The Gutenberg Bible announced a new technology in a familiar visual language. Printed in Mainz around 1455, it used movable metal type, yet its pages imitated the dense Gothic script of handmade books.
Johann Gutenberg and his financial backer Johann Fust developed a press capable of making multiple copies. The edition is estimated at about 180 copies. Printers could reproduce the text, but they could not yet supply every feature of an illuminated manuscript: much of the decoration was still added by hand.
That combination makes the Bible a threshold object. It belongs to the age of print and carries traces of the manuscript world it sought to rival. The innovation did not instantly erase older craft; it entered into conversation with it, borrowing its forms while changing how a book could be made and multiplied.