The history of typography in the Arab world and Europe is the story of a 500-year exchange of technology, imagery and design. The Arabs adopted printing long before Gutenberg, but did not use it for book production; the technique, nevertheless, may possibly have influenced the later development of printing and book production in Europe. The first books containing Arabic script were printed in Europe, and were part of the Renaissance adoption of Arab/Muslim symbolism and imagery. In this room examples of currents and counter-currents in the exchange of scripts between East and West are collected.
