typographic arts, including fonts and the use of characters, accents, and punctuation, and establishes a typographic vocabulary. The second part describes the process of setting up a press and printing.  

THE ROBERT GRABHORN -- KAY MICHAEL KRAMER COPY.  A SUPERB ASSOCIATION COPY.  The Grabhorn brothers, Robert and Edwin, established the Grabhorn Press in Indiana in 1916, and re-established it on their arrival in San Francisco in 1919, where they quickly became the most influential printers on the San Francisco scene.  By the time the Grabhorn Press closed in 1965, Robert Grabhorn partnered with Andrew Hoyem, and the new firm, Grabhorn-Hoyem preserved the Grabhorn Press's vast holdings of type and other equipment.  Robert Grabhorn began collecting books about the history of printing in the 1930s. In his biography, he described his collection as "an attempt...to find experiments in printing, typographical curiosities, failures as well as successes." The present volume was subsequently owned by printer Kay Michael Kramer, who founded his private press, The Printery, in 1970.  His press's equipment and type are held by the St. Louis Mercantile Library as part of the Printery Book Arts ALab, a resource for printers, book artists and scholars.