The recent sale of the U.S. publishing house Simon & Schuster to some soulless private equity company that will probably sell it for parts reminded me of the story of the creation of the firm’s colophon. Richard Simon and Lincoln Schuster stumbled upon “The Sower,” a painting by Jean François Millet, as they strolled through a gallery during their first week of publishing. It occurred to them that the image of a man sowing grain was the perfect publishing metaphor for “planting seeds of wisdom.” So they hired John Everett Millais to render a reproduction of the painting for their colophon. This story suggests that they were possibly unaware of the long tradition of using agricultural symbolism to brand presses, with Jean De Tournes (est. 1542) and J. Roffet (est. 1549) as two examples.