Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08738_Field_TCGG T503.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 988b | 16 lines

     done no more than to change their titles and thereupon
     became calligraphers; in any event, they went right on
     doing what had been their task for centuries. On the one
     hand, it should be remembered that calligraphers
     necessarily catered principally, if not exclusively, to the
     “de luxe-bespoke” trade. On the other, it was not
     apparent until the very late fifteenth century—or more
     fully, perhaps, in the sixteenth—that calligraphy had
     turned into an applied art or, at worst, a mere hobby. The
     scriptoria themselves seem to have been unable to
     compete with the printing firms and the publishing
     houses which subsequently came into being—although
     some managed to survive by becoming booksellers. Their
     employees, however, enjoyed a variety of alternate
     choices, in that they could contrive to attach themselves
     to well-to-do patrons, to carry on a bespoke trade, or to