Armenian typography and book art encyclopedia published

The publishing house "Armenian Encyclopedia" has issued a one-volume edition on the Armenian Typography and Bookprinting Art to enlighten the reader on the nation’s 500-year history of printing culture.

The edition was introduced today by Hovhannes Ayvazyan, the publishing house’s director and editor-in-chief.

“This book comes to shed light on our culture of book-printing; it covers the history of our 500-year-old printing art, introducing our printing houses, publishers, as well as valuable manuscripts. One can’t possibly say more than this on the book, but I think it will receive a wide reception in the society,” he added.

Ayvazyan said he knows that it took the authors three to four years to compile the volume.

“With more information and sources, things didn’t become easy at all; on the contrary, it is now more difficult, as we have to check more sources than we did before. We need to compare and combine the entire information,” he added.

As for the funding, he said that over the past years, they received 14 million Drams (US $30m) from the state, which, despite seeming an ostensibly sizeable amount, is practically very little for compiling an encyclopedia.

The 1,200-page edition’s intended print run is 1,500 copies.