Frankfurt’s print trade in 1580 was dominated by Sigmund Feyerabend, and among the small books issued from his shop that year was the Kunnst vnd Lehrbüchlein für die anfahenden Jungen, a drawing manual whose woodcuts were designed by Jost Amman and printed by Peter Schmid. The copy reproduced in modern times is held in Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek. It is the second edition of a work first published in 1578.
A Pattern Book for the Workshops of the German Renaissance
Amman, born in Zurich and settled in Nuremberg, had become Feyerabend’s most prolific designer, supplying blocks for costume books, herbals, armorials and the celebrated Ständebuch. The Lehrbüchlein turned that fluency toward teaching. It addressed itself not to collectors but to beginners — anfahenden Jungen — who were expected to copy from it.
Woodcuts Designed to Be Copied
The title page sits within a woodcut border; what follows is almost entirely image. Men and women, children, animals and assorted motifs appear in sequence, each reduced to the clear contour a learner could trace. The blocks were cut by professional formschneider working from Amman’s drawings, and the volume closes with a colophon and a printer’s device. Surviving copies differ in extent, many having been broken up for their plates.
Instruction as a Commercial Venture
A book of this kind served two purposes at once: it taught, and it kept Amman’s inventory of blocks in profitable circulation. Feyerabend understood both. Few sixteenth-century books were made so frankly to be used up. That so many were dismembered is, in its way, evidence that the instruction worked.
We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Book of Art and Instruction for Young People by Jost Amman": Jost Amman: Kunst- und Lehrbüchlein facsimile edition, published by Mueller & Schindler, 1971
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