This is an amazing life-sized collagraph of a door that was exhibited at the 798 Print Expo in Beijing this November (a collagraph is a printmaking technique where found materials such as cardboard are collaged together, inked and then printed).

The work did not have a label. Does anyone know the name of this artist?

Trade card of James Pain, pyrotechnist 4228

Lithograph, coloured, 1884

From the Evanion Collection, Online Exhibition, the British Library

London-born Henry Evans, or ‘Evanion’ as he styled himself on stage, enjoyed a long and reasonably successful career as a conjurer, ventriloquist and humorist…Evanion took advantage of this theatrical background to amass a large and fascinating collection of printed ephemera… The British Library now owns some 5,000 items from his collection, originally purchased by the British Museum in 1895.

The Evanion collection is both interesting and exceptional in the variety of its items and in the many aspects of English Victorian life they illuminate. It’s a rare and significant collection largely because such material was not considered of any lasting value in its own day, and so was neither preserved nor collected. Despite this, the collection includes many examples of fine printing, often extremely attractive and of merit in their own right.

Johann Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible
British Library C.9d3
Copyright © The British Library Board

The Gutenberg Bible is the earliest book printed in Europe using movable type… It was printed by Johann Gutenberg and his associates in Mainz, Germany, between 1454 and 1455. Between 160 and 180 copies were printed, but only 36 printed on paper and 12 on vellum have survived.