Jacob Faber

[1] Jacob Faber is a German form of what was presumably his original name, Jacques Lefèvre, a common French name – the equivalent of John Smith – shared by several other figures active in similar circles at the period; the main ones are mentioned below.

Faber was especially noted for the many metalcut title-page borders and book illustrations he made to designs by Hans Holbein the Younger in Basel in the 1520s.

He may be the "Jacques Lefèvre, dit le tailleur d'histoires" ("called the cutter of stories") accused of heresy in Paris in 1534–35,[7] but unlike 17 others at the time, not executed.

[13] His habit of signing merely with his initials ensured that his identity sank into obscurity, until he was identified again in the mid-19th century and eventually recognized as the major interpreter of the younger Holbein's designs in the medium of metalcuts, though when left to his own devices, his abilities as a designer were mediocre - "wretched stuff", according to Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints at the British Museum.

Secondly, the skilled woodcutter Hans Lützelburger arrived in Basel in 1522, bringing with him technical and artistic standards that may have stimulated Faber's own work.

[16] Faber's metalcut of the Title Page Border with Children and an Old Couple deployed shorter and more varied hatching than that of his earliest work, resulting in a greater roundness of forms.