The Laughlin Collection is a treasure for those interested in books, printing, and the history of ideas.  With its emphasis on the development of media technologies which have fueled intellectual, scientific, and political revolutions, the Collection offers a valuable glimpse into the material products upon which this progress moved.  After working in the university print shop during his years at Texas A&M, Loran Laughlin began his collection of artifacts and books related to printing, with the earliest item dating from around 2300 B. C.

Sample highlights of the collection:

Myong Chang.  Jun Mun Gyo.  1438-1439.  A Korean book printed with movable metal type called Kabin-Ja, preceding Gutenberg’s accomplishments with movable type by some fifteen years.  Volume two of a forty-volume set.

Hyakumanto Pagoda with Dharani scroll.  A.D. 770.  A lathe-turned wooden pagoda with detachable finial, containing a block-printed scroll.  One of one million miniature pagodas created by Empress Shotoku and circulated around Japan, representing the first extant and datable examples of printing.

Liber Precum. 1440s.  A manuscript Book of Hours on vellum, with six large, finely-executed illuminated miniatures surrounded by elaborate color borders.  With smaller gilt and illuminated initials throughout.

Rodericus Zamorensis.  Speculum Vitae Humanae.  Augsburg: Gunther Zainer, 1471.  A typographical masterpiece from the first press at Augsburg, established by Zainer in 1468; his gothic type, among the most handsome of all 15th-century fonts, is used here for the first time.

[image collections: liber precum; dharani scroll]