Ibn Nahmias

Description

In 1493, the Ibn Nahmias brothers, who had been exiled from Spain the year before, opened a printing house in Constantinople, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire (today Istanbul, Turkey). This poster presents the colophon of their first book (the Arba’a Turim, a guide to Jewish law) with my original translation, set by hand at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts; the ornament (printed here from a magnesium plate) is found in the original, and is one of the earliest known usages of a six-pointed star in a Jewish context. This was created as part of a print exchange in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the American Printing History Association.