There are European printed books that pre-date Gutenberg’s. Block books were produced in Europe by the mid-fifteenth century, as were single devotional woodcut prints. Laurens Janszoon Coster of Haarlem printed around the time of Gutenberg’s first experiments, and may in fact have been the first European to print with movable type. But his productions were of a low standard; Coster was a less exacting craftsman than the gem-cutter from Mainz. Gutenberg was the first craftsman in Europe to make letterpress printing viable and beautiful.
