tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206108462024-02-07T02:22:06.901+00:00Typefoundrydocuments for the history of type and letterformsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-78203788688672586132014-10-05T09:09:00.000+00:002014-10-09T06:55:31.670+00:00Porson’s Greek type design<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsanBWBqLC1fbNHcfktt2A_jfqEez9cGpE3vsWC-wD2GyhFXNCwDe6glnyQpS-Qsxrij0X3NOWy7azAMkXScDm_8UnayAkvHPqzzFXZ9zUeIHkN3Q30vOVFjoN40jS2qTk0Nsr/s1600/Porson+-+alphabet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsanBWBqLC1fbNHcfktt2A_jfqEez9cGpE3vsWC-wD2GyhFXNCwDe6glnyQpS-Qsxrij0X3NOWy7azAMkXScDm_8UnayAkvHPqzzFXZ9zUeIHkN3Q30vOVFjoN40jS2qTk0Nsr/s400/Porson+-+alphabet.jpg" /></a></div>Some types that were made in the first decade of the 19th century by the punchcutter Richard Austin for use by the University Press at Cambridge provided a model for most of the types that were used by British printers for printing Greek for more than a century.
<br/><div></div>
This is the title page of the second edition of the <i>Alkestis </i>of Euripides, edited by Monk and printed at Cambridge in 1818, with a detail of its text.
<br/><div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivoFKhsXODW8dXG0Rvi64U0uX2PlJnX1u34n7vHGNPpY-QJDegcC_jo7H63Z0cA1LpNGmP5PRvVYr_kxB4PKC8-zJLzDNuGebvOVd-YYG0t5Df8jPgNUsG04ZfWFwF_oCumUzL/s1600/Porson+-+Euripides,+Alkestis,+Cambridge,+1818+title.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivoFKhsXODW8dXG0Rvi64U0uX2PlJnX1u34n7vHGNPpY-QJDegcC_jo7H63Z0cA1LpNGmP5PRvVYr_kxB4PKC8-zJLzDNuGebvOVd-YYG0t5Df8jPgNUsG04ZfWFwF_oCumUzL/s400/Porson+-+Euripides,+Alkestis,+Cambridge,+1818+title.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq_0qY9-b-EWNUZYIOi4nx8Yhen4gYHtmx7MiTYjYjyuqnob6ytOk7YZw74bGK-UkIGFBQDBDHmoH_HeSW3mwQqyEn2H73OuJKli-fzmc9jSgqdU1WA8vDiDZA6RizQns0aM8N/s1600/Porson+Greek+-+Euripedes+-+1818+-+det+-+bb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq_0qY9-b-EWNUZYIOi4nx8Yhen4gYHtmx7MiTYjYjyuqnob6ytOk7YZw74bGK-UkIGFBQDBDHmoH_HeSW3mwQqyEn2H73OuJKli-fzmc9jSgqdU1WA8vDiDZA6RizQns0aM8N/s400/Porson+Greek+-+Euripedes+-+1818+-+det+-+bb.jpg" /></a></div>
The new types were based on the script of Richard Porson (1759–1808), one of the outstanding Greek scholars of his time, and for this reason they are commonly known by his name. But how far was Porson involved in their making? And does his model for the type survive?
<br/><div></div>
This is a question of more than passing interest to historians of printing types. For example, we know that some alphabets engraved on copper during the 1690s (although we are far from sure who drew them) were models for the types known as the <i>romain du roi </i>that were made for the Imprimerie royale in Paris. John Baskerville in Birmingham in the 1750s and François-Ambroise Didot in Paris in about 1780 got professional punchcutters to make types for them that follow some radically new ideas, and it seems likely that they must have made sketches to explain what they wanted; but if they did so, the sketches do not survive. How many designs for types do exist, dating before the introduction of mechanical punchcutting at the end of the 19th century made it possible to have a drawing reproduced faithfully in metal?
In the case of the Porson (or Porsonic) types, the alphabet above – one that I once published – does appear to be something like a ‘design’ for the type, but since I neither found it nor claimed to have done so I ought – belatedly – to give its finder proper credit.
<br/><div></div>
Less than a year after I was appointed librarian of the St Bride Library, I helped to mount an exhibition of printing in Greek types at the Library of the University of London. It was designed to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of Porson’s birth. I have no Greek at all, but I am interested in the puzzles that are involved in adapting a script from a different tradition in order to make it work with roman types, and I wanted to know more about the process by which Greek types began to be made without the tangled and complex ligatured forms that were features of the glamorous <i>grec du roi </i>of Claude Garamont, which reproduced them in 1540 from the elaborate script of a calligrapher from Crete who was working on manuscripts for the royal library of François I.
<br/><div></div>
In his study of <i>Greek printing types in Britain from the late 18th to the early 20th century</i>, his Ph.D thesis for the University of Reading, published in 1998 by ‘Typophilia’, the imprint of Klimis Mastoridis (another Reading Ph.D) in Thessaloniki, John Bowman showed the document that I had reproduced. It is among the papers of Richard Porson at Trinity College, Cambridge (B. 13. 27, fol. 92). He remarked, quoting my study, that ‘Mosley believed that it could have been a sketch for the type’. But he did not think I was right, and wrote rather magisterially, ‘It is quite possible that Porson was here practising his design, but it seems unlikely that the actual specimen supplied to Austin would have found its way back into Porson’s papers.’ David McKitterick, librarian of Trinity College, citing Bowman in his <i>History of the Cambridge University Press, </i> endorsed this sceptical view.
<br/><div></div>
This detached scholarly consensus disturbed me when I read it, because its writer had not asked me if I had really said that I believed that the alphabet I published was a sketch for the Porson type. The answer to this question would have been, no – I did not write the suggestion ; but someone did, or at least asked it as a question, which was one that I found convincing then, and I still do.
<br/><div></div>
My notes for the exhibition had interested David Thomas, who worked on book production for a publisher. He had compiled a rather elegant and well-selected collection of examples of types that was published by Sidgwick & Jackson under the title <i>A book of printed alphabets </i>in 1937, and he had a considerable knowledge of classical texts and their typography. He had been invited to look after the production and design of the <i>Penrose Annual, </i>a prestigious publication which published articles on current printing technology, and which had acquired the habit of adding studies of the design and history of printing, especially when they could be illustrated with the use of interesting processes. He plunged happily into the job of helping to provide documentation for my piece, doing so rather more energetically than I wanted or needed, as I might perhaps have said – but it did not seem nice to ; I was quite young ; and he clearly knew what he was doing.
<br/><div></div>
At any rate it was Thomas who went to look at the Porson papers at Trinity, who ordered photographs, and who wrote the captions for the separately-printed four-page section of illustrations to my piece, which was printed by collotype, a process that was becoming rare even then. This was the caption that he added beneath the illustration of the alphabet that is shown here: ‘Is this the model which Porson provided for Richard Austin?’ That is a question to which I think the only sensible answer is ‘quite probably – or something very like it’. I had supplied most of the other examples that were illustrated, but I do not think I ever saw proofs of the section. My article appeared as ‘Porson’s Greek types’, <i>Penrose Annual, </i>vol. 54 (1960), pp. 36–40.
<br/><div></div>
In the end, the Porson Greek is not an exciting design, nor is it an independent one. It treats Greek as a secondary type, like italic. Some specialists who saw themselves as expert in the matter of Greek type, like Robert Proctor at the British Museum, were incensed at the sloping ‘italic’ capitals that were provided with some of the ‘Porson’ types, although to be fair one should note that similarly sloping capitals had been made for Baskerville’s calligraphic Greek type. The forms of the Porson type were clearly designed to work well with the admirable British romans and italics of 1810, and so they do: Matthew Carter has adapted a Porson type for setting with his Miller typeface, and the result is a harmonious text. Greek types were used then in Britain chiefly to set the Greek classics, or the text of the New Testament: in both cases, they would often be set alongside conventional roman and italic types. It was the harmony of the Porson Greek with contemporary italics that attracted me to the design.
<br/><div></div>
Victor Scholderer, another specialist at the British Museum who also helped to mount an exhibition of books in Greek, became involved in the making of a very different type, Monotype’s ‘New Hellenic’ of 1927 that was based on the type that had been made for the ‘Complutensian’ polyglot Bible, printed at Alcalá de Henares in the early 16th century. He might have been expected to have reservations about the Porson type. But on the contrary; although he was not pleased by its slope (‘its originator was no doubt influenced by his own rather excessively sloping pen-script’) he liked its harmonious simplicity, writing that he greatly preferred it to the ‘restless eye-wearying Didot letter, the standard face of France, Italy, and Greece itself’. However that is a very different story.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-88857390726617345842014-04-04T07:43:00.000+00:002014-04-05T06:13:21.250+00:00A British national letter
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsWh-J7rFYWIOewHBtaq-8m_Q0jIbMdAAf3QqFNA_k63mnpyREhvr24YVlBFXEsdzaSnsOpxDFlTfPI5_2PCNBzLagXx4KpOSl-RT1syouJf6uclzGgZIy9pMVNT6CpmIhS6yz/s1600/Tate+Britain+5+vertical.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsWh-J7rFYWIOewHBtaq-8m_Q0jIbMdAAf3QqFNA_k63mnpyREhvr24YVlBFXEsdzaSnsOpxDFlTfPI5_2PCNBzLagXx4KpOSl-RT1syouJf6uclzGgZIy9pMVNT6CpmIhS6yz/s400/Tate+Britain+5+vertical.jpg" /></a>
<div></div>Some such heading seems appropriate for a post about the inaugural use of a letter that has been produced for the refurbished building that was once known as the Tate Gallery and is now Tate Britain. It houses ‘the National Collection of British Art’. The admirable new lettering was realised by the John Morgan Studio.
<div></div>Its basis is an alphabet that was published in London in 1775 as <i>Bowles’s Roman and Italic print letters </i>by Carington Bowles, a maker and seller of prints and maps, for the use of signwriters and other makers and users of letters including ‘engravers and grave-stone cutters’. Nothing else quite like this handbook for makers of letters appears to been made at this date, or at any rate none is known to have survived. Illustrations from it have appeared several times in this blog.
<div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2WvFE8QsAiN-8-zDOFI9MCiaaKeLRaWzAkNiWxprKEPC7ljFHPosmqm3xyqY9CYhsaG7AJHuBqXAAmStcvYaV7Ra5K-alrweM2ngA6_EsP8u20w0afxb56p4C1Oy5ysqKp_fj/s1600/Tate+Britain+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2WvFE8QsAiN-8-zDOFI9MCiaaKeLRaWzAkNiWxprKEPC7ljFHPosmqm3xyqY9CYhsaG7AJHuBqXAAmStcvYaV7Ra5K-alrweM2ngA6_EsP8u20w0afxb56p4C1Oy5ysqKp_fj/s320/Tate+Britain+4.jpg" /></a>
<div></div>The original printed alphabet, of which only one copy is known, was originally in the collection assembled in Oxford by John Johnson, Printer to the University, and it is now with the rest of his collection in the Bodleian Library. I published it myself in my original essay on ‘English vernacular’ in the 11th issue of the journal <i>Motif</i>. I may republish it again one day. Here is Bowles’s first plate:
<div></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4DOEXiCp2w30tbynA3az7dJu4kESUEDXtzJjdSOALLD4QobdzuYJxQ9in588uIMMMoB7rU9XoKapNm4wOZsEzeQJitb1a8SGJ9xIvv97mYwT8GcJ2rHbp0MlTlwCK7t_fMCy/s1600/Bowles+-+Alphabets+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4DOEXiCp2w30tbynA3az7dJu4kESUEDXtzJjdSOALLD4QobdzuYJxQ9in588uIMMMoB7rU9XoKapNm4wOZsEzeQJitb1a8SGJ9xIvv97mYwT8GcJ2rHbp0MlTlwCK7t_fMCy/s400/Bowles+-+Alphabets+-+1.jpg" /></a>
<div></div>In the mean time I salute John Morgan and his colleagues, and contemplate with satisfaction the use of this traditional letter on a major public building. It is worth recalling that, as this blog has noted, it is barely ten years since a weakly-drawn ‘Trajan’ letter was used by well-meaning but poorly informed restorers to paint the ship’s name at the stern of HMS <i>Victory</i>.
<div></div>This blog was begun principally in order to register criticism of the director of the National Gallery who had its name cut in big imperial Roman letters on the hitherto unblemished portico of the Greek revival building for which he was responsible, an act that it would be an understatement to call insensitive. He has since departed from his post. It has also told the dismal story of the making of the clumsy new numerals that disfigure the front door of Ten Downing Street.
<div></div>Since Bowles included the makers of grave-stones among the clients to whom his guide is offered, I should include a note in this post on some work by James Sutton, since he was the first letter-cutter to make use of the Bowles alphabet in his work, and he has shown how effective it can be. This memorial that he cut is in a country church in Kent.
<div></div>
<div></div>
<div></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4QziEocgJO1bFwSqxE0Bqo2WvTAwzbkeExnOfHSynFiCzcF8xvn1hoUGSAdF1xL0MyemMoVKVEHIqyiXHr-ZuQ4y_kErSUvdfSTW1Z2hqBfV7IkNRwzzU5_Bgo57nqEZbYv9n/s1600/Gravestone+-+Prentis+-+Newnham+-+Sutton+1964.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4QziEocgJO1bFwSqxE0Bqo2WvTAwzbkeExnOfHSynFiCzcF8xvn1hoUGSAdF1xL0MyemMoVKVEHIqyiXHr-ZuQ4y_kErSUvdfSTW1Z2hqBfV7IkNRwzzU5_Bgo57nqEZbYv9n/s400/Gravestone+-+Prentis+-+Newnham+-+Sutton+1964.jpg" /></a>
<div></div>And here is the inscription on his monument to Admiral Sir Philip Vian, which is in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral.
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-lUmS-S4_vO6ESpuw0t3ansoUKz0aw4UtfrEZ51FcDTqmkautpxxElPv_OBrcppM2NbByd60UCN8s-_IV0W7nTC4JmQiZuYpb47PcIJFUb7eU_95rgWbtQHAq-JUHOdSDlGu8/s1600/Vian+2+a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-lUmS-S4_vO6ESpuw0t3ansoUKz0aw4UtfrEZ51FcDTqmkautpxxElPv_OBrcppM2NbByd60UCN8s-_IV0W7nTC4JmQiZuYpb47PcIJFUb7eU_95rgWbtQHAq-JUHOdSDlGu8/s320/Vian+2+a.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<div></div>
<div></div>It is not far from the monument that, originally having been made for Cardinal Wolsey but not used for him, was stored with other accumulated royal property at Windsor and handed over for the burial of Nelson in 1806. It bears a good inscription in relief letters of gilded brass.
<div></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfvORjh_UoHpiXHAig3ZVBRaNGrdCK-MNuW02KTEovEpDcYHlVab8Y5hW-MYKjf0C9UWn-E9aA_vTCFtfSXc2dvUtKa-TAsflPZFlsxOUZdDUt8XIhCCC_CbOHJZlK-LO1McU7/s1600/Nelson+tomb,+St+Pauls.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfvORjh_UoHpiXHAig3ZVBRaNGrdCK-MNuW02KTEovEpDcYHlVab8Y5hW-MYKjf0C9UWn-E9aA_vTCFtfSXc2dvUtKa-TAsflPZFlsxOUZdDUt8XIhCCC_CbOHJZlK-LO1McU7/s400/Nelson+tomb,+St+Pauls.jpg" /></a>
<div></div>I made the image of the monument to Admiral Vian with the kind permission of the Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral, by whose courtesy it is shown here.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-37523824797118942652013-10-06T16:07:00.000+00:002014-04-05T09:38:21.848+00:00Commercial at<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdo3KEOxDRU1ObxZu69a6QmWtwdpkdyVthSKQ-JMjlflRk6xxDw0SwkUOWV4IWbkT7QNd68sw4Y62xFgyXYjSvBsnlxNgtfY6t_xizTGCI0GTQ3hCIb-x3hkHd0ZfOyMX4lq8S/s1600/@-sign+Georgia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdo3KEOxDRU1ObxZu69a6QmWtwdpkdyVthSKQ-JMjlflRk6xxDw0SwkUOWV4IWbkT7QNd68sw4Y62xFgyXYjSvBsnlxNgtfY6t_xizTGCI0GTQ3hCIb-x3hkHd0ZfOyMX4lq8S/s400/@-sign+Georgia.jpg" /></a></div>
<i>Note: this post is now followed by a Postscript that its readers are recommended to look at.</i>
<br><br/>
<div></div>
The ‘commercial at’, the character @, has needed an entry in this blog for some time, and indeed I have drafted many texts on it without posting them. This was not so much because the Wikipedia article on @ was seriously defective. It does, as one might expect, supply a great deal of what is needed. But the published information has failed to settle some of the puzzling details that we have some right to expect would have been resolved by now.
<div></div>
In his mostly excellent brief history for a non-professional readership, <i>Ancient writing and its influence </i>(1932), the palaeographer B. L. Ullman rather rashly remarked that,
<div></div>
‘The national hands which grew out of cursive preserved a still greater number of ligatures. The Carolingian hand suppressed most of them... But some of them were too well established and therefore have persisted to this day. The most important of all was that of et, introduced into formal writing by half uncial. We use it in English for “and”, the equivalent for Latin et, and call it “ampersand” (“and per se and”) a name that arose when this character was placed at the end of the alphabet and was recited with the other letters: “x, y, z, and, per se [by itself] (the character standing for) and”. This has taken on many different forms in different styles of writing and printing, but nearly all are based on the old & and the italic &. ... Other ligatures still in use are ae (æ) ... There is also the sign @, which is really for ad, with an exaggerated uncial d.’
<div></div>
The ‘lay’ or arrangement of types in the compositor’s case, although it had mostly become fairly standardized, tended to vary in some of its details from printing-house to printing-house, according to the kind of work that was chiefly set there. The abandonment of long s and its ligatures in about 1800, which had occupied nearly twenty sorts of the roman and italic founts, freed up some space in the case. The 1892 edition of the <i>Practical Printing</i> of John Southward showed a series of non-alphabetic characters in its example of an ‘improved’ upper case which had not been in a normal case earlier in the century.
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSr1_4emdNlByK7mWqW1KdX1eduZBMM8ub4D9l5sVk3lKy4t0s9Lo5JDudq1tsRKdKErXMABXKwQS-Qh3UBpalrm30JE0q-8BJjRi8ZfGSpBC7sfOdDXVPzMt4-zmItOn3zINI/s1600/Southward+1892+-+improved+lay+-+det.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSr1_4emdNlByK7mWqW1KdX1eduZBMM8ub4D9l5sVk3lKy4t0s9Lo5JDudq1tsRKdKErXMABXKwQS-Qh3UBpalrm30JE0q-8BJjRi8ZfGSpBC7sfOdDXVPzMt4-zmItOn3zINI/s400/Southward+1892+-+improved+lay+-+det.jpg" /></a>
</div>
<div></div>
These, shown above, in the top three rows of the upper case, included not only @ and the mostly redundant ‘per cent’ character %, but also the pound sign £, the dollar $, and also types for the calligraphic ‘per’ and for lb (the pound weight). These were all needed for use in commercial jobs like the printing of catalogues of goods for sale. The & was included in one of the small boxes at the left hand side of the lower case, which had long been its traditional place. The lb character with its cross stroke became obsolete, but it is worth noting that it was used throughout the 29 volumes of the 1911 edition of the <i>Encyclopaedia Britannica, </i>set on the Monotype machine.
<div></div>
Many of these characters migrated to the typewriter, which was introduced as a commercial machine for use in offices. No significant domestic market for it was imagined by its original makers, just as the first makers of computers notoriously could not believe that there might be a domestic market for their product. The ‘commercial characters’ were not found on every early typewriter, but it seems to be agreed that most of them, including @, had been placed on typewriters by the early twentieth century, and thereafter few typewriter keyboards lacked them. For this reason these symbols were unquestioningly adopted by the makers of computer keyboards, who were rigidly bound by tradition.
<div></div>
The ‘per’ symbol (which was admittedly a rather elaborate design) failed to get onto the normal typewriter keyboard and has faded from memory. However, one symbol that did, although few users of computers had any idea what it was for and how to use it, was of course @. Since it appeared to be both universally available and largely useless, it was adopted, as we know (the event has been well-documented), for use with the internet and with email. And although it has been a nuisance to the designers of fonts, who have rarely found its form easy to adapt to match traditional letters, there seems little likelihood that we shall get rid of it easily. The @ we have is rooted in the commercial handwriting of the 19th century.
<div></div>
If this is the case, we are entitled to ask why this is, and where and when did it begin to be used? Surely this is a question that it should be easy enough to answer.
<div></div>
Since the question was of no interest to academic historians of writing or typography, enthusiastic amateurs entered the discussion, scattering a profusion of badly-informed ideas. Not long ago, the blogosphere seemed to be full of their excited chatter. Here is some of it, from Italian and Spanish blogs:
<div></div>
<i>Scoperta! la @ è italiana! </i>(Discovery! The @ is Italian!)
<div></div><i>La chiocciola @ di e-mail è una invenzione tutta italiana</i> (The @ is a wholly Italian invention)
<div></div><i>¿Creó un sevillano la @?</i> (Did a Sevillian create the @?)
<div></div>
<i>Sevilla utiliza la @ como reclamo turístico (</i>Seville uses the @ as publicity for tourism.)
<div></div><i>La arroba no es de Sevilla (ni de Italia)</i> (The @ is not from Seville, nor from Italy)
<div></div><i>La @ ya se utilizaba en 1448 en Aragón </i>(The @ was already in use in Aragon in 1448)
<div></div>
It would be churlish to spoil their evident enjoyment of such stuff. (Googling will bring up plenty more examples.) We can only hope that they lead to lines of enquiry that are frankly more worth pursuing.
<div></div>
One of these is the claim that the @ stood for the <i>amphora</i>, the vessel for wine or oil that stood for a unit of measurement known to Greeks and Arabs, and that the Anglo-Saxons (commercial rivals from England and the USA) eventually stole the symbol for their own use. The other line, worth pursuing because it has left its trace in current usage, is that the @ stands for <i>arroba</i>, a unit of weight and capacity of arabic origin, long used in the Spanish-speaking world, which was only eliminated by the adoption of the metric system. <i>Arroba </i>is still the Hispanic word for @.
<div></div>
I have no intention here of raking through among the embarrassingly cute terms that are currently used for the @ in other languages by writers who have stumbled on it for the first time, like the <i>chiocciola </i>(snail) in Italian – see above – or the ‘monkey’s tail’ (Dutch), or the eymologically dubious <i>arrobase </i>that is used for some reason in France. Most of the discussion in circulation is dismally facetious and credulous.
<div></div>
Still, since there is usually some basis underlying many myths in current circulation, one purpose in offering this post (which I hope will soon be rendered obsolete) is to identify these myths and to distinguish between them.
<div></div>
I said that Ullman was rash in appearing to link the use of @ to &, saying that both symbols were ‘still in use’, though in justice to him one must note that – unless one takes his reference to ‘uncial’ literally – he did not assign an early manuscript use to it (as at least one online source has accused him of doing). The ampersand did indeed arrive in current use in the 15th century with the revived Carolingian hand of humanism, and it was adopted for their types by Italian printers like Jenson. It is sometimes a delightful design, which has attracted some major punchcutters, but one should note that it was unwise of the BBC in 2012 to let an enthusiast attempt to trace its history on its Radio 4 (of all unsuitable non-visual media). In that context it should have been noted that the inspirational punchcutter was Granjon rather than Garamont, and that the old Roman ‘Tironian’ shorthand symbol for ‘and’ (looking a bit like the figure 7) was not an ligature of e and t, and although it remained in common use in gothic script and types, it (and they) faded eventually from use.
<div></div>
But what about the @. When did it enter into use in commercial writing? Like most people, I suspect, I thought it had been normal English usage in business papers for some centuries. Then I tried to find examples. It was not easy. I found nothing from the 17th century. One of the earliest convincing examples I have found was something – but hardly more than an ill-defined scribble – in the papers of William Strahan (1715–1785), whose prosperity among contemporary printers in London was commonly supposed to be due to his exemplary business methods. The example that follows is simply my rough sketch from a document of 1739 (Add. MS 48800, f. 17v) among the Strahan Papers in the British Library.
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigKqCyRTx0CCY1V8di3vWPyyeFeVfT0DDOukaTC8VKjsUKf0z-QIauSo9Mhu52wJ5G7_eFd6xX-BV1G58zNRmrF207l67Lxtke0vp-WmWKDqrYHzWksfrpVWQugEtvoMMmJRWP/s1600/Strahan+use+of+@+1739+-+det+1+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigKqCyRTx0CCY1V8di3vWPyyeFeVfT0DDOukaTC8VKjsUKf0z-QIauSo9Mhu52wJ5G7_eFd6xX-BV1G58zNRmrF207l67Lxtke0vp-WmWKDqrYHzWksfrpVWQugEtvoMMmJRWP/s400/Strahan+use+of+@+1739+-+det+1+b.jpg" /></a></div>
<div></div>
It is the earliest example that I have found. Thereafter (but much later and far more slowly than I had thought), the symbol did indeed begin to be adopted in British practice for ‘at a certain price’ or ‘at a rate of’. This example of the @ as a printing type, which is the first that I have found anywhere, is in a specimen of the Miller typefoundry in Edinburgh, 1822.
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyIOwhzuRGGq8PGAU8YvEGPDtyfX4o3DUAaJ803VtYWPGY9csalNqt6v4Nr2o0kxj4uprBOgD7vBCLpzrO0mnB2EfIv66RT9st7WENsZIJ0wgIL7uEmzHqFC290Ciigs2xevZH/s1600/Miller+P2+p+1822+with+@+-+500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyIOwhzuRGGq8PGAU8YvEGPDtyfX4o3DUAaJ803VtYWPGY9csalNqt6v4Nr2o0kxj4uprBOgD7vBCLpzrO0mnB2EfIv66RT9st7WENsZIJ0wgIL7uEmzHqFC290Ciigs2xevZH/s400/Miller+P2+p+1822+with+@+-+500.jpg" /></a></div>
<div></div>
It can be seen again in an English manual of printing (T. C. Hansard, <i>Typographia</i>, 1825), in a passage reproducing handwritten book-keeping. (Notice, too, the use here of a typographical version of the symbol for ‘per’.)
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdE8-KxEzKeezkNahjmslrC4w0X_-e_kkBvQrtg77rjI6K-v1zncerns24e_xtVecEmresAIbcoccB2x6we3iFJyeDrdUooBdla11I53yGVh66eQCLHJnPC9dknVLkrLxy5zvL/s1600/@+in+Hansard+1825+p761+2+ab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdE8-KxEzKeezkNahjmslrC4w0X_-e_kkBvQrtg77rjI6K-v1zncerns24e_xtVecEmresAIbcoccB2x6we3iFJyeDrdUooBdla11I53yGVh66eQCLHJnPC9dknVLkrLxy5zvL/s400/@+in+Hansard+1825+p761+2+ab.jpg" /></a></div>
</div>
<div></div>
Here, finally, is an example of @ in a British handbook of instructions for book-keeping, C. Morrison, <i>Practical book-keeping</i>, Edinburgh, 1838. It is very nicely drawn, but its date is quite late.
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJIUzYNsp7cBa9WWSznoUmw18_erLPQPppiozIa-1S3sH6rWIEbbNyZ6MV3VQNfqb7XIbaBNvcPGjpP3Mh_oss2GkVZztSp-GlJxW3j4YA_-o1820VoyuxqcX6JxF8xYghAfm0/s1600/Morrison+1838+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJIUzYNsp7cBa9WWSznoUmw18_erLPQPppiozIa-1S3sH6rWIEbbNyZ6MV3VQNfqb7XIbaBNvcPGjpP3Mh_oss2GkVZztSp-GlJxW3j4YA_-o1820VoyuxqcX6JxF8xYghAfm0/s400/Morrison+1838+7.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div></div>
What about the Spanish connection? In 2000 there was a flurry of excitement about the ‘discovery’ of the early use of @ by an Italian academic. The source was Professor Giorgio Stabile, of La Sapienza university in Rome, who was engaged on an article for the Treccani encyclopedia, one of the enterprises that Google and Wikipedia have to some extent displaced for use in our current research.
<div></div>
Stabile let it be known to some friends in the media that in the course of his researches into commercial documents he had found an early use of @ in the correspondence of some Italian merchants based in Seville in 1536. This discovery made news, and it still generates some excitement in journals that should know better, like the <i>New York Times </i>and the <i><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2000/jul/31/internetnews.internationalnews">Guardian</a></i>, who keep obsolete links alive to Stabile and his important researches.
<div></div>
It would have been satisfactory if Prof. Stabile had been more candid about the source of his ‘discovery’. To his credit, he did later acknowledge that his ‘research’ among original documents consisted in this case of finding an example in a well-known, well edited and well illustrated published collection of commercial correspondence that had been made some decades before by Federigo Melis, <i>Documenti per la storia economica dei secoli XIII–XVI, con una nota di Paleografia Commerciale di Elena Cecchi</i>. Firenze: Olschki, 1972 (Istituto Internazionale di Storia economica ‘F. Datini’ Prato, Pubblicazioni – Serie I. Documenti, 1). The documents that Stabile claimed to have found are illustrated on pages 214–215, and the originals are among the Strozzi papers in the Archivio di Stato, Florence.
<div></div>
Stabile explained that the symbol @ in this text stood for containers of wine measured by the unit known as the <i>amphora</i>, and he suggested (but without providing sources) that this was a widely-used Mediterranean unit of measurement. He might have added – but he did not – that in several of the commercial letters shown in his book by Melis, the @ is also commonly used for the date, in phrases like ‘Ad di 20 di gennaio’ (on 20 January), which takes it closer to its later use in business documents. He made no reference to its more general use in contemporary Italian commercial handwriting or the <i>scrittura mercantesca</i>, on which, as its title shows, a useful appendix in Melis’s book was contibuted by Elena Cecchi.
<div></div>
How far did the historians of writing contribute to the story? For writing of the Italian Renaissance they gave most of their attention to the <i>cancellaresca corsiva, </i>the official ‘chancery hand’ derived from the humanistic cursive of the 15th century which was shown in a well-known series of printed handbooks of the 16th century. All the same, in several of these handbooks an example of the gothic commercial hand, the <i>mercantesca</i>, was often to be found at the back. There is in fact a little handbook of the hand by Eustachio Celebrino, an associate of the writing master Tagliente, <i>Il modo di imparare di scrivere lettera merchantescha, </i>1525, but it does not appear to include examples of the use of @.
<div></div>
The earliest example of the @ character that I have found in an Italian writing book is in a document in the commercial hand in a letter dated 8 May 1557, a woodcut at the end of the first publication of Giovanni Francesco Cresci, the <i>Essemplare di scrivere più sorti lettere</i>, published in Rome in 1560, with the phrase, <i>ponete @ conto nostro</i> – ‘put [the sum] to our account’.
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8ruwsB-MMI4QiHMEscYzRfNdaNSyWxk3KxrkQ7ejMwwhNLTHLqOs-lbDl2SYDH7e727Y3NiDHnjKXfbf2ldfT3UaRUXqIFMkmh_kGxHkecwGwk82wbV5U5VS8aJpvEuQtGQY6/s1600/Cresci+-+Essemplare+1560+-+Lettera+merchantile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8ruwsB-MMI4QiHMEscYzRfNdaNSyWxk3KxrkQ7ejMwwhNLTHLqOs-lbDl2SYDH7e727Y3NiDHnjKXfbf2ldfT3UaRUXqIFMkmh_kGxHkecwGwk82wbV5U5VS8aJpvEuQtGQY6/s400/Cresci+-+Essemplare+1560+-+Lettera+merchantile.jpg" /></a></div>
<div></div>
And here is the @ again in a document dated 1569 in Cresci’s <i>Il perfetto scrittore</i> of about 1570: <i>la valuta di libre centouinticinque di seta calabrese presa da noi @ Ragion di [scudi] tre la libra per pagar a tempo dj xviij mesi proximi @ venire</i> (the value of a hundred and twenty-five pounds of silk from Calabria, obtained from us at a rate of three <i>scudi </i>per pound, to be paid within eighteen months).
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZtNArXCZOUixSG2J4S7O_eeu8OgKie8NCMbpBOySlUgKJMM-0aWbZQ7LciR5vZ8O5k8-VfJGfD8yr9_4TlqutE3dXEGxQhbM-s82uG8qhXu_1IcHJy8rbIdYVgWByFm34AsBf/s1600/Cresci+-+Perfetto+scrittore+1569+2+bw+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZtNArXCZOUixSG2J4S7O_eeu8OgKie8NCMbpBOySlUgKJMM-0aWbZQ7LciR5vZ8O5k8-VfJGfD8yr9_4TlqutE3dXEGxQhbM-s82uG8qhXu_1IcHJy8rbIdYVgWByFm34AsBf/s400/Cresci+-+Perfetto+scrittore+1569+2+bw+-+2.jpg" /></a></div>
<div></div>
From these examples, there seems little doubt that the @ was in regular use in more or less its later sense of ‘the commercial at’ in Italian documents of the 16th century. If it disappears from later writing books, this is probably because they were not much concerned with the gothic commercial hands. There are intermittent examples that have been published online of later French and Spanish handwritten usage, but very few with reference to specific, dated documents of which the present whereabouts is clearly specified. For the <i>arroba</i>, that term of Arabic origin, the later Spanish character in printing was indeed @, but it seems to me that this usage may simply be the result of borrowing ‘Anglo-Saxon’ type, since by 1900 the @ was widely available from typefounders in Europe and in North America. We need far more authenticated examples of its use (and its meaning) in earlier, dated handwritten documents.
<div></div>
I ought to add a final illustration of the @ in the type specimen of J. B. Clement-Sturme in Valencia, 1833, details of which are given in the admirable list of Spanish type specimens by Albert Corbeto (<i>Catalogación y estudio de las muestras de letras impresas hasta el año 1833</i>), published in 2010. The @ (with a design that is based on a roman a) is used to give the price of the type by weight, the unit being the <i>arroba</i>: <i>Precio di cada @ castellana, 162½ Reales</i>.
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVGEZ6c6aVFiH8pO-5OdQFNxn3kC7TsvcwFllMZtaUds00WYT7RNfFEHfUaWHsIvlptPPVwGG1hMnJFUkrsoHuoFFYXUQzPEI6H7_Kfm1kVeAKZlUUruVaL8YzlHi0r9wJ0gze/s1600/Clement-Sturme+spec+Valencia+1833.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVGEZ6c6aVFiH8pO-5OdQFNxn3kC7TsvcwFllMZtaUds00WYT7RNfFEHfUaWHsIvlptPPVwGG1hMnJFUkrsoHuoFFYXUQzPEI6H7_Kfm1kVeAKZlUUruVaL8YzlHi0r9wJ0gze/s400/Clement-Sturme+spec+Valencia+1833.jpg" /></a></div>
<div></div>
I am sure that there is much documentation that can be done by the many researchers who trawl through the innumerable business records that survive in major collections. I hope that, in the course of their work, they will spare a thought for historians in other fields, and save some well-documented images for us that will fill in the many gaps that exist and which still frustrate the fulfilment of our wish to complete the story.
<br><br/>
<div></div><div></div>
<b><i>Postscript</i></b>
<div></div>
This post began with a reference to discontent with the confused, often badly-informed and sometimes chauvinistic sources of information that frustrated my own attempts to understand where this symbol came from and what it has meant. It made me doubt whether I should add yet another contribution to the debate.
<div></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzasWCzU8AZzQzpHhQnq7uvsMO8wRlB7Afqan2Usc5281qB3wZ_Nd4UtWQoA2-MuuzeYenWEN7PGjz-S3nYVwwRNEYWrovX3ehoq-aWW0No2t5qOWqthIo708QvCqFukon28R0/s1600/Smith+-+29+janv+2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzasWCzU8AZzQzpHhQnq7uvsMO8wRlB7Afqan2Usc5281qB3wZ_Nd4UtWQoA2-MuuzeYenWEN7PGjz-S3nYVwwRNEYWrovX3ehoq-aWW0No2t5qOWqthIo708QvCqFukon28R0/s400/Smith+-+29+janv+2013.jpg" /></a></div>
<div></div>
However I am glad that I did, because it has led me to discover a substantial body of work that will do much to clear up the confusion. In January 2013 Marc Smith, Professor of Mediaeval and Modern Palaeography at the École nationale des Chartes, the leading institution in its field in France, gave an illustrated lecture on the @ in French, a link to which can be found on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZLWtvfSqCY">YouTube</a>. He has published a summary of his lecture in a printed journal in France (<i>Graphê </i>55, July 2013), and he plans to put its substance into a book. One hopes that it will include a generous selection from the many images of documents, handwritten and printed, some of which are familiar but most of which are wholly unknown, that accompany the lecture.
<div></div>
At the heart of his argument is the question of the <i>arroba</i>, the unit of weight (and capacity) of twenty-five pounds that was a part of Spain’s heritage from its arabic past until the metric system overtook it. One meaning of @ in Spain and Portugal, and to some extent in France, was indeed the <i>arroba</i>, but it stood for many other things too. Professor Smith shows that it was something of an all-purpose abbreviation for many words beginning with a, like <i>avoir</i>. In one of his documents, in French, dated 1391, it is used for initial ‘an’. The current French term <i>arrobase </i>appears to be simply based on the Spanish plural <i>arrobas</i>. But he notes, as I have done, that English speakers belatedly adopted a continental variant of an accented form of a as ‘à’, tending to use it where it was a convenient way of saving space by not writing ‘at’ in full. As a universal term, he appears to be content with the anglophone <i>commercial at</i>.
<div></div>
As a palaeographer, Marc Smith was well qualified to find and to interpret the many early documents in which @ has appeared. But his researches have been wide-ranging, and he has done good work among handbooks for book-keepers, typefounders’ specimens, several from Spain, beginning with Pedro Ifern, 1793 (but he shows a rather crude example, possibly cut on wood, in the <i>Ortografìa de la lengua castellana </i>of the Real Academia Española, Madrid, 1754), collections of commercial correspondence, and typewriters. He offers the Caligraph No. 2 Commercial of 1883 as an early machine with a key for @. For French typefounders, with an eye on their neighbouring market in Spain, the @ stood for <i>arroba</i>. He has found a type for an English @ in Patrick Kelly, <i>Elements of book-keeping, </i>1805.
<div></div>
Since he does not substantially differ from the suggestions I make in my own text, I am inclined to leave it more or less as it was posted, but anyone wishing to take the matter further and stand on firm ground must turn to his account of his own extensive researches, and follow them as they progress. One hopes that they will.
<div></div>
JM 11 October 2013Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-32102624547154793152013-03-17T08:48:00.002+00:002013-04-10T08:25:51.172+00:00This is a fragment<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp-DghfqzvtrII5d_RW0NV17AduEomc67jZnG6Cbd0Os9vs9oGOVAnxlMIE108lDEPimeRJIgcGc5graM3FBfVi3tY6FJcDbPIm4qKIos_LrZ2YuhEh_gzxqwnJlF7VO4QJCGj/s1600/Alas+4+tr.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp-DghfqzvtrII5d_RW0NV17AduEomc67jZnG6Cbd0Os9vs9oGOVAnxlMIE108lDEPimeRJIgcGc5graM3FBfVi3tY6FJcDbPIm4qKIos_LrZ2YuhEh_gzxqwnJlF7VO4QJCGj/s320/Alas+4+tr.jpg" /></a>
<br /><br />The slate headstones of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire are the glories of their churchyards. Much of the stone came from the quarries of Swithland in Leicestershire, which were worked until the later 19th century. The headstones are a nuisance to the incumbents of the churches, getting in the way of the machines that cut the grass neatly but often score the surface of the stones as they hit them; the sheep which browse in some country graveyards are a gentler and more effective alternative. Where they are not wholly destroyed, gravestones are dealt with in various ways: often by uprooting them and setting them against a wall, or by laying them flat so the mower can pass over them. One of the more devilishly practical solutions to the problems they pose is not only to lay the stones flat but to make a dry and convenient path to the church door with them.
<br /><br />None of these actions has much to recommend it. Slate, set upright so that it drains naturally, is resistant to weathering, and its grain permits the cutting of fine detail. It withstands even the acid rain of urban environments which eats away the limestones that are also used for gravestones. Uprooting the stones and placing them against a wall tears them away from association with the original graves they were set to mark. Laying them flat allows water to penetrate, so that as it freezes the stone is shattered into its natural layers. Worst of all, when they are used as paving stones, not only does the damp penetrate but the fine and delicate surface is destroyed by the accumulated grit that is pounded into it, grinding away the detail. It takes an insensitive personality to be indifferent to such treatment.
<br /><br />This is a fragment of a headstone from a churchyard in Nottinghamshire which had become a paving stone. It measures about 18 by 13 inches. It is a fragment because it appears to have been quite deliberately reduced to a quarter or less of its original size by blows from a heavy hammer which have removed from it the name and the dates of the person it was designed to commemorate and they have also truncated the verse that had been cut below.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLznW8v7lSYyTJFdheiTu7wxDc6cRbM5x1IOtP5Thuph7LJvtiPaDqbkDvHEj-v8G6UcCmR6xqkxvVv-uxS_v1Q6Is3r5E7zzQHXAG8ct5Sl3rXxOFJ-25yDngWrLLApN1QGj6/s1600/Alas+4+-+det.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLznW8v7lSYyTJFdheiTu7wxDc6cRbM5x1IOtP5Thuph7LJvtiPaDqbkDvHEj-v8G6UcCmR6xqkxvVv-uxS_v1Q6Is3r5E7zzQHXAG8ct5Sl3rXxOFJ-25yDngWrLLApN1QGj6/s320/Alas+4+-+det.jpg" /></a>
<br /><br />
We shall never know the name. As for the verse, with a glance at similar examples one can guess how it may have read:
<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSi84YvkjSeWTb4Q-l8PfhjarejrHWgsFL5T-fL9-aay-rPHg_kmQZNyc8Ddmarz5I-jLB9bZuwuXSl_JROAm5JKFXlSe3y5egLABWAjscVnEcYom2CqQmbYk2Dru2PjW8ghXh/s1600/Alas+1+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSi84YvkjSeWTb4Q-l8PfhjarejrHWgsFL5T-fL9-aay-rPHg_kmQZNyc8Ddmarz5I-jLB9bZuwuXSl_JROAm5JKFXlSe3y5egLABWAjscVnEcYom2CqQmbYk2Dru2PjW8ghXh/s320/Alas+1+sm.jpg" /></a>
<br /><br />When I first saw the stone I was distressed by the sight of the damage, and by the erosion of the design that was already visible and which would continue if it was left to lie where I found it. I went into the church. I forget what I said, but it got the result I least expected. The hapless verger (or whatever he was – possibly even the incumbent) asked if I would like to take it away and look after it. It was staggeringly heavy. But somehow I got it back home and it now stands safely upright, as it had done originally, with what is left of its beautifully-cut message washed clean by the rain and often lit by sunshine.
<br /><br />That was a long time ago. Should I have accepted the offer? I do not think I could have removed a stone which still bore the name of a parishioner who had lived nearby, but it seemed to be worth doing something to preserve this anonymous fragment. Although I shall not name the church, I see that its current web page offers admiring tributes to the few, widely-spaced tombs that have been allowed to stay in its churchyard, and even has the temerity to praise their lettering. An image posted on Flickr in 2008 shows that the path to the door of the church is still made up of incised slate headstones.
<br /><br />The church must do what it can to look after itself, but it seems to me that there is a more wide-ranging and worthwhile question to be asked. Why, since by common consent this lettering belongs to a tradition of such quality, have letter-cutters let it die out?
<br /><br />I don’t want to see a flood of weak pastiches of the original vernacular idiom. (The work of Gill’s contemporaries, and of his pupils too, are reminders to us that there were very few who could ever string the bow of Odysseus.) But I should be glad to see some evidence in the work of modern artists that they are aware that we have a durable legacy from the date of this fragment from Nottinghamshire, which I guess to be about 1760, the period of the work of the letter-cutter, typefounder and printer, John Baskerville.
<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5SmrF1uvCRIQOEKrvKBGiIDAGYcikHwV_glPtJnbg8t7kxnmWfvcrR6oDUocxSyqqqY4nkBm59ZeGo3qRsJNq_O97QU2TmGr-aythLHlmZ6wLnqUKm7uze1uBqnWmqMUegyBh/s1600/Alas+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5SmrF1uvCRIQOEKrvKBGiIDAGYcikHwV_glPtJnbg8t7kxnmWfvcrR6oDUocxSyqqqY4nkBm59ZeGo3qRsJNq_O97QU2TmGr-aythLHlmZ6wLnqUKm7uze1uBqnWmqMUegyBh/s320/Alas+2.jpg" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-14691977638369573812012-07-29T16:28:00.000+00:002014-09-21T08:43:33.408+00:00Caractères de l’Université<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsy2S9cv8WMdguvW_aHKkRtiF1qzi71SnMgbzbOgh7jXviQDUeIRVqf0TieNkEw70871LognlhWyk9WklZ0nYiKh_TKgLdbA1gGo9JB5JFKyz5Dmr8lciR0PiftL1p0v1KpMLK/s1600/1+Spec+1845+-+det+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="398" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsy2S9cv8WMdguvW_aHKkRtiF1qzi71SnMgbzbOgh7jXviQDUeIRVqf0TieNkEw70871LognlhWyk9WklZ0nYiKh_TKgLdbA1gGo9JB5JFKyz5Dmr8lciR0PiftL1p0v1KpMLK/s400/1+Spec+1845+-+det+2.jpg" /></a>
<br /><br />This type on a body of about 18 points appears in the big type specimen book of the Imprimerie Royale, Paris, 1845. It is the first known published reappearance of the type by Jean Jannon of Sedan for which matrices had been acquired by the Imprimerie Royale in 1641, and the first text to link it to the name of Garamont.
<br /><br />It is a detail of a table headed <em>Spécimen des caractères romains employés par l’Imprimerie Royale, de 1640 à 1846</em> – yes, ‘1846’, although the title page of the book has the date 1845. The table, showing roman and italic types of three centuries, is spread across facing pages.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDVgtlBcHQb4QLPTkqblTleNPBiSo9yppt1wB9_DiCwFceJtVVRgrt0MSIJPyE9gcD1HjYnGEezcL1FWkusBkME8nm0z5t7NMdo1s33qE677i_rSBQCkIZ6gBDwQwlEqTVoiSX/s1600/2+IR+1845+-+Car.+romains+table+48-49+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="263" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDVgtlBcHQb4QLPTkqblTleNPBiSo9yppt1wB9_DiCwFceJtVVRgrt0MSIJPyE9gcD1HjYnGEezcL1FWkusBkME8nm0z5t7NMdo1s33qE677i_rSBQCkIZ6gBDwQwlEqTVoiSX/s400/2+IR+1845+-+Car.+romains+table+48-49+b.jpg" /></a>
<br />
It appears, paradoxically, in a long preliminary section on non-Latin types, not on romans and italics, headed ‘Notice sur les types étrangers du spécimen de l’Imprimerie royale’. The text and the table were reprinted from the same types as a book with this title in 1847, making a volume that is easier to find in libraries. The table from this reprint is familiar to readers of Updike’s <em>Printing types</em>, where it appears as his fig. 327. But as Updike reproduced it both the heading and a final panel on the right with descriptive notes on the types were omitted. Updike’s caption is ‘Comparative table of types used by the French National Printing House from its foundation to 1825’, a date that was derived from the heading to the last column, ‘Types gravés par M. Marcellin Legrand. 1825’.
<br /><br />
The present post is not much more than a footnote, albeit a rather long and involved one, to one or two others in this blog that have been dedicated during the last year in different ways to Claude Garamont (d. 1561) and to some of the types that have borne his name. I have repeated one or two images from them, together with some passages that I have already quoted in the earliest and longest post, but which may be difficult to find, in an attempt to offer some explanation for one of the remaining unsolved puzzles connected to them: the types of Jean Jannon are often referred to as if their original and proper title was <em>caractères de l’Université</em>. Was this true? And what did the phrase mean?
<br /><br />
The description of the type in the specimen of 1845, omitted from Updike’s illustration, is linked to the note reference (1), and it runs as follows:
<br /><br />
<em>(1) L’existence de ces types, qu’on désignait sous le nom de caractères de l’Université, remonte aux premières années du XVIe siècle. La date que l’on donne ici est celle de l’établissement de l’Imprimerie royale, qui fit usage de ces caractères jusqu’à l’époque où ils purent être remplacés par les types de Louis XIV.</em>
<br /><br />
(These types, which were known by the name ‘types of the University’, date from the first years of the 16th century. The date given here [1640] is that of the establishment of the Imprimerie royale, which used these types until the time when they could be replaced by the types of Louis XIV [the <em>romain du roi</em>].)
<br /><br />
This is the beginning of a long and confused story.
<br /><br />
As I have noted elsewhere, a set of matrices for three sizes of roman and italic types, for the modern bodies of 18, 24 and 36 points, was bought by Cramoisy, the director of the Imprimerie royale, from Jean Jannon in March 1641. This purchase, which was unknown to Beatrice Warde (and which makes nonsense of a part of her narrative of 1926) was first reported in the catalogue of an exhibition, <em>L’art du livre à l’Imprimerie nationale</em>, held at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, in 1951. The catalogue entry did not give the <em>cote</em> or call number of the document in the Archives nationales in Paris relating to the purchase, but it was supplied by H.-J. Martin in his study of printing in Paris in the 17th century published in 1969: it is Ét. XLIII, liasse 32.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJx3A_Vtt86woMpWKLvWIxk81uY-ienvk1p-SehZGaOcXRz-h0J7TPw08u8H7C-iz4ZP-B1VZW_-BglM6fJDVDskctdC2JOzcZx4PH0pWbftBiDbX2bXVdHeE4brvAdEjz6t7/s1600/3+Purchase+of+Jannon+frappes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="241" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJx3A_Vtt86woMpWKLvWIxk81uY-ienvk1p-SehZGaOcXRz-h0J7TPw08u8H7C-iz4ZP-B1VZW_-BglM6fJDVDskctdC2JOzcZx4PH0pWbftBiDbX2bXVdHeE4brvAdEjz6t7/s400/3+Purchase+of+Jannon+frappes.jpg" /></a>
<br /><br />
The document names <em>Six frappes de matrice assauoir gros et petitz canons, gros parangons, et leurs istalicques, auecq trois moulles pour fondre les caracteres desdictes six frappes</em> (six sets of matrices for Gros and Petit Canon, Gros Parangon, and their italics, with three moulds to cast types from these six sets of matrices).<br />
<br />
The term <em>caractères de l’Université</em> does not appear in this document, nor has it been found in any other of this period. In the inventory of the materials of the Imprimerie royale made in 1691 (BnF, MS nouv. acq. fr. 2511) the matrices are listed correctly by their sizes, but the term <em>caractères de l’Université</em> does not appear. As I have noted in a previous post, only the two smaller italic types of Jannon, for Petit Canon and Gros Parangon, appear ever to have been used by the Imprimerie royale, and I have found no use during the 17th century of either the roman or the italic of Gros Canon, nor of the two smaller romans.<br />
<br />
In 1828, the Imprimerie royale having accumulated some very mixed materials including some imported from England, an inventory was drawn up under the authority of its director, the Baron de Villebois. It is in a series of volumes with the printed title <em>Recueil des empreintes des poinçons et des matrices des caractères français et exotiques … existans à l’Imprimerie royale</em>, which are kept with the original punches and matrices in the <em>Cabinet des Poinçons</em> at the Atelier du livre d’art et de l’estampe, the ‘craft division’ of the Imprimerie nationale de France that was set up in 2005 at at Ivry-sur-Seine. For types for which there were no punches, like those of Jannon, impressions from cast types appear to have been made in ink, by hand.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4lIDpwSEYbL6-7KWLzI4ErntblROfr6xLN8AiLjIzr-WzrCdui73m5J-QNiqLkzTgowzPXFkscDZ2UJ-A6e0AN_snpdAdoy-KSd_3_20DyiLImzZRZ7MaGmhUYByM7lkBjOno/s1600/4+Recueil+des+empreintes+1828+-+Car+de+l%2527Univ+-+Gros+canon+ital+1+-+det.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="194" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4lIDpwSEYbL6-7KWLzI4ErntblROfr6xLN8AiLjIzr-WzrCdui73m5J-QNiqLkzTgowzPXFkscDZ2UJ-A6e0AN_snpdAdoy-KSd_3_20DyiLImzZRZ7MaGmhUYByM7lkBjOno/s400/4+Recueil+des+empreintes+1828+-+Car+de+l%2527Univ+-+Gros+canon+ital+1+-+det.jpg" /></a>
<br />
<br />
Volume I of the inventory begins with an account of <em>les caractères dits de l’Université</em> (‘the types known as those of the University’) and those of Luce, with a note that both types were <em>hors de service</em> (not in current use). This is the reference at the foot of the title page:
<br /><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnMDqixtTqh49_3QqVjY3EmTV7oMLg4Gwhopg2dL38c2E7DYhN96uzeXIMwYbPsbJSjJLQFPHchE3XN8qInF-K7JS-KBZgWOyGOR8EQmLFfgOPGi9hwBAOP2n28QJ0oX1sK2oK/s1600/5+Inv+1828+-+title+-+det+1+a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="122" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnMDqixtTqh49_3QqVjY3EmTV7oMLg4Gwhopg2dL38c2E7DYhN96uzeXIMwYbPsbJSjJLQFPHchE3XN8qInF-K7JS-KBZgWOyGOR8EQmLFfgOPGi9hwBAOP2n28QJ0oX1sK2oK/s400/5+Inv+1828+-+title+-+det+1+a.jpg" /></a>
<br /><br />
This is the first known use of this term <em>caractères de l’Université</em> in connection with the type of Jannon. It is also the first known modern showing of these types.
<br /><br />
Apart from those for non-Latin types like Garamont’s greeks, these matrices from Jannon were the only old materials in the collection of the Imprimerie royale. According to the author of the section on roman types in the specimen of the Imprimerie royale, 1845 (who was apparently F. A. Duprat, the <em>chef du service</em> in charge of its type foundry), ‘when the royal printing-office was set up, it had been furnished with types that were cut for the use of the printers of Paris’, types of which the origin dated back to King François I (reigned 1515–47), and which were ‘attributed to Garamont’. These were used until new types (the <em>romain du roi</em>) were made to the order of Louis XIV especially for the use of his printing-office. This is the passage:<br />
<br />
<em>Lorsqu’en 1640 Louis XIII, agissant sous l’inspiration du Cardinal Richelieu, fit établir une imprimerie dans le palais du Louvre, on l’approvisionna de caractères gravés pour les imprimeurs de Paris. On continua de se servir de ces caractères, dont l’origine remontait à François Ier, et qu’on attribuait à Garamont, jusqu’à la fin du XVIIe siècle, époque à laquelle Louis XIV ordonna qu’une typographie spéciale serait gravée pour le service de son imprimerie.</em>
<br /><br />
An early specimen of the types of the Imprimerie royale dated 1643 (of which a facsimile was published in 1958) shows that this was a fair summary: the types used at the Imprimerie royale were those of Garamont, Granjon and other punchcutters of the 16th century that were still in common use in Paris, and which were available, newly cast from old matrices, from several typefounders. Only the two smaller italics cast from the matrices of Jannon were added to this material and used occasionally.
<br /><br />
Duprat’s contemporary and a rival historian of the royal printing office, Auguste Bernard (1811–68), a printer’s son with some experience of work with Firmin Didot and as a proof-reader at the Imprimerie royale, was less careful in his wording. He wrote in his history of the Imprimerie royale (1867),
<br /><br />
<em>Les premieres caractères dont se servit l’Imprimerie royale, et dont on conserve les matrices, sont attribués à Garamond, célèbre graveur du seizième siècle, auquel on doit les types grecs de François Ier. Ils sont connus sous le nom de caractères de l’université. Leur forme est très gracieuse.</em>
<br /><br />
(‘The first types that the Imprimerie royale used, and of which the matrices are preserved, are attributed to Garamond, the celebrated punchcutter of the 16th century to whom we owe the greek types of François I. They are known by the name of <em>caractères de l’université</em>. Their forms are very elegant.’)
<br /><br />
Here we see the old types still in regular use by printers in Paris being attributed to Garamont and also linked to the one set of surviving early matrices, those that we now know to be by Jannon, which had not been acquired until 1641, a year after the initiation of the Imprimerie royale, and which lay for many years, unused, in the stock of the typographic materials of the Imprimerie royale.
<br /><br />
Now Duprat had not said anything as appreciative. Indeed in a little book that he wrote on the history of the royal printing office, published in 1848, he remarked,
<br /><br />
<em>... les types dont se servait alors l’Imprimerie royale, et dont elle continua de faire usage jusqu’aux premières années du xviiie siècle, manquaient de pureté et d’élegance. A cette époque, l’Imprimerie royale ne possédait pas de types spéciaux; elle employait les mêmes caractères que ceux dont se servaient les imprimeurs de Paris, et qu’on désignait sous le nom de caractères de l’Université.</em>
<br /><br />
(The types that were used at this time by the Imprimerie royale, and which it continued to use until the beginning of the 18th century, lacked purity and elegance. At this date the Imprimerie royale had no special types of its own, but employed those that were used by the Printers of Paris, and which were known as the <em>caractères de l’Université</em>.)<br />
<br />
It should be noted that Duprat is saying here that the ordinary types used by the printers in Paris were those that were known as the <em>caractères de l’Université.</em>
<br /><br />
We have other testimony that helps to confirm the remark. In 1756, in an anonymous letter, generally attributed to Fournier le jeune, in the <em>Journal des Sçavans</em> (Oct 1756, p. 660), it is said that from the time of Cramoisy to that of Rigault (its directors from the date of its foundation in 1640 until 1707), the Imprimerie royale used only the types that were in use in the University, which were cast for it by the ordinary typefounders at the same price that other printers paid. These foundries – wrote the author – were mostly those of Sanlecque, Le Bé and Cot. If they used matrices that were royal property (presumably a reference to the <em>grec du roi</em> by Garamont, the use of which was jealously protected) they made out a receipt for them.
<br /><br />
(<em>‘Depuis Cramoisi, premier directeur de cet Imprimerie jusqu’à M. Rigault, on n’employa point d’autre caractères que ceux qui étoient en usage dans l’Université; on les faisoit faire par les Fondeurs ordinaires & au même prix que les autres Imprimeurs. S’il arrivoient qu’on fournit les matrices qui appartenoient au Roy, le Fondeur en donnoit son recepissé. C’étoient ordinairement les Fonderies des Sanlecque, le Bé, & Cot, qui avoient cet pratique.’</em>)
<br /><br />
The foundry of Cot was acquired by Claude Lamesle, whose specimen of 1742 gives the most spectacular view that was published during the 18th century of the types of the 16th-century masters, newly cast from original matrices. (There is a facsimile reprint of the specimen and an online version, but neither of them quite conveys the stunning sharpness of the types shown in the real thing.)
<br /><br />
‘In use at the University’. What does this mean? Since long before the use of printing, the University in Paris had a history of relationships with the makers of books, approving and controlling the quality of the texts that were made and their prices. The printers in Paris, whose numbers were strictly limited, were largely confined to the the district round the rue St. Jacques, which was also that of the complex of university buildings, and the connection yielded to them certain privileges. How this could extend to types is far from clear.<br />
<br />
The same term was used by a contemporary of Fournier’s. In the ‘Avertissement’ to his <em>Essai d’une nouvelle typographie</em> (1771) Louis Luce, an independent typefounder who had deen designated <em>graveur du roi</em> (punchcutter to the king) in succession to his uncle Jean Alexandre, wrote,
<br /><br />
<em>Mes Caracteres différent aussi de ceux de l’Université & des Caracteres de Hollande, tant par la délicatesse de leurs empattemens que par l’harmonie qui regne dans leur forme.</em>
<br /><br />
(‘The features that differentiate my types from those of the University and from the types of Holland are the delicacy of their serifs and their overall harmony of form.’)
<br /><br />
In both passages, by Fournier and Luce, it looks as if the term ‘types of the University’ is being used, as Duprat did, to mean simply the traditional types that were in common use. Perhaps the term means no more than the fact that they were used in academic publications. However, if ‘types of the University’ was a specialized term that conveys a precise meaning to historians of the Parisian book trade, and if a source can be cited, I shall be glad to be told of it, and I will publish it here.
<br /><br />
The upheavals of the Revolution coincided with the major shift in the style of printing types that is associated with the family of Didot, and the stock of old materials abruptly lost its value, except as scrap. Punches rust, and the copper of matrices is recyclable. All traces of the early types that had been in the hands of the trade typefounders like Le Bé, Sanlecque and Lamesle in Paris vanished completely. No relics of them were saved anywhere, except in commercial centres that had become relative backwaters, like Antwerp, where the Plantin-Moretus printing office piously preserved the collection of its founder.
<br /><br />
It is a maxim among the curators of museum collections that if an artefact has survived intact and unblemished, it can be presumed that either it never worked or that it was rarely used. This was true of Plantin’s collection of old matrices, and was also the case with those of Jannon, which (as I observed in an earlier post) had hardly ever been used by the Imprimerie royale, even in the 17th century, and which can be presumed to have been in excellent condition in the 19th, when they were proclaimed by historians – mistakenly, but for reasons that one can understand – to be authentic relics of the types of the 16th century, the heroic age of printing in Paris.
<br /><br />
In other words, it was the miscellaneous collection of older types by Garamont, Granjon and others, that were in regular use by Parisian printers, to which the term of <em>caractères de l’université</em> was first applied in the 18th century, and not specifically to those of Jannon, the matrices of which had been a misguided purchase, hardly used, and the existence of which had long been forgotten. However, the phrase used by Bernard in 1867, <em>leur forme est très gracieuse</em>, echoes sentiments that had begun to be felt by English as well as French printers who had become aware of the charm of older types. Louis Perrin in Lyon lamented that the words of his beloved 16th-century poets no longer seemed the same when they were set in rigidly perfect contemporary types. And so where original matrices still survived, the types of Caslon and indeed those made at Oxford for John Fell were brought back into use for suitable texts, and new types – like the Basle roman of the Chiswick Press or the new <em>caractères anciens</em> of Jeannet in Paris – were cut in imitation of the old ones.
<br /><br />
I might take the opportunity of ending this post with a passage written by Arthur Christian.
<br /><br />
<em>Lorsqu’en 1895 j’eus l’honneur d’être choisi ... pour diriger l’Imprimerie nationale. ... on parlait déjà de l’Exposition de 1900; j’avais donc à me préoccuper de faire un livre constituant à la fois et un effort de la typographie et une œuvre utile; je songeai à l’histoire de l’Imprimerie et m’en ouvris à M. Claudin. ... L’Histoire de l’Imprimerie en France a été composée en caractères Garamond, dont l’Imprimerie nationale possède les matrices. Je me félicite d’avoir fait ainsi revivre ces types admirables, qui ont servi pour l’impression de l’<em>Imitation de Jésus-Christ</em>, premiere volume que l’Imprimerie royale ait fait paraître en 1640.</em>
<br /><br />
(In 1895, when I had the honour to be chosen to direct the Imprimerie nationale, the Exhibition of 1900 was already under discussion. I needed to make a book that would be both useful and an outstanding production. The history of printing came to my mind and I talked to M. Claudin. His <em>Histoire de l’Imprimerie en France</em> was set in Garamond types, of which the Imprimerie nationale has the matrices. I am proud to have revived these splendid types, which were used to print the <em>Imitatio Christi</em>, the first volume produced by the royal printing-office in 1640.)<br />
<br />
This text, from Christian’s lectures, <i>Origines de l’imprimerie en France</i> (1900), is quoted by Linda Ritson in her admirable study, ‘Arthur Christian, Director of the Imprimerie nationale, 1895–1906’ (<em>Signature</em>, n.s. 9, 1949, pp. 3–28). The passage catches Christian’s righteous pride in his part in making these types ‘live again’, but it is unreliable in two respects. The text of Claudin’s book and its title page were in fact set wholly in the ‘Grandjean’ type (the <i>romain du roi</i>); only the brief Avant-propos and Preface were set in the ‘Garamond’ types. The <em>Imitatio Christi</em> of 1640 was not set in the Jannon types for which the Imprimerie nationale did not yet have the matrices but in the Gros Canon of Garamont, with headings in an italic of the same size by Robert Granjon, both of which were types that appeared in the specimen of 1643 and which would be much used at the Imprimerie royale during the next few decades. These were presumably among the commonly available types that were known as <em>caractères de l’Université</em>.
<br /><br />
The main point of this post is that, the original sixteenth-century matrices for roman and italic types in the possession of the founders in Paris having all been destroyed as a consequence of the revolution in typography associated with the family of Didot, the term <em>caractères de l’Université</em> became attached by default to the set of apparently early matrices that had survived, its provenance forgotten, in the mixed stock of materials of the national printing-office.
<br /><br />
<br />
<b>Sources</b>
<br /><br />There is no single historical narrative relating to the Imprimerie nationale, listing all printed and manuscript sources. One of the nearest things to a published list of the earlier sources may possibly be, for all its limitations, the piece I published on ‘Type specimens of the Imprimerie royale 1643–1828’ (<em>Bulletin du bibliophile</em>, 1, 2002, pp. 70–99) in which I also did my best to list the various inventories.
<br /><br />The only formal histories are those of F. A. Duprat, <em>Histoire de l’Imprimerie impériale de France</em>, 1861, and of Auguste Bernard, <em>Histoire de l’Imprimerie royale du Louvre</em>, 1867, the narrative of which runs only to the end of the Ancien Régime. (A pdf version can be found online.) The catalogue of the exhibition, <em>L’Art du livre à l’Imprimerie nationale</em> (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1951) is useful, though it has many omissions and errors. H.-J. Martin was among the compilers. A volume of collected essays with the same title, including some important contributions to its history by specialists, was issued in 1975.
<br /><br />The inventories that are most relevant to the subject of this post are the volumes mentioned above, made to the order of Villebois in 1827 and completed in 1828, which are kept at Ivry. There is a further inventory at Ivry which has a printed title: <em>Inventaire du matériel de l’Imprimerie royale au 31 décembre 1838</em>. (It has a spine label reading ‘Inventaire du matériel de l’Imprimerie royale au 1er janvier 1839, and a handwritten note on the printed title page, reading ‘Déposé aux Archives de la Chancellerie le 23 mars 1840’). This includes an account – shown below – of the materials for what had by now become known habitually, if misguidedly, as the <em>caractères de l’Université</em>. Neither of these inventories attributes the types to Garamont. The smallest size, the Gros Parangon, now cast on an 18-point body, is here labelled ‘Gros Romain’.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtkgZYJXDXyYLGzwyhmDDNgvQfuSjy5kI3rgM-32WYjqvE5LfEoC6Jb9ZuW-SHhduzBvqq-_tXfUc25KeCLS4_rzXq-cylgkltwoHvgQMoQLVxSczd5yy8yI4vylo7zLsvvkEu/s1600/6+Inventaire+1838+2+-+det+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="283" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtkgZYJXDXyYLGzwyhmDDNgvQfuSjy5kI3rgM-32WYjqvE5LfEoC6Jb9ZuW-SHhduzBvqq-_tXfUc25KeCLS4_rzXq-cylgkltwoHvgQMoQLVxSczd5yy8yI4vylo7zLsvvkEu/s400/6+Inventaire+1838+2+-+det+1.jpg" /></a>
<br /><br />
It should be kept in mind that the national printing office in France has not only had many different names but also several changes of address, having been established in the palace of the Louvre in 1640 but split into different divisions during the Revolution. These were brought together in the Marais district of Paris during the 19th century, set up in a new building in the 15th arondissement early in the 20th century, and the materials of the <em>Cabinet des Poinçons</em>, and the traditional ‘craft’ activities like punchcutting and letterpress printing, were moved in 2005 to the rented industrial premises shown below at Ivry-sur-Seine to become the Atelier du livre d’art et de l’estampe. At each move, some forgotten things were rediscovered and it is possible that others were discarded.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5HYizJAOKr8llbxZc2kTChwUOIQHFd9bcuTDtBsNC4c_lhHkGBTCiflFhTuIxfhYWOLf1XN__DFTBJIY1Ag1jq_AxOzO4ahZms_qpYvNYASz3KATiweThFeAe5EJYznYkO6zt/s1600/7+Atelier+du+livre+d%2527art%252C+Ivry%252C+2008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="286" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5HYizJAOKr8llbxZc2kTChwUOIQHFd9bcuTDtBsNC4c_lhHkGBTCiflFhTuIxfhYWOLf1XN__DFTBJIY1Ag1jq_AxOzO4ahZms_qpYvNYASz3KATiweThFeAe5EJYznYkO6zt/s400/7+Atelier+du+livre+d%2527art%252C+Ivry%252C+2008.jpg" /></a>
<br /><br />
A further and perhaps final move of the whole establishment to a location in Normandy, to the site of the publishing archive IMEC (<em>Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine</em>) near Caen, has been planned for some time and publicly discussed. A letter approving the project in principle has been published, addressed by President Sarkozy in 2008 to Jack Lang (Minister of Culture to President Mitterand, and the current head of IMEC). But Sarkozy is no longer president of France, and so far as I am aware details of the move have yet to be confirmed.
<br /><br />
<b>Update</b>, September 2014. The materials and the operation of the Atelier du livre d’art were moved early in 2014 to a building that is the property of the Imprimerie nationale at Flers-en-Escrebieux on the outskirts of Douai, not far from Lille, in the department of Nord. Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-5127494672219105572012-06-10T09:55:00.002+00:002013-03-24T08:04:50.959+00:00Portrait of Bodoni?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM2v-mh8UjcCIlEpyjXTVY8oAgxCIJ5cu6tnl1I7m6YZniVOBF_VCcuq_yigPHlQ536MPs59dypXiYxe9E-ukpZZOwI_XcySjKZyBbSgVYoIafFOpsemiqykhym1yLBpo6SCpP/s1600/Appiani+-+Bodoni+portrait+-+front+-+900.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM2v-mh8UjcCIlEpyjXTVY8oAgxCIJ5cu6tnl1I7m6YZniVOBF_VCcuq_yigPHlQ536MPs59dypXiYxe9E-ukpZZOwI_XcySjKZyBbSgVYoIafFOpsemiqykhym1yLBpo6SCpP/s400/Appiani+-+Bodoni+portrait+-+front+-+900.jpg" width="306" /></a>
<div></div>
Was the sitter for this portrait Giambattista Bodoni, whose name was written on the back? And can we believe the claim that the artist was Andrea Appiani (1754–1817)? Appiani’s well known painting of Bodoni, which is in the <em>galleria nazionale</em> at Parma, is familiar from the engraving of it by Francesco Rosaspina which is the frontispiece to the first volume of the 1818 edition of the <em>Manuale tipografico</em>, shown below.
<div></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSJUr6qoXKxUykMGp7bH_hxA2uyZJJ3fOMwtI2ZjqzCx2XUMlU4_mDUSqWYg0dx0T66yIIk4XMt1oynDYzalEZUl1JYByiPXtQnbyl2gd4egQrFGk_uhpjUaBVYqzaH6uuSNMi/s1600/Bodoni+portrait+-+Rosaspina+after+Appiani.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSJUr6qoXKxUykMGp7bH_hxA2uyZJJ3fOMwtI2ZjqzCx2XUMlU4_mDUSqWYg0dx0T66yIIk4XMt1oynDYzalEZUl1JYByiPXtQnbyl2gd4egQrFGk_uhpjUaBVYqzaH6uuSNMi/s400/Bodoni+portrait+-+Rosaspina+after+Appiani.jpg" width="200" /></a>
<div></div>
Perhaps this text should have said more about the original when the image was first posted. The portrait, painted on a wooden board measuring 49 by 39 centimetres, does indeed bear the names of Giambattista Bodoni as sitter, and Andrea Appiani as the artist, written in ink on the reverse, apparently by more than one hand.
<div></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRAcHbOantB0Kv7A6YjBzLyU68T3B97nUUtkiUG-dMg3fp4cmnPlghglojx4SH6UgPDT5IPvRnuXPQo66ifoAxjHNqRDugL2k0Clw0lZjrWC0PpYEkIJ7mrSCCtgI12abd-DeQ/s1600/Appiani+-+Bodoni+portrait+-+reverse+-+det.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="159" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRAcHbOantB0Kv7A6YjBzLyU68T3B97nUUtkiUG-dMg3fp4cmnPlghglojx4SH6UgPDT5IPvRnuXPQo66ifoAxjHNqRDugL2k0Clw0lZjrWC0PpYEkIJ7mrSCCtgI12abd-DeQ/s400/Appiani+-+Bodoni+portrait+-+reverse+-+det.jpg" /></a>
<div></div>
The painting had been acquired during a visit to Europe by Muir Dawson, of Los Angeles, California, a dealer in books on printing and examples of fine printing. A. L. Van Gendt, publisher of Amsterdam, had bought it from the book dealer Commin of Bournemouth. In 1965 Dawson was in correspondence about the portrait with Robert F. Lane, a resident of New York and an outstandingly well-informed specialist on the work of Bodoni. In 1964 Lane had already received enquiries by letter about the picture from its current owner, R. C. Hatchwell, a bookseller of Little Somerford, Chippenham, Wiltshire. As he told Dawson, Lane did not think it represented Bodoni. Others, noting the lack of resemblance to the figure with a well-nourished face in more familiar portraits, have had the same reaction.
<div></div>
Being puzzled to know what to do with the portrait, with its lack of a reliable attribution or provenance, in October 1968 Dawson and Van Gendt presented it jointly to the St Bride Printing Library, as it was then known, with an invitation to discover more about it, if that should be possible.
<div></div>
I am afraid that nothing more has come to light. The direct trail, if it ever existed, became a cold one. But since next year, 2013, is the 200th anniversary of Bodoni’s death, which will be marked with an event in Parma, it seems to me that if it can be done, it is about time to try to resolve the doubts relating to this ‘portrait’, or at least to discover its provenance. After all, it is now possible to publish the image and its associated story more widely than ever before. By indexing this post, Google has now placed it among the images produced by a search for ‘Bodoni portrait’. Information relating to this painting will be welcome.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-68088427711241349762012-02-03T15:17:00.108+00:002014-12-15T15:08:08.049+00:00The types of Jean Jannon at the Imprimerie royale<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioO15NYe9sDt52oVe8T_VNW3N6NDWEmbQk7Tx-HBkPEyRE2NjqgOi0GJEw3BKkN00cI18k64xiwNEkBytC7oLH42NrJZ6gEB7LDAHR5CnFpIa6og4HFXy95DpE3ScxTeIckAGX/s1600/Updike+fig+172.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 258px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioO15NYe9sDt52oVe8T_VNW3N6NDWEmbQk7Tx-HBkPEyRE2NjqgOi0GJEw3BKkN00cI18k64xiwNEkBytC7oLH42NrJZ6gEB7LDAHR5CnFpIa6og4HFXy95DpE3ScxTeIckAGX/s400/Updike+fig+172.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5704939405553284930" /></a><br /><div></div>It is well known that the ‘Garamond’ types, of which the use was initiated at the Imprimerie nationale, Paris, during first years of the 20th century, included some that had been cast from a set of early matrices for three sizes of roman and italic known as the <em>caractères de l’Université</em> to which the name ‘Garamond’ or ‘Garamont’ was assigned during the 19th century (for the first time, apparently, in the specimen of the Imprimerie royale, 1845), and to which several other sizes were added by professional punchcutters, notably Hénaffe. During the 1920s these types were attributed to Jean Jannon of Sedan in an article under the pseudonym of Paul Beaujon in volume 5 (1926) of <em>The Fleuron</em> by <a href="http://www.garamond.culture.fr/kcfinder/files/3_3_4_article_beatrice_warde.pdf">Beatrice Warde</a>. Her claim was based on their appearance in Jannon’s type specimen book of 1621 in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFl6magd0JekfR5-lNz6tT9EVRfLe1OofjgxHo003CvDl0L0uFNTZfyk2H5hn1FrEeLF4hQQH25FNOP-qLjv97oOe3dnNmuxdL4iZhj6X75DYzY5MLqO0F1giMup5LwzWmgtK3/s1600/IN+1904+-+Gara+rom+det+2+a.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 229px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFl6magd0JekfR5-lNz6tT9EVRfLe1OofjgxHo003CvDl0L0uFNTZfyk2H5hn1FrEeLF4hQQH25FNOP-qLjv97oOe3dnNmuxdL4iZhj6X75DYzY5MLqO0F1giMup5LwzWmgtK3/s400/IN+1904+-+Gara+rom+det+2+a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5704972835261518834" /></a><br /><div></div>The types appeared for the first time under the name of ‘Garamond’ as a ‘series’ in the specimen of the Imprimerie nationale dated 1904 (shown above), and they would become the models for the ‘Garamond’ types of American Type Founders (about 1917), and the English Monotype Corporation (1922).<br /><div></div>The story has been told in many places. My own version was in an essay that I published in 2006, and which forms a part of the very long and involved post with the title ‘Garamond or Garamont’ in this blog, which first appeared in April 2011 and to which many additions and corrections have been made ever since. There is also a separate section on Jannon in the new <a href="http://www.garamond.culture.fr/">Garamont </a>website of the French Ministry of Culture, although this is in need of some fine-tuning. As we both note, the term <em>caractères de l'Université</em> does indeed appear to have been introduced in the inventory of 1827 or 1828, a record of the punches and matrices of the Imprimerie royale with a printed title page dated 1828, now kept at Ivry. But I have seen no attribution of this type to ‘Garamont’ earlier than the one that appears in the Imprimerie royale specimen of 1845. It seemed to me that for those who have found the navigation of the elaborate narrative that appears in the previous post rather laborious, it would be helpful to offer a summary of some recent findings of my own, so that is my chief aim here.<br /><div></div>In 1922 D. B. Updike published the image that appears at the head of this post as fig. 172 of the first edition (1922) of his <em>Printing types, their history, forms and use</em>. It shows a part of a leaf from Richelieu’s text, <em>Les Principaux points de la foy catholique défendus</em>, a folio printed at the Imprimerie royale in 1642. Updike’s caption identifies the types as Garamond’s on the basis of the belief that was current in 1922. In later editions, in deference to Beatrice Warde, the types were called ‘Jannon’s’, an identification that was not wholly correct. The object of this piece is to set things as nearly right as possible.<br /><div></div>Perhaps the best place to begin is with the pair of larger types that appears in Updike’s figure. The roman can be identified as the <em>Petit Canon </em>of Robert Granjon, a type that is listed by Vervliet in his <em>Conspectus </em>of 2010 as type 140. (It had appeared on the Berner specimen sheet of 1592, where like the other romans it was identified as the work of ‘Garamond’, but on a specimen offered by Guillaume II Le Bé to the Plantin printing-office in about 1599 there is a note stating that it was cut by Granjon.) This is a type that appears in the specimen of the Imprimerie royale dated 1643, of which a facsimile with notes by Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer and André Jammes was issued in 1958. (Bibliographical details of this specimen and the facsimile are given in the ‘Garamond or Garamont’ post above.) The italic is indeed the <em>Petit Canon </em>italic of Jean Jannon, and it is one of two italics by him which are shown in the specimen of 1643.<br /><div></div>Matrices for three sizes of roman and italic types were bought from Jannon by the director of the Imprimerie royale in 1641, the <em>Gros Canon, Petit Canon </em>and <em>Gros Parangon</em>, types that were later cast on bodies of 36-, 24- and 18-points. The relevant document (from which an image was shown in my first blog relating to Garamond/Garamont) is the contract between Jean Jannon and Sébastien Cramoisy dated 1 March 1641 (Archives nationales, Paris, Étude XLIII, liasse 32). The question to which I addressed myself during the later months of 2011 was, ‘which of the types by Jean Jannon named in this document were used during the 17th century at the Imprimerie royale’?<br /><div></div>I looked at many examples of printing at the Imprimerie royale held by the British Library, mostly making use of the list of titles printed in his historical study by Auguste Bernard: ‘Catalogue chronologique des Éditions de l’Imprimerie royale du Louvre’, <em>Histoire de l’Imprimerie royale du Louvre </em>(Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1867), pp. 123–256. My conclusions were as follows: <br /><div></div>I found no example of roman types by Jannon in use at the Imprimerie royale. Two sizes of the italics appear, the <em>Petit Canon</em> and the <em>Gros Parangon</em>, accompanying roman types by other hands. As for the largest size, neither the roman nor the italic of the Jannon <em>Gros Canon</em>, has been found in use at the Imprimerie royale during the 17th century.<br /><div></div>To say that I found this a surprising result is an understatement. Like most of his readers (I imagine), I had accepted the appreciative estimation of Jannon by Henri-Jean Martin that I had cited in my earlier post:<br /><div></div>‘This man was the worthy follower of the typographical artists and technicians of the century before. One can see appreciation of his efforts in the fact that types cast in the matrices that he sold to the Imprimerie royale were used in the splendid works printed during the early years of this institution.’ <br /><div></div>(Cet homme était le digne émule des artistes et des techniciens de la typographie du siècle précédent. On pourrait peut-être voir la consécration de ses efforts dans le fait qu’on fondit sur des matrices portant l’empreinte des ses types et par lui vendues à l’Imprimerie royale, les caractères utilisés pour les plus luxueux ouvrages publiés par cet établissement à ses débuts. <em>Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle</em>, 1969, p. 367.)<br /><div></div>Martin’s remarks were elegantly expressed and based on a logical inference, but they appear to be wrong. The types used at the Imprimerie royale during the years following its creation until the end of the century, when the new <em>romain du roi</em> was made, were mostly the ‘classic’ romans of Claude Garamont and italics of Robert Granjon that had been used by Parisian printers for many decades. They appear in the specimen of the Imprimerie royale dated 1643, and the source seems likely to have been Parisian foundries that were well furnished with matrices for these types, of which there were several. In summary it can be said that only two italic types by Jannon appear to have been used at the Imprimerie royale, where they accompany older types, and none of the romans.<br /><div></div>Two pieces of printed evidence seem to support my conclusion. One is the fact that only these two Jannon italic types, and none of the romans, appear in the Imprimerie royale specimen of 1643. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivsXEoWPN4zucjxHjlirGCoUmaVNnLdCZhqFTB9K7X0j2etmXaD3OiHkty-Ll5vgsndABnARqA-ErSeceIP5ZalDiGeejuf7ww3Ig5l_tc1gk3fXpOM_LH7sxgCRiljvxg-Ja8/s1600/Ms+n+a+fr+2511+-+F+det.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 269px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivsXEoWPN4zucjxHjlirGCoUmaVNnLdCZhqFTB9K7X0j2etmXaD3OiHkty-Ll5vgsndABnARqA-ErSeceIP5ZalDiGeejuf7ww3Ig5l_tc1gk3fXpOM_LH7sxgCRiljvxg-Ja8/s400/Ms+n+a+fr+2511+-+F+det.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5704939787016206338" /></a><br /><div></div>All three sets of roman and italic matrices were mentioned as being present in ‘drawers’ (<em>layettes</em>) in an inventory of the materials of the Imprimerie royale drawn up in 1691 (BnF, MS nouv. acq. fr. 2511), but when in 1690 the widow of the director Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy prepared specimens of the types from matrices ‘belonging to the king’ to be passed to his successor, in addition to five sheets of greek types lettered A to E (the <em>grecs du roi</em>), there was a single sixth sheet, lettered F, a detail from which is shown above, showing only the two smaller italics of Jannon that appear to have been in regular use.<br /><div></div>Several questions are raised by my claims, which were the basis of papers that I gave at <em>colloques</em> relating to Garamont at Amiens in September 2011, and in New York in January 2012. Have I overlooked examples of the use of Jannon types (especially the romans) at the Imprimerie royale? Since it is not easy to prove a negative, that is possible; and one reason for offering my own observations in this form is in order to invite others to make their own and to let me know what they find or to publish them.<br /><div></div> One the matter of the Jannon type specimen dated 1621, perhaps I should include this note.<br /><div></div> In his little pamphlet of 1887 Brincourt appears to be the first writer to mention it as a specimen of types. (There is an oddly garbled reference in the Bigmore & Wyman <em>Bibliography of printing</em> (1880) where it is listed, evidently by someone who had not seen it, as ‘a very interesting work on the few (<em>qy.</em> seven) but admirable editions in 12mo, printed at Sedan'.) Warde appears to have been using the copy in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, the only one now known and the original of the facsimile published in 1927. In 1887 Brincourt wrote, ‘ce cahier, intitulé: “Espreuve des caractères nouvellement taillez,” est de la plus grande rareté: on y trouve la reproduction de tous les caractères nouveaux, y compris la Nompareille et la Sedanaise avec son Italique.’ And in the later printings of Brincourt’s text (1902, etc.), there is a reference to a copy, without any indication of its whereabouts, as ‘In-4° de 6 ff. pour le titre et de l’Avis “aux Imprimeurs”, plus 10 ff. pour les “Caracteres nouuellement taillez”. But in the copy at the Bibliothèque Mazarine there appear to be only seven leaves which show types, and they do not include either the roman or italic of Nompareille or Sedanaise, although both sizes are named on the leaf of two-line letters. Can Brincourt have seen another and a more complete copy of the specimen, and if so where is it?<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><em></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-84328475611945664832012-01-06T09:23:00.071+00:002014-02-16T17:48:56.324+00:00Type held in the hand<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggdaARGMwKmUAgm0nvdWAfPDGNY0DoVlx0oSbpEi4vj_AJiYDOvB9vTcsG0QTbSLGweI1RY5t6_6xxzCIp74oLOYmsuzQyB5p0YzuohqwoKWxe5-gKGTT8yhycZFyxlNOAaBmV/s1600/0++Type+in+composing+stick+1+b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 135px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggdaARGMwKmUAgm0nvdWAfPDGNY0DoVlx0oSbpEi4vj_AJiYDOvB9vTcsG0QTbSLGweI1RY5t6_6xxzCIp74oLOYmsuzQyB5p0YzuohqwoKWxe5-gKGTT8yhycZFyxlNOAaBmV/s400/0++Type+in+composing+stick+1+b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694447839762910066" /></a><br /><div></div>Type, as we know, is something that you can pick up and hold in your hand. But there are fewer opportunities for doing this now than ever before, and our fading familiarity with the way type was made in the past can make for puzzles that are not easy to resolve. <br /><div></div>Harry Carter’s phrase with which he began the lectures that became <em>A view of early typography</em> (1969), ‘Type is something that you can pick up and hold in your hand’, was a reproach to bibliographers whose attention was so occupied by the marks they saw on paper that they were not always much concerned about the means by which the solid types that made them were created and how this had affected the way they looked. The reproach was not always deserved, even when it was addressed to bibliographers isolated in their libraries. Making type was traditionally a secretive trade and difficult to penetrate. <br /><div></div>In recently using a post to praise Talbot Baines Reed’s work as a historian I observed that his notes on the evidence for the shape of early types are still useful, and that they were retained with little alteration by his editor in the edition of 1952. But there is scarcely any reference in his original edition of 1887 to the way in which type was being made then – in what can now be seen to have been fateful years, when mechanization began to change the normal stance of the setter of texts from standing at a pair of cases to sitting at a keyboard. <br /><div></div>It is often in my mind, when I use Reed’s book, that it would have been helpful if he had recorded more of the everyday operation of his typefoundry and added a note on the way it was changing. Notwithstanding some of the new techniques that had crept insidiously into regular use, like the use of the machines that had taken over the work of most of the casters with the hand mould and the electrotyping that had become a process for making many of the matrices, he must have been well aware that most of the operations of his own foundry had not changed in centuries. It still held one of the major surviving collections of early materials, the larger part of which were still usable, and the work of the casters and dressers had hardly changed. In the collective memory of the workmen there was a store of unwritten knowledge of how things had once been done.<br /><div></div>Now we are well aware that not only has our own access to this tradition almost slipped away from us, but nobody today is quite sure, since metal types are not going to return, how we can preserve the embarrassingly rich stores of historical punches and matrices that have survived so far. The technical skills of those who understood the trades of the caster and the punchcutter, which were passed to the next generation by example and word of mouth and which would help us to understand exactly what we have left to us and how it was used, are now almost beyond our reach, even if we can find the individual sets of punches and matrices that we may be seeking among those that are stored.<br /><div></div>I write this bit of sermonizing, not for the first time, to try to give some dignity to a post that might otherwise seem to deal with trivia. Its subject – some details of the way type looks, and why – is one that has been in my mind since I noticed that the typefounder’s mould in the image published in the Diderot <em>Encyclopédie</em> would actually make type with the nick ‘below’ the letter, just like modern type in English-speaking places, and not in the French manner. <br /><div></div>The nick (see the image at the head of this post) tells the compositor whether all the type in the line is the right way up or not, and it distinguishes p from d in the case. The nick is visible to the compositor and it can be felt with the thumb, reassuringly, as the type is set. But French type usually has the nick ‘on top’, or at the back when it is placed in the composing stick. Fournier le jeune labours the point in a long section on the <em>cran</em>, or nick, in his <em>Manuel typographique</em>. Moreover, there is this image in the <em>Encyclopédie</em>, in the section on printing, that shows some large types which have their nick ‘on top’, in the French manner, as we would expect.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGGGUdWtupnCqSEc68cuXwudOKf8RYcYv8XsZHK6UX0QLeLpae8TbzyOkQGP4VWgzZt1ws1_jbXk2rfo0udTzS58HYUeGdQGYbhG1hcMRt_Ws8DqJW0xG8gQaNR5PQSnQBclaR/s1600/1++Encyc+-+Imp+en+caracteres+b+-+1000+a.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGGGUdWtupnCqSEc68cuXwudOKf8RYcYv8XsZHK6UX0QLeLpae8TbzyOkQGP4VWgzZt1ws1_jbXk2rfo0udTzS58HYUeGdQGYbhG1hcMRt_Ws8DqJW0xG8gQaNR5PQSnQBclaR/s400/1++Encyc+-+Imp+en+caracteres+b+-+1000+a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694455558851618162" /></a><br /><div></div>But what exactly does the <em>Encyclopédie</em> itself tell us? There is a whole article, a brief one, headed <em>cran</em>, which is included in Giles Barber’s admirable collection of selected materials from it on the making of books which was published in 1973. The piece is carefully worded, giving the function of the nick, but managing not to offer an opinion regarding which side of the types the nick should be. This (in my words) is what it says:<br /><div></div>“Nick, a term of the typefounder, is a small indentation in the body of type which tells which way up it is. The compositor who takes care to place the nick of each piece of type on the same side is sure that they are all in the right orientation. The nick is on top or below, according to the country, and the choice of the printer.”<br /><div></div>Fournier himself acknowledged that although the nick was ‘on top’ in France it was on the other side in Holland, Flanders, Germany and the ‘Lyonnais’ – the district round Lyon, the city that had been one of the major centres of printing in France. He says nothing about England, but then he had no knowledge of founders’ practice there. As <a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/08/casting-bodonis-type.html">Bodoni’s surviving moulds </a>show, types in Italy had the nick ‘below’, like those in England. <br /><div></div>Hence the puzzle of this diagram in the <em>Encyclopédie</em>, below. It is fig. 2 of plate II of the section on ‘typefounding’ (<em>Fonderie des caracteres</em>).<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoten-tvliAMKU8iAFs45swcMnQvky1_nW9yyNjuVT_7595AzAOAtgcva23GLUm7p-67u2vL_rmlGB7v8Au67R0VjY2aAaHKHliGktvBSxw0tH0t40Bxxu7dAVcKlGBD4ZPeVN/s1600/2++Moule+-+pl.+2%252C+fig.+2+Encycl..jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 348px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoten-tvliAMKU8iAFs45swcMnQvky1_nW9yyNjuVT_7595AzAOAtgcva23GLUm7p-67u2vL_rmlGB7v8Au67R0VjY2aAaHKHliGktvBSxw0tH0t40Bxxu7dAVcKlGBD4ZPeVN/s400/2++Moule+-+pl.+2%252C+fig.+2+Encycl..jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694456077355804626" /></a><br /><div></div>It shows the ‘bottom half’ of the mould, with the matrix pushed up to the ‘stool’ and its lower part projecting. The impression of the punch is not shown on the matrix as it should be, but there is no doubt that type it cast would have the nick ‘below’, in the English manner, where the compositor could see and feel it.<br /><div></div>Even if the diagram is intended to show a kind of universal mould, with an orientation that would be familiar in many countries and not just one, it contradicts what one has learned of the French custom. Since the image among the engravings of the <em>Encyclopédie</em> that illustrate the article on printing (above) show big types with the nick on top, or at the back, is there a contradiction to resolve? What other evidence have we of the general practice in France?<br /><div></div>We have in fact the advantage of an earlier treatise, the account of typefounding that was prepared by Jacques Jaugeon for the so-called ‘Description des Arts et Métiers’ with the authority of the Academy of Sciences. Its image of the mould, engraved by Louis Simonneau in 1694 (below), shows the nick on top. The closed mould is on the left, with the bottom end of the matrix, to which a piece of leather has been tied, projecting from it. The image in the centre shows the other end of the matrix, with a piece of cast type, with its nick ‘on top’ and the projecting ‘jet’ of surplus metal, still in place.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5zOQ-w78fiKAId0WEZ0CewTbAQH3JOGsWsqy-7pOsjLEhlYnUQyvFNT0yXeuaAmeF2vPYlrJm5GShi-hBe6WEBgtOvJnSb-zeVr8kiDhQqP6tpBnGtnbPSCzJGZSvAqAetCa/s1600/4++Le+moule+-+gray+-+det+a.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 276px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5zOQ-w78fiKAId0WEZ0CewTbAQH3JOGsWsqy-7pOsjLEhlYnUQyvFNT0yXeuaAmeF2vPYlrJm5GShi-hBe6WEBgtOvJnSb-zeVr8kiDhQqP6tpBnGtnbPSCzJGZSvAqAetCa/s400/4++Le+moule+-+gray+-+det+a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694456506503450514" /></a><br /><div></div>In fact the surviving iconography goes further. In the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal there is a series of pen and wash sketches relating to typefounding that were probably drawn in the 1690s and intended for the engraver. They tell us more about the look of type than any other images of that date. Here is a large letter A.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEite6f8ueMMi3IZxP8FTGpB981-rwVUaZlnQ1dpZapeyuFXJTE84UvrLgRFMmPoYK9KoGwt1guL5uAuYO7doddPh70xu6-myBy8IUAxFv60lHBK_r78fSbZ8cqfqROvATdZ4ag2/s1600/5++Arsenal+-+cap+A2+-+1+aa.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 358px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEite6f8ueMMi3IZxP8FTGpB981-rwVUaZlnQ1dpZapeyuFXJTE84UvrLgRFMmPoYK9KoGwt1guL5uAuYO7doddPh70xu6-myBy8IUAxFv60lHBK_r78fSbZ8cqfqROvATdZ4ag2/s400/5++Arsenal+-+cap+A2+-+1+aa.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694456856679904834" /></a><br /><div></div>Sure enough, the nick is ‘at the back’ in English terms. Moreover the projecting lower part of the type body has been shaved away at an angle with a plane, (‘bearded’ to use the English word), so that it would not pick up ink and print by accident. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijqb0R6YxjG1fOqYDl3shMLKE9KTgebrXF3Tl0exKIdEeVyI_jN5cUB5VxqwId06S7EH2jzW5CBcGf-OYdcOLWQ_2wGRnBjJgANC93oYRENgSqxOHMnsTDJAdsNH-RZikvRqZD/s1600/6++Arsenal+-+cap+A+1aa.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 277px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijqb0R6YxjG1fOqYDl3shMLKE9KTgebrXF3Tl0exKIdEeVyI_jN5cUB5VxqwId06S7EH2jzW5CBcGf-OYdcOLWQ_2wGRnBjJgANC93oYRENgSqxOHMnsTDJAdsNH-RZikvRqZD/s400/6++Arsenal+-+cap+A+1aa.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694457179047491490" /></a><br /><div></div>Here is a view of the same letter seen from the side, showing the bearding clearly, and also something that the first sketch left out. The angles on either side of the A have been shaved, to eliminate the risk that these sharp projecting corners would pick up ink and print by accident. The feature that was left out has been added to both images. It is labelled in this one as the <em>goutiere</em> or ‘gutter’ (modern French <em>gouttière</em>), that is the ‘groove’ made with a plane in the foot of the type in order to remove the projection that may be left by the surplus metal that is broken off after it is cast, so that just two ‘feet’ are left, the feature (a brilliantly simple one) that gave each piece of cast type a uniform height. (The image above from the <em>Encyclopédie</em> shows these features too, though the bearding is not so well drawn.)<br /><div></div>Details like bearding apart, we can be fairly sure that type of 1700 was not unlike the product of more recent techniques of casting and dressing, and that some of its details were innovations that were not features of <a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/06/fallen-and-threaded-types.html">very early types</a>. It was nearly an inch high, as type seems always to have been – a nicely calculated size for something big enough to be picked up and assembled by hand and to lock itself into a solid forme. Here are types for text setting that were part of a purchase made in the 1670s by the University Press at Oxford with the help of the scholar Francis Junius, showing their nick and groove. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtvy5n_Qinexhh-Tyo1sKB0a0xDrx3CsyB9cfXRpWlEUBbgHSDHgpLZGOKShUnnoeO8CSfBpD90fgeSMjoGuvqIiZXhPUQxxGDg4DKaOvAhsmYx4Y8eNU-RRU3_Z29MV6SxXL/s1600/7++Swedish+1a.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 292px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtvy5n_Qinexhh-Tyo1sKB0a0xDrx3CsyB9cfXRpWlEUBbgHSDHgpLZGOKShUnnoeO8CSfBpD90fgeSMjoGuvqIiZXhPUQxxGDg4DKaOvAhsmYx4Y8eNU-RRU3_Z29MV6SxXL/s400/7++Swedish+1a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694457510237010114" /></a><br /><div></div>They are for a German Schwabacher for an ‘English’ body (about 14-point) equipped with special characters for printing northern languages like Swedish, which was the name that was given to the type at Oxford. Like all hand-cast types, these lack the precise finish of the machine-cast product, and their sides show scoring from being rubbed on a stone to remove the fins of metal that had crept round the edge of the hand-held mould. There is a conspicuous casting flaw in one sort, but if the face was good enough to print such a flaw in the body was of no consequence to the printer. It was said that the metal of hand-cast type was more solid than the machine-made product.<br /><div></div>Here, for comparison, is some type that is only slightly later: an Etruscan type for the same body as the Swedish. It was made in London by William Caslon in about 1748 for sale to the Oxford University Press. The image below shows how it looks in the Caslon specimen of 1766. The type – almost the only type in existence from the original Caslon foundry – survived almost unused at Oxford because the opportunities for printing Etruscan were naturally so limited as to be virtually non-existent.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3l8F9ecJbvFIcxVfGFOwOA7UT-JTXkoR-5MoYxMoDBFmU1qAOaPWPYzGGXYJkiUZF2cQ63abLPQ3xx-RBSzZVINtPBOud5ihc6GddsrBaf-lsJvHGc6dYuqIt_x5HcGsDuTz-/s1600/8++Caslon+Etruscan+type+1a.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3l8F9ecJbvFIcxVfGFOwOA7UT-JTXkoR-5MoYxMoDBFmU1qAOaPWPYzGGXYJkiUZF2cQ63abLPQ3xx-RBSzZVINtPBOud5ihc6GddsrBaf-lsJvHGc6dYuqIt_x5HcGsDuTz-/s400/8++Caslon+Etruscan+type+1a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694457942058752002" /></a><br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzXAWZDeB0zz9En-oHjwdDtBsbb5kVqzcG64HLf7n7VxVkW9ufZeW1GZiTqqePU0QZbjiXK7vvmbFysWRSI6PnFPhNWWhsJnuq9XMI5HXMcn8W1nIXmlWiViWAgjtFMgACvxnG/s1600/9++Caslon+Etruscan+a.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzXAWZDeB0zz9En-oHjwdDtBsbb5kVqzcG64HLf7n7VxVkW9ufZeW1GZiTqqePU0QZbjiXK7vvmbFysWRSI6PnFPhNWWhsJnuq9XMI5HXMcn8W1nIXmlWiViWAgjtFMgACvxnG/s400/9++Caslon+Etruscan+a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694458244616719682" /></a><br /><div></div>There is one other feature of cast type that the bibliographer sees and accepts without question, but which has caused more of a technical challenge to the founder (and irritation to the printer) than many readers can ever have suspected. Lower-case f has generally overhung the letter that follows: it is ‘kerned’ (to use the term in its original sense, one that has become modified in digital type-making). This was because f overhung the letter that followed in many early scripts, and typefounders, from Gutenberg onwards, have generally accepted the challenge. <br /><div></div>In the 42-line Bible, a detail from which is shown below, as in most later types, f is kerned and hangs over the letter that follows. (In this example, it is also worth noting that there is a c that is cast to project beyond its body but in which the projection has been rubbed down flush to it, so that it abuts firmly on the specially-adapted form of i that follows, making a kind of ligature and keeping the rhythm of vertical strokes that contributes to the even visual texture of this type on the page.) <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9jj3x1kH-7pfkbDuhljneK-T7LHv7qdPdjVqzImR3DP-iSL2MmhQafm7j2mK-ObHm59j1gqZ9E9_EIaezyojTnmvYjMRVvKOd_fOMG0ziuqRayaLQSxFMm_M4BB8bkqBLDt7O/s1600/10++B42+-+detail+of+kerned+f+b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 369px; height: 186px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9jj3x1kH-7pfkbDuhljneK-T7LHv7qdPdjVqzImR3DP-iSL2MmhQafm7j2mK-ObHm59j1gqZ9E9_EIaezyojTnmvYjMRVvKOd_fOMG0ziuqRayaLQSxFMm_M4BB8bkqBLDt7O/s400/10++B42+-+detail+of+kerned+f+b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694458520217729506" /></a><br /><div></div>If the character following f was an i or an l, a special fi or fl sort needed to be made in order to avoid a collision; in several later types such collisions can be seen.<br /><div></div>Here is one: the book, set in a nice <em>bâtarde</em> gothic, is Robert Gaguin, <em>La mer de croniques et miroir historial de France</em>, Paris, Nicole de la Barre c. 1520 (St Bride 5750). An f in the first line, in <em>filz</em>, has ridden up over the i next to it. Some five lines lower, a double-f ligature in <em>suffisant</em> has collided with the following i (or some other ascender) and sustained visible damage.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz7s0QYPUAqHK1GCz7GpmQjDU4m11JTXTUNByftLLT67R6Xx4twvrjbMzEnDfxMkQumCQ1abd3Xvt-nMjDuuM_yoMrx4kAdjmJZdld5EUvQ35uXXnn6vluqLV6qpP6-8qjTgFv/s1600/Gaguin+-+Mer+de+croniques+Paris+1518+-+det.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz7s0QYPUAqHK1GCz7GpmQjDU4m11JTXTUNByftLLT67R6Xx4twvrjbMzEnDfxMkQumCQ1abd3Xvt-nMjDuuM_yoMrx4kAdjmJZdld5EUvQ35uXXnn6vluqLV6qpP6-8qjTgFv/s400/Gaguin+-+Mer+de+croniques+Paris+1518+-+det.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5695623031333754642" /></a><br /><div></div>The kerned f became the common and inescapable feature of nearly all types, roman or gothic. (Perhaps to avoid the need for an fi character, Jenson put the dot of his i as far to the right of its body as it would go.) To give some idea of the engineering skills that were required to make the cantilevered projection of the f, here is the Canon or 36-point size of the so-called Fell type from Oxford:<br /><div></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvRCBWPBH-8vQNUX3-H_KNyd6BWV34Fbv5oM0Mt1g08O_XPa8R9ORf5kZYGaTHsZS8D3jqYa2A0PWy_Gz3sl-mxj0qbq8ev5O2y0AfgcE2taJUuzxzHtgsseGQTmhCkKoxtewU/s1600/11++Fell+Canon+kerned+rom+fa+1+det.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 272px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvRCBWPBH-8vQNUX3-H_KNyd6BWV34Fbv5oM0Mt1g08O_XPa8R9ORf5kZYGaTHsZS8D3jqYa2A0PWy_Gz3sl-mxj0qbq8ev5O2y0AfgcE2taJUuzxzHtgsseGQTmhCkKoxtewU/s400/11++Fell+Canon+kerned+rom+fa+1+det.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694458759024687394" /></a><br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFHxIVa77kYLzxEbBaE6_4N7fKz1kjqKCrMmNBwJ4gSES_2_9DEubKp60IPIqhP7CFGKZJAsrJO-rZkLDpSXpaUe6ia-9DtWYlzU8N4fSZdITyUEoJcc0J6GK9Sqfk_6efpcyK/s1600/11a+Fell+Canon+f+det+9+-+1+b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 316px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFHxIVa77kYLzxEbBaE6_4N7fKz1kjqKCrMmNBwJ4gSES_2_9DEubKp60IPIqhP7CFGKZJAsrJO-rZkLDpSXpaUe6ia-9DtWYlzU8N4fSZdITyUEoJcc0J6GK9Sqfk_6efpcyK/s400/11a+Fell+Canon+f+det+9+-+1+b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694461668901974514" /></a><br /><div></div> Although precisely-engineered machines like the Monotype cast a kern that took some support from the shoulder of the following letter, founders generally shaved the underside of the kern in case variations in the height of the next letter induced stresses that could break the metal. In his <em>Practical typecasting</em> (1993), Theo Rehak, drawing on experience at ATF, specifies the use of the ‘kerning plow’, and also the use of a worn file for a substantial kern. Fig. 23 of Legros & Grant, <em>Typographical printing-surfaces</em> (1916) shows a ‘kerning file’, a device that held the individual type for kerning at the correct angle. One of these, from the foundry of Stevens, Shanks, was transferred to the St Bride Library.<br /><div></div>In casting italics, the strokes of most of the descending letters like p needed to be kerned on the left and ascenders like l on the right, in order to get a good even rhythm. Italic f (together with long s) was a particular nuisance since it needed to be kerned on both sides: both kerned parts often tended to break or bend in use, however competent the caster had been. Eventually – but it took a long time – the habit of kerning f began to be lost. In the first decade of the 19th century Lord Stanhope, with his rational approach to everything and his enthusiasm for stereotyping saw no reason for keeping it (the plaster mould tended to catch in the kerned part of the letter). By the middle of the 19th century, when the long s had long been dropped from use, special ‘news founts’ with unkerned f were made for the printers of newspapers, who printed from stereotype plates. <br /><div></div>Graham Pollard, a bibliographer who thought he had made a coup and identified a forgery by making much of its use of a kernless f apparently before its time, might have got himself into trouble if his antagonist, Thomas J. Wise (who was certainly guilty), had not been too old and tired to defend himself. Pollard had failed to look in specimens of the 1850s for kernless ‘news founts’.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPdkr3YNsk0EaV8u_mbNHNbVoSpu_c0Db0-nAw24xkCtyIBNlZz7F3iC0lAeLzhiSQ0l3ARzRznfXfcbSDsUjNQZX8QEH3DOd2iEAYp5AKqVEUY_I77JltbxhwTY6b3f-ym0vn/s1600/12++Caslon+-+News+founts+-+bw+shp+b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 204px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPdkr3YNsk0EaV8u_mbNHNbVoSpu_c0Db0-nAw24xkCtyIBNlZz7F3iC0lAeLzhiSQ0l3ARzRznfXfcbSDsUjNQZX8QEH3DOd2iEAYp5AKqVEUY_I77JltbxhwTY6b3f-ym0vn/s400/12++Caslon+-+News+founts+-+bw+shp+b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694459110948605042" /></a><br /><div></div>As this image shows, the elimination of the kern from f did nothing to discourage the use of the fi and fl ligatured forms.<br /><div></div>By the end of the 19th century, the practice of using non-kerning f for type for text setting was so widely accepted that for the makers of the Linotype machine, in which kerning was technically impossible, the limitation did not appear to be a significant handicap. Early designs made for the Monotype machine, which cast separate types, did not kern the f, perhaps principally to save trouble, since it was in fact possible. Eventually it was found by Monotype that kerned characters made italics that were better-spaced. Moreover this feature gave a conspicuous advantage over Linotype when traditional designs were made. And so the practice of kerning was reprieved, although in the last days of independent typefoundries the process was often handled with ever-decreasing understanding and skill. The italic of Monotype’s so-called Garamond type (series 156) handled the kerned characters very well: the long s is kerned even more generously than the f, demonstrating engineering skills that were no doubt those of the works manager F. H. Pierpont. The swash capitals are based on some made by Granjon for his Parangon italic, a type found in much printing in Paris and shown on the Berner specimen sheet of 1592. This is a specimen of Monotype’s 14-point Garamond italic. In this special version of the type, with its many archaic swash capitals and ligatured sorts, it seems likely that the long s was combined with some of the vowels that followed to make a single piece of type. Morison showed a synopsis of these characters on page 30 of his monograph <em>On type faces</em>, London, 1923. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqtYi-kufGLDSC9PyQBC-TfcOZ2r_5-YBmNs6I43m3wXo1keDRVyAFjF_perCYVMFzu95wtxmbTxLVRY4CEeDR_joGL-eCnHkYgruQlJEAQa7aJ-1fn9C5BiZPlObgvUaqInK/s1600/13++Mono+Garamond+156+ital+spec+chars+sh+-+det.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 106px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqtYi-kufGLDSC9PyQBC-TfcOZ2r_5-YBmNs6I43m3wXo1keDRVyAFjF_perCYVMFzu95wtxmbTxLVRY4CEeDR_joGL-eCnHkYgruQlJEAQa7aJ-1fn9C5BiZPlObgvUaqInK/s400/13++Mono+Garamond+156+ital+spec+chars+sh+-+det.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694459414767709330" /></a><br /><div></div>But the machine could produce some impressive examples of kerning. The tail of the capital Q of Monotype Van Dijck (example below) runs right over the following letter.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoSA8V8s-HfDUExCXFdOtllf0glcAnLEAFyKReZ6G9brYS1BjJTIr6pfwBIXokQziNAL9FIYddCPWV-mSrgX6DWU9sJQgGLmStJPPjTpuzh7VU8ppwe_A934_vMMyWNxBzOvdF/s1600/Van+Dijck+203+12pt+1b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 146px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoSA8V8s-HfDUExCXFdOtllf0glcAnLEAFyKReZ6G9brYS1BjJTIr6pfwBIXokQziNAL9FIYddCPWV-mSrgX6DWU9sJQgGLmStJPPjTpuzh7VU8ppwe_A934_vMMyWNxBzOvdF/s400/Van+Dijck+203+12pt+1b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5695647406449163586" /></a><br /><div></div>For Linotype, for a long time the dominant system for typesetting in the United States, only a technical change would eventually overcome the limitations. In due course the liberating but flawed technology of filmsetting, and then its digital successors, notably OpenType, would do something to save the kerned f and to preserve the mandatory accompanying set of the five ff, fi, fl, ffi and ffl ligatures for painstaking and pedantic typographers.<br /><br /><strong>French type and its nicks: a footnote</strong><br /><div></div>I wrote above that French type ‘usually’ has the nick on top. In fact I know of one exception to that rule, for a special reason.<br /><div></div>The so-called Garamond type of the Imprimerie nationale has had much documenting in this blog (and of course in the magisterial <a href="http://www.garamond.culture.fr/">Garamont </a>website of the Ministry of Culture in France, introduced in October 2011). One odd result of the preserving of the matrices of Jean Jannon, acquired in 1641, is that as one can see that they have an unusual appearance : they are struck ‘upside down’. That is, the top of the letter is at the lower end of the matrix. <br /><div></div>Traditionally the top of the letter in the matrix is at the end that is placed first in the mould. Making contact with the heurtoir, the ‘stool’ inside the mould, it sets the alignment of the type. The usual orientation of the letter on the matrix can be seen seen in this Figgins type of about 1810. The notch at the lower end is there to make it easier to tie a piece of leather to it so that it can be held in the mould, something that can be seen in the image of the mould by Simonneau:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mXWfjKAZRNGLCGDviAPhO-XZ0H6bbkANP1qFKMEjpEF8Fhdw1RlIsxJdFBb1C7CDcKeP-yFpgkY7bsEd8sH0G4PL06GKbk5-brGOHNl_jHDAm94dNFDBySr3mbd3-CXYhTvt/s1600/14++Figgins+Canon+mat+-+R+1+b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 198px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mXWfjKAZRNGLCGDviAPhO-XZ0H6bbkANP1qFKMEjpEF8Fhdw1RlIsxJdFBb1C7CDcKeP-yFpgkY7bsEd8sH0G4PL06GKbk5-brGOHNl_jHDAm94dNFDBySr3mbd3-CXYhTvt/s400/14++Figgins+Canon+mat+-+R+1+b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694459873719691778" /></a><br /><div></div>The Jannon matrices were struck the other way round, so that the letter looks ‘upside down’. Perhaps it shows how new he was to typefounding. (As John Lane has noted, matrices for a very few English types of the 17th century were also struck in this manner, which perhaps tells us how isolated some English founders were from conventional practice.) Here is a matrix for Jannon’s <em>Gros Canon</em> (36-point) roman:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj49QQGpWDIqYAUDxrqYh3Tlf46XZIoD_f5r-3H-I0KFRJUC4-7v2lTSH8uI8mVMj9Nyjl8jJktPtASZmhQ8sjiscXSlRUY-Iuwvsb-hbMzl7gxyWBIa-aFAWEEzWKBI8HEV45y/s1600/15++Car+de+l%2527Univ+-+mats+-+36pt+3.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 208px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj49QQGpWDIqYAUDxrqYh3Tlf46XZIoD_f5r-3H-I0KFRJUC4-7v2lTSH8uI8mVMj9Nyjl8jJktPtASZmhQ8sjiscXSlRUY-Iuwvsb-hbMzl7gxyWBIa-aFAWEEzWKBI8HEV45y/s400/15++Car+de+l%2527Univ+-+mats+-+36pt+3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694460137267106210" /></a><br /><div></div>There is one result from Jannon’s habit that is perfectly logical but which surprised me at first. If type is cast from this matrix in a normal French mould the type itself will be ‘upside down’ on its body, so its nick will be ‘below’ the letter, as any English compositor would expect. This can be seen in examples of the 36-point Jannon type that have been cast at Ivry. I’m not sure that there is any moral to this anecdote, except that I find it reassuring that a kind of logical explanation can be found for such a minute variation from what seems like a rigidly undeviating and disciplined practice.<br /><br /><strong>Note on nicks, etc.</strong><br /><div></div>Anyone at all interested in the discussion of this detail of the mould should look at Carter’s notes on its construction in ‘The history of the typefounder’s hand-mould’ in the Davis and Carter edition of Moxon, <em>Mechanick exercises</em>, revised edition, 1962, pp. 377–9. Kerning is dealt with pretty thoroughly by Fournier (<em>Manuel typographique</em> pp. 98 ff.; Carter, <em>Fournier on typefounding</em>, pp. 109 ff.).<br /><div></div><em><strong>An oversight.</strong></em> I am grateful to Stan Nelson for drawing my attention to the following passage, which I should have quoted in this post:<br /><div></div>‘T. B. Reed noted (<em>Old English Letter Foundries,</em> 1887, p. 204) that the matrices for the Union Pearl, the Alexandrian Greek, the Court Hand, and the Scriptorials were struck with the letters upside-down. The same is true of Nicholls’s Great Primer Roman and Italic and the Great Primer Ethiopic at Oxford. If fitted in English moulds, therefore, they produce type with the nick at the back, which is normal in France. A possible explanation is that they were made for use with French moulds so as to cast type with the nick in front. Moulds of the kind appear, therefore, to have descended from Nicholls to Grover.’<br /><div></div>Edward Rowe Mores, <em>A dissertation upon English typographical founders </em>edited by Harry Carter and Christopher Ricks,(London, 1961), p. 112. Horace Hart had already made some remarks on the orientation of the Nicholls matrices in his <em>Notes on a century of typography at the University Press, Oxford</em> (1900), at page 139.<br /><br /><strong>Notes on some sources of images</strong><br /><div></div>I am grateful to those who have granted access to the materials shown here.<br /><div></div>The image of the mould engraved by Louis Simonneau in 1694 is one of a series of plates illustrating typefounding that were prepared but never published, and copies are almost unfindable outside Paris. (But it is known that some proofs escaped. Copies of these may possibly exist in libraries or print collections, perhaps, since they have no captions, mistakenly identified as plates made for the <em>Encyclopédie</em>.) I showed these images with a commentary for the first time in an article, ‘Illustrations of typefounding engraved for the Description des Arts et Métiers of the Académie Royale des Sciences, 1694 to c. 1700’, <em>Matrix</em> 11 (1991), pp. 60–80. They match the manuscript description of punchcutting and typefounding compiled by Jacques Jaugeon for the Description des Arts et Métiers in the Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France, Paris. Fred Smeijers later showed them in his book <em>Counterpunch</em> (1996). The originals were from an album at the St Bride Library, London. The printed image of the mould is missing from this set of plates but the original copper plate had been acquired by the Newberry Library, Chicago, which was kind enough to have a few new impressions made from it, from one of which this detail is taken.<br /><div></div>The two details of sketches showing a printing type for capital A appear on leaf 80 of an album relating to the Description des Arts et Métiers (Gr. fol. 114) at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris.<br /><div></div>The early types from the University Press, Oxford, are among materials that were transferred to the St Bride Library in 1989.<br /><div></div>The matrix of the <em>Gros Canon</em> roman of Jean Jannon is in the Cabinet des Poinçons of the Atelier du livre d’art et de l’estampe of the Imprimerie nationale, Ivry-sur-Seine.<br /><div></div>The detail of the word <em>faciem</em> from the 42-line Bible (Leviticus 20:3) is from a single leaf at the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, one of several from a broken copy that were sold in New York in 1921 with a common title-page reading <em>A noble fragment, being a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.</em><br /><div></div>There are selected articles from the <em>Encyclopédie</em> in Giles Barber’s <em>Bookmaking in Diderot’s Encyclopédie: a facsimile reproduction of articles and plates, with an introduction</em> (Farnborough: Gregg, 1973)<blockquote></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-37949404219817705632011-11-07T14:22:00.058+00:002011-12-10T12:04:12.958+00:00Elzevir letterFrom time to time those who handle English books of the early 18th century come across the phrase ‘Elzevir letter’ in the lists of new publications that are added at the end by booksellers. It refers to publications that are set in types that are small but elegant, and (it is implied) they are also beautifully printed, like the little books of the Elzevirs or Elseviers, printers in Leyden and elsewhere in the Low Countries during the 17th century. These were often editions of the Latin classics in tiny formats. Later they became the quarry, sometimes sought rather obsessively, of collectors, and several lists of the titles were printed, of which more below. The reputation of the ‘Elzevir letter’ in England was certainly enhanced by the sight of the crisp, competent presswork of the Dutch printers.<br /><div></div>Thanks to Google, it is not difficult to put together a pattern of the use of this term in the English book trade. It begins quite late, some time after the period of the greatest commercial activity of the Elsevier family in the Netherlands. There are several examples in announcements of books in England from about 1712 to 1715, some of them from Curll and Lintott, and there is occasional use of the term during the later 18th century. According to its publicity, the <em>London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer</em>, launched in January 1760, was to be ‘beautifully printed on a new Elzevir letter, and fine paper’. The earliest example that I have found is in an announcement in the <em>London Gazette </em>in 1712:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkbuttUpoHJe8TemVw9mIPfvVWr4LT0Y3-zCO4q-QGvWyxX9sqNnfXc1wcTvMum_rzhKM676oeDVboXZLwq_axH3wwqlEQz1Lw4Pb0ne5wmRlgLVO6900g2HnzkE6rzleMHUra/s1600/Elzevir+letter+-+London+gazette+1712+b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 151px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkbuttUpoHJe8TemVw9mIPfvVWr4LT0Y3-zCO4q-QGvWyxX9sqNnfXc1wcTvMum_rzhKM676oeDVboXZLwq_axH3wwqlEQz1Lw4Pb0ne5wmRlgLVO6900g2HnzkE6rzleMHUra/s400/Elzevir+letter+-+London+gazette+1712+b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5672261995985022370" /></a><br /><div></div>For ‘Elzevir letter’, the OED has: ‘Used [attributively], an edition published by one of the Elzeviers; formerly applied also to editions printed in the small neat form and with the kind of type adopted by them.’ And then, ‘The style of type used by the Elzeviers in their small editions of the classics. Now used as the name of a special form of printing types.’<br /><div></div>The term ‘Elzevir letter’, as used by the English booksellers, however ill-informed its terms of reference, was evidently intended as praise. But what are we to make of this succession of phrases from D. B. Updike’s <em>Printing Types </em>(1922): ‘The Elzevirs are popularly remembered nowadays by their little editions in 32mo, with engraved title-pages, narrow margins, and compact pages of a solid, monotonous type which is Dutch and looks so.’ (ii. 15). Later he writes of ‘compact monotonous type’ (ii. 17), and then: ‘To have seen one Elzevir volume … in this format, is to have seen all—or certainly as many as one wishes to see! How anyone ever read with comfort pages so solidly set in such monotonous old style type passes understanding—or at least mine.’ (ii. 17). We begin to get the point that Updike is making: Dutch types are dull and boring, perhaps (though he does not quite dare to say it) like Dutch people. <br /><div></div>Commenting on the type specimen sheet of types ‘cut by the late Christoffel van Dijck, issued by the widow of Daniel Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1681’ (a sheet repoduced in <em>Type Specimen Facsimiles</em>, 1963, no. 12, and quite often elsewhere too), Updike wrote, ‘Most of these types are recognisable as Dutch by their sturdy qualities of workmanship, and, particularly in the smaller sizes of roman and italic, by a tiresome evenness of design.’ (ii. 20). <br /><div></div>Monotonous? Tiresome? Is this an example of Bostonian impatience with the lingering Dutch heritage of New Amsterdam? Possibly. But a longer and more involved story appears to lurk behind this display of bad temper. In 1880 a writer in Belgium published a study of the Elzevirs and their books, a major contribution to the listing of the books made by this family. <em>Les Elzevier</em>, by Alphonse Willems, offered a solution to the problem of the origin of the types, which was one that had exercised several bibliographers. (This is my rendering of his French text.)<br /><div></div>“All the writers who have investigated and appreciated the masterpieces that came from the presses of the Elzevirs have had repeatedly to ask the name of the artist who devised and engraved the types, with their delicacy of design, their happy proportions, and their accomplished fitting, which their editions so prized that they are quite incomparable. Whoever created the type that was so elegant and perfect of its kind, so that the term ‘elzevirian’ that is normally applied to it has become a synomym for perfection, was no ordinary artist, and deserves to have his name known to posterity, no less than that of the Elzevirs themselves. This question of attribution was raised long ago, and – lacking solid proof as we do – it has been resolved by more or less ingenious guesswork. As ever, the first guess was in the direction of the best-known punchcutters, Claude Garamond or the Sanlecques. A. Didot was the supporter of the first of these names, and Adry, relying on an early document, preferred the others. Garamond, whose work of this kind, especially the fine greek types he made to the order of François I, entitled him, in the words of Vitré, to be named among the great artists, and was worthy of being associated with the Elzevirs. There was only one problem. Garamond died in December 1561, nearly three-quarters of a century before the Elzevirs began to issue their first masterpieces, and the specimens of his style that we know are very different from that of the Elzevir types. In fact, the types of the Sanlecques have similarities that cannot be mistaken. Moreover, the Sanlecques were contemporaries of the Elzevirs, and – a detail that has its importance – the younger brother Sanlecque became a protestant, and thus professed the same religion as the famous Dutch printers.”<br /><div></div>Willems then delivers what may be called his punch line: “There is no need to guess any longer. The maker of these marvellous punches was neither Garamond nor the Sanlecques, nor any other foreign master: he was a Dutch punchcutter, and his name was Christoffel van Dijck.”<br /><div></div>At Antwerp, in the collection of the newly created Museum Plantin-Moretus, Willems had found the broadside specimen of 1681 bearing the name of Daniel Elsevier, showing the types of Christoffel van Dijck, and he included a photo-lithographic facsimile of the sheet in his book. Here was an Elsevier (the widow of Daniel in this case) offering for sale the foundry of van Dijck. So far as Willems was concerned, it solved the problem of the origin of the Elsevier types, demolishing the claims that had been made on behalf of French punchcutters. But did it do so? <br /><div></div>In 1756, in the <em>Journal des Sçavans</em> for May, Jean-Pierre Fournier, Fournier l’aîné, the owner of the Le Bé foundry in Paris, had asserted, ‘I own the foundry of Garamond, the Le Bé family and Granjon. I shall be happy to display my punches and matrices. These are the types that made the reputations of the Estiennes, Plantin and the Elzevirs.’ <br /><div></div>In 1784, in his <em>Épître sur les progrès de l’imprimerie</em>, Pierre Didot included the line, “Garamond d’Elzévir a cimenté la gloire” – that is, ‘Garamond conferred lasting fame on the Elzevirs’. (The ‘A. Didot’ cited by Willems in the passage above must be ‘F.-A.’ Didot, François-Ambroise, the father of Pierre.)<br /><div></div>So far as I can discover, both claims had some justification. <br /><div></div>Fournier l’aîné does not appear to have produced a formal specimen of the types of his foundry, which given the extent of its materials and their age would not have been a simple task. But in the Collection Anisson of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. fr. 22189, there are several scattered leaves with showings of types that are attributed to him. No. 65 is a small roman type. It is annotated by hand, ‘Petit Texte by Garamond, used by the Elzevirs’. ‘Petit Texte’ was a small size, roughly equivalent to eight points.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh93oRCiiU4yYhsKHo8NKYlk1742kcftkvcNZuAl74A7_seLDxuFXTDdfokn1NJVG0n5adIJzKmioOry3CxS8JovnPQXx8kNGSWBWsaOSEe31Iu_svwEKmp24ewW3AF8zDGghd/s1600/Petit+texte+-+Fournier+l%2527ain%25C3%25A9.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh93oRCiiU4yYhsKHo8NKYlk1742kcftkvcNZuAl74A7_seLDxuFXTDdfokn1NJVG0n5adIJzKmioOry3CxS8JovnPQXx8kNGSWBWsaOSEe31Iu_svwEKmp24ewW3AF8zDGghd/s400/Petit+texte+-+Fournier+l%2527ain%25C3%25A9.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5672267644152898978" /></a><br /><div></div>The ‘early document’ referred to by Adry and cited by Willems was the <em>Epreuves des caractères du fond des Sanlecques</em> (Paris, 1757). This specimen does indeed include a ‘Petit Texte’ that appears to match the type shown on the leaf of Fournier l’aîné. Moreover, the introductory note says that the types shown have been used in the much-appreciated books of Cramoisy, Vitré ... the Elzevirs and others.<br /><div></div>There is a fundamental point to make here. As we have seen, Willems used the age of the materials of Garamont (d. 1561) as an objection to the possibility of their use by the Elzevirs. But we are now aware that punches could be used to make many different sets of matrices, and that, used for casting by hand, these would go on producing good types for some hundreds of years. In Paris alone, the Garamont Petit Texte was represented by matrices in the stock of the Le Bé foundry, in that of Lamesle, and also of the Sanlecques.<br /><div></div>So what type did the Elzevirs use? Using the example that I have closest to hand, the little <em>Ovid</em> of 1629, I find that its text is set in the Petit Texte roman of Garamont, a type with a body of 2.9 mm (Hendrik Vervliet, <em>French Renaissance printing types: a conspectus</em>, 2010, type 20). Whether it was supplied by the Sanlecques or the foundry of Le Bé is of no consequence.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR2dAqiEnuD8RGWdqTNm-oZfCSh2vRaWQ9uiILS0-md5lvHwrvympdh5bQ-fCem4FND6cq3YXqWPwh8TwvGChWHEoIJH8k7D-VC7RpPrMk2wZractT02Qs5c22VhFw23GcMXLn/s1600/Elsevier+-+Ovid+1629+-+3+-+v.2+p.5+A2r.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 270px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR2dAqiEnuD8RGWdqTNm-oZfCSh2vRaWQ9uiILS0-md5lvHwrvympdh5bQ-fCem4FND6cq3YXqWPwh8TwvGChWHEoIJH8k7D-VC7RpPrMk2wZractT02Qs5c22VhFw23GcMXLn/s400/Elsevier+-+Ovid+1629+-+3+-+v.2+p.5+A2r.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5672263757943673058" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmXPB0lYrCmyUKfiYqRKy3Di6J_GYZISu5cwv84HjsnPWp9lj5ShcUWbcF73YIDr1DVqFou4DRmoDV3CMueDHEvJWYy-SHzaasNAQ8NEDvNdb37nCwPDgjzLxmLUR-b_njKsjd/s1600/Elsevier+-+Ovid+1629+-+4+-+v.2+p.5+A2r+-+det.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 207px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmXPB0lYrCmyUKfiYqRKy3Di6J_GYZISu5cwv84HjsnPWp9lj5ShcUWbcF73YIDr1DVqFou4DRmoDV3CMueDHEvJWYy-SHzaasNAQ8NEDvNdb37nCwPDgjzLxmLUR-b_njKsjd/s400/Elsevier+-+Ovid+1629+-+4+-+v.2+p.5+A2r+-+det.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5672267476582102658" /></a><br /><div></div>Where an italic was called for in the little <em>Ovid</em>, the type used was a Brevier italic by Robert Granjon.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFwr0w9Ecqd8Rl0VbPjMWwqgG69KKgndovQHCsJmJl6wF-OhJ-dGieRpPTEcR8nQSeys0cEthJ9dEu6FXK0u-tGrdGYVilp-M6xKxkPpxC-Y_yCut95fwKhgq4_gVOuTwuDiY2/s1600/Elsevier+-+Ovid+1629+-+6+-+v.2+p.1+sh.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFwr0w9Ecqd8Rl0VbPjMWwqgG69KKgndovQHCsJmJl6wF-OhJ-dGieRpPTEcR8nQSeys0cEthJ9dEu6FXK0u-tGrdGYVilp-M6xKxkPpxC-Y_yCut95fwKhgq4_gVOuTwuDiY2/s400/Elsevier+-+Ovid+1629+-+6+-+v.2+p.1+sh.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5672270627350310866" /></a><br /><div></div>There was much that was trivial, even rather hysterical, in the assertions that were made by both Willems and Updike. Willems, writing in French, displayed open Flemish loyalties and was delighted to diminish the claims that had been made on behalf of French types and to promote appreciation of the skills of a Dutch punchcutter. Updike was unwilling to express appreciation of anything Dutch. Neither of them attempted to name the types that had been used to set the text of any specific book. Updike was all too willing to believe, with Willems, that the Elzevir types were Dutch, and in his view they must therefore share certain inevitable characteristics. <br /><div></div>(Updike’s classic blunder in the same work, <em>Printing Types</em>, apparently driven by prejudice, relates to the text of the edition of the first volume of the <em>Works</em> of Selden, printed in London by William Bowyer in 1726, which had been identified mistakenly during the 18th century by John Nichols as an early use of type cut by William Caslon. Updike comments, ‘To the student who has been looking at earlier English books printed with Dutch fonts, the pages of the Selden are a relief to the eye – they are so easy to read, so clear and beautiful.’ As A. F. Johnson was later able to show, the types of the <em>Selden</em> were Dutch, not English.)<br /><div></div>I have given just one example of the use in 1629 of the Petit Texte of Garamont. It is entirely likely that other books of the Elseviers, especially later ones, made use of types from founders in Amsterdam or elsewhere in the Low Countries. But supporters of the idea should supply exact details: the title of the book, the name of the type body and the founder, based on printed evidence of some kind, preferably a reliably dated type specimen. Specimens of the foundries of Christoffel Van Dijck and Voskens, with attributions of the types, have long been available in facsimile (<em>Type Specimen Facsimiles</em>, ed. John Dreyfus. 1963), and more recent scholarship has added greatly to our knowledge of typefounding in the Low Countries. Some patient, exact work on the identification of the types used in individual books of the Elseviers would be a welcome contribution to the discussion.<br /><br /><strong>Sources</strong><br /><br />Jean Félicissime Adry, <em>Notice sur les imprimeurs de la famille des Elzévirs … par un ancien bibliothécaire</em> (Paris: Delance, 1806).<br /><div></div>Simon Bérard, <em>Essai bibliographique sur les éditions des Elzévirs</em> (Paris: De l’imprimerie de Firmin Didot, 1822). Uses Adry’s study as a basis. <br /><div></div>Charles Pieters, <em>Annales de l’imprimerie des Elsevier</em> (Gand, 1858). <br /><div></div>Alphonse Willems, <em>Les Elzevier, histoire et annales typographiques</em> (Bruxelles, 1880).<br /><br />My thanks to Stephen Lubell for an image.<em></em><em></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-23093938493424760312011-07-31T09:03:00.064+00:002012-04-02T16:31:05.997+00:00Talbot Baines Reed, typefounder and sailor<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNpFRjefMzxjENczZXVsd_85BKEBdC5hw_QmOAkPpK3i60QTYdiaMUucc45_s1sVPvXW2nMRUOCqrBCHeOJ3BM69-aQZKdwK5TwqOcxQurzYfY0NxRbE4syar5ulKOI-EpCIn0/s1600/Reed+Hand+Moulds+-+titlepage+-+det.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 194px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNpFRjefMzxjENczZXVsd_85BKEBdC5hw_QmOAkPpK3i60QTYdiaMUucc45_s1sVPvXW2nMRUOCqrBCHeOJ3BM69-aQZKdwK5TwqOcxQurzYfY0NxRbE4syar5ulKOI-EpCIn0/s400/Reed+Hand+Moulds+-+titlepage+-+det.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643938296089688306" /></a><br /><div></div>Talbot Baines Reed was born in 1852 and he died in 1893, a premature death for someone who might in later years have been able to contribute even more than he did to our knowledge of the history of his trade, which was that of typefounder.<br /><div></div>This is in some ways a personal essay. I have known Reed’s handwriting intimately for all my working life, mostly from the well-informed notes on the types in them that he wrote in the books that he accumulated. Some of them were battered copies that he must have got cheaply in bookshops or perhaps from bookstalls like those in Farringdon Road near the railway station. His handwriting (of which a sample is seen above) was lively and neat, and I recognize it with pleasure wherever I meet it.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs8PkNLZDlaavfjWKZ1XQsXVkJpa2MPxAi3umzV7xh70dqu2cYwM7aTP9FdxTNZV_HxoSFeqV2KIO7Vu7CC4mTsWh4hoKEBG66DIjcDjbDYJ5yfRcokf4iUT32VwoAN524DBz8/s1600/Reed+collection+plaque+a+-+900.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 362px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs8PkNLZDlaavfjWKZ1XQsXVkJpa2MPxAi3umzV7xh70dqu2cYwM7aTP9FdxTNZV_HxoSFeqV2KIO7Vu7CC4mTsWh4hoKEBG66DIjcDjbDYJ5yfRcokf4iUT32VwoAN524DBz8/s400/Reed+collection+plaque+a+-+900.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635440361011520962" /></a><br /><div></div>These books make up a substantial part of his typographical collection that was given to the St Bride Library in 1900 (the gift was that of J. Passmore Edwards, who had bought it from the family), where this personal element in their choice makes them a happy complement to the more systematically made library of William Blades, who seems to have got much of his material from dealers in England and abroad who had instructions – which they carried out very well – to search for and to supply the literature of the printing trades.<br /><div></div>Here is Reed’s note in an item that he bought at an auction sale of 1886 at which he and Blades both got more books more cheaply than they had dared to hope.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPKLcNBkuG0BCJU9LvlAsaGW6_jiH9gUhbfIe2Kie1rZLZZLFuzMyNXR5w2p_qxZSU7QJYgHQifGQW7AHttxkjGwOei1gNdbvz3NvH6ETE8zNZiVYDBYLr5WPJ0hqakPeIH5Hq/s1600/TBR+note+on+Bodoniana+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 242px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPKLcNBkuG0BCJU9LvlAsaGW6_jiH9gUhbfIe2Kie1rZLZZLFuzMyNXR5w2p_qxZSU7QJYgHQifGQW7AHttxkjGwOei1gNdbvz3NvH6ETE8zNZiVYDBYLr5WPJ0hqakPeIH5Hq/s400/TBR+note+on+Bodoniana+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5651376535906469042" /></a><br /><div></div>Technical note for users of the library’s online catalogue. Each of its books has a unique ‘accession number’ which serves as its identity, with the letters SB in front of it in the full catalogue entry. The accession numbers for Blades’s books were all given a prefix of 20, so that they often have five figures, beginning with 2. The numbers for Reed’s books are more often of four figures. Here is a nice example, a folio volume findable under the name of its printer, Johann Froben, with some types of which the cutting is now attributed to Peter Schoeffer, the son of Gutenberg’s assistant. Erasmus, <em>In Novum Testamentum annotationes</em>. Basel, 1519. Its number is SB5867.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLF2UVnuTuMcA8KF9pH60FoI8cCEPJyxDBZIvKoGzYACp6Wp9gLpELITx2bYlyBlPnEj0yv43sebUjupFkCc30gtDDps270q7TvizFd1wfhzB6V7PI84-j1VI9iZiwtdSDWsRl/s1600/Froben+-+Erasmus+2+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLF2UVnuTuMcA8KF9pH60FoI8cCEPJyxDBZIvKoGzYACp6Wp9gLpELITx2bYlyBlPnEj0yv43sebUjupFkCc30gtDDps270q7TvizFd1wfhzB6V7PI84-j1VI9iZiwtdSDWsRl/s400/Froben+-+Erasmus+2+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5651449926991892930" /></a><br /><div></div>In 1869, after he left the City of London School, Reed began to work at his father’s typefoundry, Sir Charles Reed & Sons, known as ‘the Fann Street Foundry’, and after his father’s death in 1881 he became its director. In 1877 he became associated with Blades in setting up the display that was shown at the Caxton Celebration, an event to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of Caxton’s printing in England that was held at the South Kensington Museum. A year later, with Blades’s encouragement and support, he began to write his <em>History of the Old English Letter Foundries</em>, an account of the British foundries based on extensive reading of printed and archival material that was published in 1887.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4tgMbSC3lCr9zP4F6CDNCMBDc7PuhJoFfiRj4vuWW4NfB8jVw6z7WQuu0EYD6ZbJbhqrkax_NYJ0witGpak0JdJBVCcN8NAc1n4cXo1Y5dUXPMAe_1QvPxaG6QnfTnSkAy8Nd/s1600/Reed+Hand+Moulds+-+titlepage.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 273px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4tgMbSC3lCr9zP4F6CDNCMBDc7PuhJoFfiRj4vuWW4NfB8jVw6z7WQuu0EYD6ZbJbhqrkax_NYJ0witGpak0JdJBVCcN8NAc1n4cXo1Y5dUXPMAe_1QvPxaG6QnfTnSkAy8Nd/s400/Reed+Hand+Moulds+-+titlepage.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635440188744313762" /></a><br /><div></div>It is not easy to say how far Reed was involved in the practical side of the foundry, but there is a surviving document, of which the title page is shown above, that gives us a fascinating hint: the handwritten ‘Catalogue of Hand Moulds’ of the Fann Street Foundry dated 1883 which is among materials that came to the Type Museum, London, with documents from Stephenson, Blake. (Justin Howes listed them and scanned this item.) It was made at a date when we know from other sources that the use of hand moulds was becoming less practical as a part of the operations of a modern typefoundry. Reed may have taken the opportunity to bring together and list this collection of items that were still in use but which were obsolescent and had some antiquarian value. <br /><div></div>One item that was inherited by Stephenson, Blake is worth putting on record, the fruit no doubt of Reed’s historical researches. This was ‘safe Q’, which was not a safe at all, but a simple chest of drawers which was located in the ‘tomb’, the store room at Sheffield to which few visitors were admitted. It contained ‘Mr. Reed’s curio collection’, namely some items that in looking through the materials of the Fann Street Foundry he had identified as being of special historical interest: the matrices of some of the undoubtedly old black-letters, those of ‘scriptorial’ types like those of Ichabod Dawks and the so-called ‘Union Pearl’, and the matrices for the capitals of Joseph Moxon’s Canon roman, discarded by Caslon. Later visitors had reason to be grateful to him.<br /><div></div>In 1890 Reed gave a talk on ‘Old and new fashions in typography’ at the Royal Society of Arts in which he drew on his historical researches, but most of his ceaseless regular writing, which he greatly enjoyed, consisted of the school stories that were published serially in the <em>Boys’ Own Paper</em>, set in public boarding schools with names like ‘Fellsgarth’ and ‘St Dominic’s’, exotic environments that for the day boy who had attended the City of London School must have provided an exercise in creative imagination.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtgstP8jOxG061CmXwQ6JbBcdBWEaHyk0keiD1tKybrfZwAyp1lWyAQZbHF4kOT8gI3OhSbWJ2wVrziRqXbcYbUQ6DDxO2eCYNJDRIwQA-iXONdGE5sdrql6t9d8Wq1aqY_NzY/s1600/Rubeus+-+EW+for+WM+2.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtgstP8jOxG061CmXwQ6JbBcdBWEaHyk0keiD1tKybrfZwAyp1lWyAQZbHF4kOT8gI3OhSbWJ2wVrziRqXbcYbUQ6DDxO2eCYNJDRIwQA-iXONdGE5sdrql6t9d8Wq1aqY_NzY/s400/Rubeus+-+EW+for+WM+2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641493169340916242" /></a><br /><div></div>There were two other connections that might have developed further, given time. The Reed foundry was chosen to cast the types cut by Edward Prince for William Morris, who gave his founder an album of the enlarged photographs of early types made by Emery Walker on which his own designs had been based. (One of them appears above.) And Reed was the first honorary secretary, ‘until you find someone better’, of the Bibliographical Society. He signed with the others present at the inaugural meeting on 15 July 1892.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfu6JZ2FbtXtdCp7ccUW-9PiUreYLVCxyKfX6LdesGUVaqmJ_7FJkZT2A7W3mJA5PyLs-CT108wFOezEYTsGMXHP98V5L8Qq7CJRKmqe6xw4cvJF8JV1Pt-l_zJ34dqgYEkBs7/s1600/Reed+-+Type+foundries+tp+-+900.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 319px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfu6JZ2FbtXtdCp7ccUW-9PiUreYLVCxyKfX6LdesGUVaqmJ_7FJkZT2A7W3mJA5PyLs-CT108wFOezEYTsGMXHP98V5L8Qq7CJRKmqe6xw4cvJF8JV1Pt-l_zJ34dqgYEkBs7/s400/Reed+-+Type+foundries+tp+-+900.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635440647327876194" /></a><br /><div></div>The <em>History of the Old English Letter Foundries</em>, which got its title from a phrase in the idiosyncratic essay of 1778 by the 18th-century antiquarian Edward Rowe Mores, <em>A dissertation upon English typographical founders and founderies</em>, is worth a word here. It is a triumph of rapid and scrupulously exact writing. Modern readers know it from the revised edition that was published by Faber & Faber in 1952. Although the name on the title page was that of the historian A. F. Johnson, the initiative for the new edition, as for so many things of its kind, was that of Stanley Morison, and the new edition of Reed’s work, like so many of the projects that were generated during Morison’s decade or so of headlong activity beginning in the 1920s (the big book on the Fell types is another example), would never have been realised without the patient support of others.<br /><div></div>Johnson’s edition, a handsome volume printed at the University Press at Oxford at the height of its capabilities, set in Monotype Bell and bound in green buckram, is (notwithstanding its many virtues) something of an editorial disaster. Huge changes in typographical scholarship had taken place during the sixty years that had elapsed since the work had appeared, but in the larger part of Johnson’s text it is impossible to be sure whether any phrase was written by Reed in 1887 or Johnson in 1952, and the question is often an important one. There are one or two sensible examples of major surgery: the account of William Caslon and his earlier types is wholly imported from one of Johnson’s own published studies in which he established, for example, that the traditional account of the first use of one of Caslon’s own types, in Bowyer’s <em>Selden</em> of 1726 (which had misled Updike and lured him into a characteristic anti-Dutch rant), was nonsense. Conversely, however, Reed’s first chapter, which gives a lucid summary of theories concerning the early making of printing type, is given almost wholly in his own words with the minimum of interference, but without some effort one cannot be quite sure of this: Johnson had a habit of tinkering with his text. One example of inadequate editing among rather too many is his treatment of a reference by Reed to ‘our copy of Cottrell’s specimen’ (Reed 1887, p. 292). In his text of 1952 Johnson altered this to ‘the St Bride copy of Cottrell’s specimen’ (Reed-Johnson, p. 292), presumably on the grounds that Reed’s own books had come to St Bride’s. But he might have checked that this was so: Reed’s reference was in fact to the Fann Street Foundry’s ‘house’ copy of the specimen, which remained with the foundry and was transferred with it to Stephenson, Blake in Sheffield when they acquired the Reed materials. It should now be with the specimens that were acquired by the Type Museum. (I write ‘should be’ because the earlier of the specimens acquired from Stephenson, Blake cannot currently be located there.)<br /><div></div>However, it should be said that Johnson added a great deal of invaluable material to his edition, extending the period that is covered to the later 19th century, and his book is indispensable to any reader concerned with British typefounding. But then so too is Reed’s original work. As I say, Johnson was capable of changing any phrase at his whim, and as the above example shows it is impossible to be quite sure of the status of the modern text without having both editions open side by side. A reader should not be compelled to work under such tiresome conditions.<br /><div></div>The printer’s copy for the text of 1952, which survives at the St Bride Library, is a nice reminder of the trials that were then imposed on its compositors by the scholarly printer: it is simply a torn up copy of Reed’s book corrected in handwriting by both Morison and Johnson. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQy4BYdjeDaw5lNKgzSgo3V7eFExxWszzW9bGa6YnkvW36K-tHxK6ZKIw1zN5-vpagL5UqhURx8lhEa90piX03YVNBaRdau7OmPKA0J4YaK98YMxpgkK1KXq1ivRt0tUl1u2Ds/s1600/Reed+-+Letter+foundries+-+copy+for+1952+ed+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 312px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQy4BYdjeDaw5lNKgzSgo3V7eFExxWszzW9bGa6YnkvW36K-tHxK6ZKIw1zN5-vpagL5UqhURx8lhEa90piX03YVNBaRdau7OmPKA0J4YaK98YMxpgkK1KXq1ivRt0tUl1u2Ds/s400/Reed+-+Letter+foundries+-+copy+for+1952+ed+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635447147953508850" /></a><br /><div></div>Morison had intended to take a more active part in the making of the new edition than he was able to give to it. The bibliography at the end of his article ‘Printing types’ that appears in the 14th edition of the <em>Encyclopaedia Britannica</em> includes this title: Reed, <em>A history of the old English letter foundries.</em> new ed. A. F. Johnson and Stanley Morison, 2 vols. 1929. This is the bibliographical ghost of a book that never existed: Johnson would eventually realise the edition that Morison had planned. But (with some encouragement and the lavish editorial help that <em>The Times </em>provided him with on behalf of its official history) Morison did produce the memoir of Reed that he had intended to add to it: <em>Talbot Baines Reed: author, bibliographer, typefounder</em> was printed and distributed in 1960 by Brooke Crutchley, the University Printer at Cambridge. Other sources for Reed’s life include the memoir by his friend John Sime that was added to his last book <em>Kilgorman</em> (1895), and the revised entry in ODNB.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFP_XP679I19LdSbhT-1NfkznJd6jK-sgUonsDLGZHdbYsR9p2mUuiV39urxPCddVGBM5oOHBuCAfqevU7GbNZ7LOqqXubP7O4xmGhd8c-lZgAfVdwuUSr5c8mTfhS1W_54-rW/s1600/Reed+Abney+Park+2011-07-01+6+b+-+900.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 356px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFP_XP679I19LdSbhT-1NfkznJd6jK-sgUonsDLGZHdbYsR9p2mUuiV39urxPCddVGBM5oOHBuCAfqevU7GbNZ7LOqqXubP7O4xmGhd8c-lZgAfVdwuUSr5c8mTfhS1W_54-rW/s400/Reed+Abney+Park+2011-07-01+6+b+-+900.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635440930322131010" /></a><br /><div></div>As well as the connection with St Bride’s I have another link with Talbot Baines Reed. A Reed family memorial, on which he is commemorated, is in Abney Park cemetery, not far from my front door. It is a large and striking Celtic cross, the work of the O’Shea brothers, the family practice of stonemasons and sculptors from Ballyhooly in County Cork who had collaborated with Ruskin on the sculptural work of the Oxford Museum of Natural History. This is how the inscription for T. B. Reed, which is now obscured and unreadable, looked in 1990.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO8fMXmnpgbgQ3kadWPgwY2p_Ne-Fv8mD38blcw9bWX2JHTIc0YjkfFfXxaBXk7ECj9SZPJX-70pN3rD0LsqeI6jVIKvtK6yD5qKQsTdzKOWnTXs3UeFIHvPAV0_WMsnURO_Hd/s1600/Reed+monument+October+1990+-+inscription+b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 244px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO8fMXmnpgbgQ3kadWPgwY2p_Ne-Fv8mD38blcw9bWX2JHTIc0YjkfFfXxaBXk7ECj9SZPJX-70pN3rD0LsqeI6jVIKvtK6yD5qKQsTdzKOWnTXs3UeFIHvPAV0_WMsnURO_Hd/s400/Reed+monument+October+1990+-+inscription+b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5668818673312508946" /></a><br /><div></div>In 1876 Reed had married Elizabeth Jane, daughter of Samuel MacCurdy Greer, a County Court judge who had briefly been MP for Londonderry County. He enjoyed swimming and sailing, and the family holidays had long taken place in the northern Irish counties, which he loved. At 17 he saved the lives of his younger brother and a cousin who had got into trouble while they were swimming.<br /><div></div>Reed’s last published work, issued in 1895 after his death, was <em>Kilgorman: a story of Ireland in 1798</em>. Near the opening is a scene in which the narrator, a lonely child with mysterious ancestry, spots a French gun-runner skilfully navigating the perils of the lee-shore by Fanad Head at the opening to Lough Swilly, on a coast that he knew very well. It is a piece of vivid, virtuoso writing with which I shall conclude this piece, leaving readers of Patrick O’Brian with the suggestion that this passage must surely (along with Conan Doyle’s <em>Rodney Stone</em>, and countless other scattered sources) have been among the texts that were known to him and that were drawn on in his published works:<br /><br />I tried to get up on my feet, but the wind buffeted me back before I reached my knees, and I was fain to lie prone, with my nose to the storm, blinking through half-closed eyes out to sea.<br />For a long time I lay thus. Then I seemed to descry at the point of the bay windward a sail. It was a minute or more before I could be certain I saw aright. Yes, it was a sail.<br />What craft could be mad enough in such weather to trust itself to the mercies of the bay? Even my father, the most daring of helmsmen, would give Fanad Head a wide berth before he put such a wind as this at his back. This stranger must be either disabled or ignorant of the coast, or she would never drive in thus towards a lee-shore like ours. Boy as I was, I knew better seamanship than that.<br />Yet as I watched her, she seemed to me neither cripple nor fool. She was a cutter-rigged craft, long and low in the water, under close canvas, and to my thinking wonderfully light and handy in the heavy sea. She did not belong to these parts—even I could tell that—and her colours, if she had any, had gone with the wind.<br />The question was, would she on her present tack weather Fanad Head (on which I lay) and win the lough? And if not, how could she escape the rocks on which every moment she was closing?<br />At first it seemed that nothing could save her, for she broke off short of the point, and drove in within half-a-mile of the rocks. Then, while I waited to see the end of her, she suddenly wore round, and after staggering a moment while the sea broke over her, hauled up to the wind, and careening over, with her mainsail sweeping the water, started gaily on the contrary tack.<br />It was so unlike anything any of our clumsy trawler boats were capable of, that I was lost in admiration at the suddenness and daring of the manoeuvre. But Fanad was still to be weathered, and close as she sailed to the wind, it seemed hardly possible to gain sea-room to clear it.<br />Yet she cleared it, even though the black rocks frowned at her not a cable’s length from her lee-quarter, and the wind laid her over so that her mast-head seemed almost to touch them as it passed. Then, once clear, up went her helm as she turned again into the wind, and slipped, with the point on her weather-quarter, into the safe waters of the lough.<br />I was so delighted watching this adventure from my lonely perch that I did not notice the October afternoon was nearly spent, and that the light was beginning to fade. The storm gathered force every moment, so that when at last I turned to go home I had to crawl a yard or two to shelter before I could stand on my feet.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivG4HchEZLNDCQZzlCKvep5HrUsE0UB1sZcYHAwCCsKDpO07OWQ6QBNRjPBZjhHhXfdI6Y6Fyc3gkSUfpCavI-noy5BxvVWdtoMBffKE7bjj_e-wNA1WE-9qIIFRmiB91zU8mS/s1600/Lough+Swilly+-+Wikipedia.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivG4HchEZLNDCQZzlCKvep5HrUsE0UB1sZcYHAwCCsKDpO07OWQ6QBNRjPBZjhHhXfdI6Y6Fyc3gkSUfpCavI-noy5BxvVWdtoMBffKE7bjj_e-wNA1WE-9qIIFRmiB91zU8mS/s400/Lough+Swilly+-+Wikipedia.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5645487301230892770" /></a><br />Lough Swilly (Wikipedia)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-5930501753471882572011-04-01T12:37:00.371+00:002012-01-14T18:25:13.401+00:00Garamond or Garamont?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1f2g9FCZ0eAd68kBTI0H911ibnE8zNWKJSJ_5QtR0B72Vhl3fKxZGWnBFhivqR7yiPdNp-ABEDr5CzD1W8JlRxt8VjKzMU6-MSEvOK7xs2PCR_ERmFPBo3m4GazmkFKHBz1ZU/s1600/Garamond+-+portrait+-+tr+-+800.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 251px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1f2g9FCZ0eAd68kBTI0H911ibnE8zNWKJSJ_5QtR0B72Vhl3fKxZGWnBFhivqR7yiPdNp-ABEDr5CzD1W8JlRxt8VjKzMU6-MSEvOK7xs2PCR_ERmFPBo3m4GazmkFKHBz1ZU/s400/Garamond+-+portrait+-+tr+-+800.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591635482795239746" /></a><br /><div></div>This small engraving (47 by 28 mm) was included by Léonard Gaultier towards the end of the 16th century in his ‘Portraits of illustrious men who have flourished in France since the year 1500 until the present’. It is the only image we have of the maker of printing types whose name has been better known for longer than that of any other. It gives his name as ‘Claude Garamont’. Was this how he spelt it himself? And is this how should we spell the name now? <br /><div></div>It seems clear that ‘Garamont’ was indeed his own spelling. It is the form that appears in most of the surviving contemporary documents connected with his working life in France, and it is in the imprint of the handful of small format volumes that he published during 1545 in partnership with Jean Barbé, either as <em>Garamont</em> or Latinized as <em>Garamontius</em>. This is from the <em>Thucydides</em>. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwYWU6ubIRO7xOHXsr7w3P2l0zCFAwhT48UiALnYhbwrRAa83ftMeMQVqUb_oNkoLG2tisoxg1VOloYM6hBs2R-YoyuTLJiqSNg0YVtBxUL2-ZPvOFnPCWgkkM5f_CiLMWX1X/s1600/2+Thucydides+imprint+1545+-+det+-+800.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 98px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwYWU6ubIRO7xOHXsr7w3P2l0zCFAwhT48UiALnYhbwrRAa83ftMeMQVqUb_oNkoLG2tisoxg1VOloYM6hBs2R-YoyuTLJiqSNg0YVtBxUL2-ZPvOFnPCWgkkM5f_CiLMWX1X/s400/2+Thucydides+imprint+1545+-+det+-+800.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593854669679630642" /></a><br /><div></div>(Note: The combination of <em>r</em> and <em>a</em> is an awkward one for italic types of this date, where the form of <em>a</em> slopes up to a point and leaves a gap: it would be better if the <em>r</em> could be kerned to fill the space, but because, as shown here, it may need to be placed next to tall characters like <em>i</em> and <em>b</em> this cannot be done routinely. Some title pages among these little books illustrate the problem. As this example shows, one answer was to make an <em>ra</em> ligature, a combination that Alexander de Paganinis had already used in the cursive type with which he printed in Toscolano in the 1520s. As will be seen from the detail of the title page of his essay on Garamont of 1914, shown below, Jean Paillard included an <em>ra</em> ligature in the type made under his direction by Ollière in 1913.)<br /><div></div>For some centuries the form ‘Garamond’ has been the more common usage, indeed for much of the time effectively the only one. However there are signs that the dominant use of this form, which has been on the wane for a century now, may now be over, among professional historians of typography at any rate: during recent decades they have increasingly tended to give the name as Claude Garamont. This note is an attempt to trace the process, and incidentally to follow the history of the reputation of Garamont himself.<br /><div></div>One reason for the continuing familiarity of ‘Garamond’, so spelt, is because during the twentieth century it became attached to several different typefaces, many of which are still in current use. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzvPvBiSPD4fg5gZ91k2lt1erfbKm0b0o0r2WbEt83v4jddzHo9rSg31Fn_tAnoHpp5dCRaLA-bGrvc49n7YELoqxF9JDSSyMeKp1YsZpUwOfqxUBqsAeymDFG7k0hgySwbgyv/s1600/3+ATF+Garamond+1923+1+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 260px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzvPvBiSPD4fg5gZ91k2lt1erfbKm0b0o0r2WbEt83v4jddzHo9rSg31Fn_tAnoHpp5dCRaLA-bGrvc49n7YELoqxF9JDSSyMeKp1YsZpUwOfqxUBqsAeymDFG7k0hgySwbgyv/s400/3+ATF+Garamond+1923+1+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593855496436053650" /></a><br /><div></div>One of the most prominent and well-marketed ‘Garamond’ types was among the group of early historically-based classics from major makers of types in the years before and after the First World War. The ‘Garamond’ of the American Type Founders Co, apparently begun in 1917 and shown above as it appears in the massive ATF specimen of 1923, was based very closely, as the company failed to make quite clear, on the set of types that had been made not long before in order to expand a series of founts cast from the early matrices in the possession of the Imprimerie nationale in Paris, and to which the name ‘Garamond’ had been given by the French national printing office. The English Monotype Corporation was encouraged by the example from the US and by customers in Britain to make its own version of the type for machine composition in 1922 under the same name. When speakers of English say Garamond, its last letter is of course fully audible.<br /><div></div>The new director of the Imprimerie nationale, Arthur Christian (appointed in 1895), following in the wake of other ‘revivers’ of older types during the second half of the 19th century who had employed them for the reprinting of classic texts (the recasting of the Caslon types, and later of the 17th-century ‘Fell types’ at Oxford, are British examples), created a complete proprietary typeface for the use of the national printing office by employing the punchcutter Hénaffe to add other sizes to the unidentified old romans and italics, known as <em>caractères de l’Université</em> of which the Imprimerie nationale possessed matrices for three sizes. The name of ‘Garamont’ or ‘Garamond’ had become attached to them and ‘Garamond’ was the form that was adopted. (A showing of the three original sizes, cast on bodies of 36, 24 and 18 points IN together with four new sizes on 16, 12, 11 and 9 points and the note ‘autres corps en préparation’, appears for what may be the first the first time in the <em>Spécimen simplifié des types divers de l’Imprimerie nationale</em> dated 1904.) Christian made use of this type to initiate the making of some spectacular examples of fine printing at the Imprimerie nationale, including the title that has a claim to be among the most accomplished examples ever made of the <em>livre d’artiste</em>, the edition of Verlaine, <em>Parallèlement</em>, that appeared in 1900, to the consternation of some members of the Assemblée nationale, under the joint imprint of the Imprimerie nationale and the enterprising art dealer and patron Ambroise Vollard, with the arresting verse printed in beautifully cast italics over lithographic images in rose pink drawn on the stone by Pierre Bonnard.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglr4eY-hJT365jU1m_bwYwmQO0yQQbbdkNygemVq7byHWupTZOgspQTlcjIUTvErej6ZQ2Wm_v3fFMVhds4N-3NsISdMRsTv3FHmEs1AsfldQ6JzmUur2xFInsN67-WDuxuK7E/s1600/Paral%25C3%25A8llement+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 315px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglr4eY-hJT365jU1m_bwYwmQO0yQQbbdkNygemVq7byHWupTZOgspQTlcjIUTvErej6ZQ2Wm_v3fFMVhds4N-3NsISdMRsTv3FHmEs1AsfldQ6JzmUur2xFInsN67-WDuxuK7E/s400/Paral%25C3%25A8llement+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646259410585826658" /></a><br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIvEwZq1kVhYopuVnYwLxR5-GdaBOg84nwzKtPRPeOn-oJmmNWByGSESiH3j6FunA0MaMPRkRLCMXaokHQVuWIEdktFduZ2M2HlLrHQOSqOV_G1cxvwHzFgvmYoao8zYmwRmAX/s1600/4+Paral%25C3%25A8llement+-+1100.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 294px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIvEwZq1kVhYopuVnYwLxR5-GdaBOg84nwzKtPRPeOn-oJmmNWByGSESiH3j6FunA0MaMPRkRLCMXaokHQVuWIEdktFduZ2M2HlLrHQOSqOV_G1cxvwHzFgvmYoao8zYmwRmAX/s400/4+Paral%25C3%25A8llement+-+1100.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593855750161511042" /></a><br /><div></div>The chief reason for the familiarity of the name of the punchcutter and its repeated appearance in texts relating to the history of printing in France is because he was known to historians as the maker of the <em>grecs du roi</em>, the Greek types with complex ligatures, of which the punches, still preserved, were known to have been cut during the 1540s and not only used to make matrices for the types of Robert Estienne, <em>imprimeur du roi</em>, but which he apparently took with him to Geneva when he prudently left Paris, a topic that would continue to be debated for a long time. There was also a tradition, less certainly based, that he had made roman and italic types of outstanding quality. <br /><div></div>Jean de La Caille, in his <em>Histoire de l’imprimerie et de la librairie</em> (Paris, 1689), expresses the still enduring sense at that time of a uniquely celebrated talent, a maker of types that were still extant and, as he implies, still in use. He does so using a spelling that appears not to have been much used in print, if at all, although there are instances in the correspondence of the Plantin printing-office: ‘Il y avait aussi de son temps Claude Garramont, qui épousa Guillemette Gaultier. Il était un des plus habiles fondeurs de son temps, dont il nous reste presentement plusieurs Frappes & Matrices qui portent encore son nom.’ <br /><div></div>Roman types identified with the name of ‘Garamond’ (mostly reliably but the <em>Petit Canon</em> is Granjon’s) had appeared on the broadside specimen of types offered for sale in 1592 by Conrad Berner in Frankfurt am Main, which came to light just before the outbreak of the First World War, although it is not known how the foundry, of which an earlier owner was the lyonnais Jacques Sabon, obtained its matrices.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbBCksEoYqnnAmsAIg5G0aGCew3AQ4Xo-LjiOozd_lwkD7sX7QE0LzbIUyqYICw11TWVSbVeFSZEUXC_ePmyy_HITExPeMvEoavz1kSgwF-DrxSQwJVa6fPcSSmVYcn8DJRg-1/s1600/5+Berner+1592+-+Parangon+-+1200.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbBCksEoYqnnAmsAIg5G0aGCew3AQ4Xo-LjiOozd_lwkD7sX7QE0LzbIUyqYICw11TWVSbVeFSZEUXC_ePmyy_HITExPeMvEoavz1kSgwF-DrxSQwJVa6fPcSSmVYcn8DJRg-1/s400/5+Berner+1592+-+Parangon+-+1200.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593855964770469746" /></a><br /><div></div>More evidence that the reputation was more than merely national comes from the observation that <em>Garamond</em> (but also <em>Garmond</em> or <em>Garmont</em> – the spelling varies) was a term that became used in Germany and the Low Countries (but not, as Fournier thought, in England) to designate a size of type, generally one that was roughly equivalent to 10 points (the Berner sheet shows a <em>Romain Garamond de Garamond</em>), and in Italy too this body was known as <em>Garamone</em>, with a diminutive <em>Garamoncino</em> for the size below. This example is from the specimen book of the printer Georg Fuhrmann, Nürnberg, 1616:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVkWkP2mRQpB_SXYHnttvqouNc4J2D70FkZK-v0yjMSPsOBEtpTRZJgho_sfXL2ALeXlc3hrgxIKdH0ogkf6cS0I8hFdoB1uKLGP30xqJA7nJ5V4TcjKs6hZxc7NkWaQz1EOHH/s1600/6+Fuhrmann+1616+-+Antiqua+Garamond+-+1200.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 244px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVkWkP2mRQpB_SXYHnttvqouNc4J2D70FkZK-v0yjMSPsOBEtpTRZJgho_sfXL2ALeXlc3hrgxIKdH0ogkf6cS0I8hFdoB1uKLGP30xqJA7nJ5V4TcjKs6hZxc7NkWaQz1EOHH/s400/6+Fuhrmann+1616+-+Antiqua+Garamond+-+1200.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593856305941932930" /></a><br /><div></div>After the death of the punchcutter in 1561, Christophe Plantin had acquired a few of his punches and some matrices for his types for his own printing-office in Antwerp, where they were mostly recorded in his inventories (such as this one, in the hand of Hendrik van den Keere, who gives own his name here in French as Henry du Tour) as the work of ‘Garramond’.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxS35o0bzlml8VNEI8Oh2JF73uXYbHRAHqd4f_ArVWG4HSolhp_j064DipmmcL6meCkR2bfIvCTkdC5hDGWe2i5QkxrTasXTTL14-T8gwSHN9ndcjVh6DVwtzYkYUYX08wPyc/s1600/7+Van+de+Keere+-+Plantin+inv+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 189px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxS35o0bzlml8VNEI8Oh2JF73uXYbHRAHqd4f_ArVWG4HSolhp_j064DipmmcL6meCkR2bfIvCTkdC5hDGWe2i5QkxrTasXTTL14-T8gwSHN9ndcjVh6DVwtzYkYUYX08wPyc/s400/7+Van+de+Keere+-+Plantin+inv+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593856828105262274" /></a><br /><div></div>Shortly after Plantin’s death his heirs received offers of matrices from the typefounder Guillaume II Le Bé in Paris, which used the form of the name that would become more widely accepted. His father, who had died shortly before, had been associated in his trade with the punchutter and had acquired the larger part of his stock of punches and matrices. Guillaume II added notes to some of the samples of printing that he sent:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUDLgivV3CeF4eFJvlfceu0CzOffrgEtjfaEgSUs7AsFsYpuTXVfDLrQah-xMRErm9KyBwIruqlTkn7Yj72_Y000a9tqrUnWuUdjm14KIF1MCujbhjql3oQIdBkKL773GgSVkN/s1600/8+Le+B%25C3%25A9+II+-+Garamond+Gros+Romain+MPM+-+det+-+1100.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 217px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUDLgivV3CeF4eFJvlfceu0CzOffrgEtjfaEgSUs7AsFsYpuTXVfDLrQah-xMRErm9KyBwIruqlTkn7Yj72_Y000a9tqrUnWuUdjm14KIF1MCujbhjql3oQIdBkKL773GgSVkN/s400/8+Le+B%25C3%25A9+II+-+Garamond+Gros+Romain+MPM+-+det+-+1100.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593857073720543986" /></a><br /><div></div>Here he writes ‘Lettre ditte en France Gros Romain taille de Claude Garamond’ (Type called <em>Gros Romain</em> in France, cut by Claude Garamond), and this is the spelling that his father had used. On a specimen of a Hebrew type the elder Guillaume Le Bé wrote that he had made it in Paris in 1551 for ‘Claude Garamond’, who cut the King’s Greek types, in his house in the rue des Carmes: ‘Lan 1551 en ceste ville de Paris Jay taille ceste lettre 9.e Pour le Sr Claude Garamond taill[eu]r & graveur des lettres Grecques du Roy’: <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp9bBRmxNL1qHvFUMnZ3ErpxuQc1hH7Kmy0ZGhd7hC_UxeTOS5KzKI0MIBUcJOgA0bUcWmL_2auTmUX2uI-bHg-yAPNAMcxxYeuJGsdSl4zyZCrgEBsHN_FBDCMen4bYJUnb3J/s1600/Le+B%25C3%25A9+9e+hebrew+-+after+Omont+-+det.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp9bBRmxNL1qHvFUMnZ3ErpxuQc1hH7Kmy0ZGhd7hC_UxeTOS5KzKI0MIBUcJOgA0bUcWmL_2auTmUX2uI-bHg-yAPNAMcxxYeuJGsdSl4zyZCrgEBsHN_FBDCMen4bYJUnb3J/s400/Le+B%25C3%25A9+9e+hebrew+-+after+Omont+-+det.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613658256575458914" /></a><br /><div></div>‘Garamond’ was the form of the name that was used by his foundry for a good two centuries after the punchcutter’s death while the types were still being cast for use by printers. The Le Bé foundry passed through the hands of a third Guillaume Le Bé, who died in 1685, and then those of his widow and her daughters, until in 1730 it was sold to the son of her manager, who had been Jean-Claude Fournier. The inventory of the foundry that was drawn up for the sale appears to have been extracted from a more detailed original written by Guillaume II Le Bé that does not survive, made in the early seventeenth century. Here is an image of a small part, showing that it possessed the punches for roman types by ‘Garamond’, as well as others by the elder Le Bé (‘mon père’), Robert Granjon and Jacques de Sanlecque.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFui-7xB3dxoihYYwxczVDwwBmFOU6OeQT7Nea9mHgI0LdPr8hrtPbBp6NxY8iX39ghNvno4RPVOGAnixa3CI8wYTq9pxub5zx_yv5zvD5mXw0-uG_AJAdlelIytl3rq1_KEJO/s1600/Le+B%25C3%25A9+1730+-+poincons+sh+bw+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 301px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFui-7xB3dxoihYYwxczVDwwBmFOU6OeQT7Nea9mHgI0LdPr8hrtPbBp6NxY8iX39ghNvno4RPVOGAnixa3CI8wYTq9pxub5zx_yv5zvD5mXw0-uG_AJAdlelIytl3rq1_KEJO/s400/Le+B%25C3%25A9+1730+-+poincons+sh+bw+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5596481302945661794" /></a><br /><div></div>(For details of the transcription of this document published in 1957 see below.)<br /><div></div>Jean-Pierre Fournier, Fournier l’aîné (1706–83), the elder son of Jean-Claude, made much of his possession of this material in a public correspondence in the <em>Journal des Sçavans</em> in 1756 with an anonymous writer who was in fact his own younger brother. ‘I own the foundry of Garamond, the Le Bé family and Granjon. I shall be happy to display my punches and matrices. These are the types that made the reputations of the Estiennes, Plantin and the Elzevirs.’<br /><div></div>The spelling ‘Garamond’, having been used by the Le Bé establishment, set the model for most succeeding writers. Not only Fournier l’aîné but also his younger brother, Fournier le jeune, made use of the archival material that had been acquired with the foundry. Much of it has now vanished, but one document, a biographical note on the French makers of types, which is now known as the ‘Le Bé Memorandum’, begun by Guillaume II Le Bé and with some later additions, would serve the younger Fournier in preparing the historical notes that he added to the preface to the specimen of his own foundry in 1742 and in the second volume of his <em>Manuel typographique</em>, 1766. The text of this document, which is presumably still in the hands of descendents of the Fournier family, was published in 1967 in a reliable transcription with notes by Harry Carter. Here is the beginning of the entry for Garamond:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQx59lu1J0l5diH4i4rD29YPwCEGgaT8dx8jVQ70QCLM2Uzk8Xt3qB0bi3BbCunUqv0WEDZEuw9dE9VITCoyVFpPuPYoJ_wBGlaf65JHseew0J_DykHkoEyyJoNrE-rlsdEWs/s1600/10+Le+Be+memo+-+Garamond.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQx59lu1J0l5diH4i4rD29YPwCEGgaT8dx8jVQ70QCLM2Uzk8Xt3qB0bi3BbCunUqv0WEDZEuw9dE9VITCoyVFpPuPYoJ_wBGlaf65JHseew0J_DykHkoEyyJoNrE-rlsdEWs/s400/10+Le+Be+memo+-+Garamond.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593885182828864114" /></a><br /><div></div>The Didot family, who would replace his roman type, then still in current use, with their own, nonetheless paid homage to his skills and reputation, and they adopted the same version of the name: <em>Garamond d’Elzévir a cimenté la gloire</em> – that is, ‘Garamond conferred lasting fame on the Elzevirs’, wrote Pierre Didot, in his ‘Epistle on the progress of printing’ (1784), echoing the words of Fournier l’aîné, and uttering a sentiment that would be rudely and ignorantly challenged by a writer with Dutch sympathies some years later. <br /><div></div>His brother Firmin Didot made a claim regarding the source of Garamond’s design that would have its echoes in the 20th century when Stanley Morison announced that he had made the same discovery. In a lengthy footnote to an edition of the <em>Bucolics</em> of Virgil published in 1806 (one that, as the imprint claims, he had edited, translated into French and printed with types he had cut himself), he drew attention to a type that he says had been used in a little-known book printed by Aldus, Pietro Bembo’s <em>De Aetna</em>. This type, he claims, had been the model for Garamond, who in his types which were so familiar in the printing of the Estiennes and the Elzevirs, ‘had only to copy this type cut by Francesco da Bologna’ (whose surname, Griffo, had yet to be discovered) ‘to get all the honour for it.’<br /><div></div>A later and in some ways equally surprising claim by Firmin Didot regarding Garamond relates to the one set of printing types for which he was known to historians: the <em>grecs du roi</em>, the three sizes of greek made with royal authority for the use of Robert Estienne, printer to the king, for which we now know that a formal order was made out to ‘Claude Garamon, tailleur et fondeur de lettres’ in 1540. The emigration of Robert Estienne to Geneva, with the matrices for the <em>grecs du roi</em>, and some said all the types and the punches too, taking himself out of reach of reproach or worse for his religious views, was a controversial matter, and one that was repeatedly discussed by historical writers. The punches had in fact simply been deposited in a safe place and forgotten. In an essay on Robert Estienne that he published with his <em>Poésies</em> (1834), Firmin Didot, an unconditional supporter of Estienne, argued for his rights to the materials, and made a charge against Garamond of which there seems to be no trace in any other literature: ‘Garamond had no foundry of his own, being only a punchcutter though doubtless a very skilled one, but his reputation as a drinker is still recalled among typefounders. He was always in need of money, and turned to the printer for an advance.’ <br /><div></div>Without referring to this issue, G. A. Crapelet, a professional printer with bibliographical interests, entered the debate in his <em>Études pratiques et littéraires sur la typographie</em> (1837) on behalf of the punchcutter he called ‘Garamont’. Although there had been some intermittent earlier appearances of this spelling (Joseph de Guignes has a single example in a heading, ‘Caractères Grecs de François I.er appelés Grecs du Roi, gravés par Garamont’, in his <em>Essai historique sur la typographie orientale et grecque de l'Imprimerie Royale</em>, 1787. This appears to be its first consistent use in a serious historical study, based perhaps – as later usage would be – on a preference for the form of the name in the imprints of 1545 over that which had for so long been familiar to printers and typefounders. <br /><div></div>The foundry of Fournier l’aîné, with all its materials of the Le Bé foundry, had sunk without trace during the Revolutionary period, no doubt as a consequence of the radical changes in the forms of printing types that coincided with it: printers no longer wanted the old types. (A substantial part of the major surviving collection of the old punches and matrices of the Low Countries, which were in the hands of the Enschedé office in Haarlem, was sold as scrap metal at about the same time.)<br /><div></div>The name of Garamond (or Garamont), had now become of interest chiefly to the historians who had been aware of the Greek types, and who would also become concerned with the romans and italics. <br /><div></div>The Imprimerie nationale had continued to maintain a typefoundry at which it made a succession of new roman and italic types, including a series cut by Firmin Didot for the Emperor in 1811, designed to replace the <em>romain du roi</em> of Grandjean, some new types either imported from England or modelled on them after the restoration of the monarchy in 1815, and then a new design commissioned from Marcellin-Legrand that seemed more acceptable for use in the modern national printing-office. <br /><div></div>The modern types, non-Latin and ‘French’, were displayed in a spectacular type specimen issued in 1845. It includes on pages 45 to 49 a brief historical note on the printing-office and a two-page table on pages 48 and 49 with the heading ‘Spécimen des caractères romains employés par l’Imprimerie royale, de 1640 à 1846’, showing alphabets of some of the roman and italic types used there from the date of its founding in 1640 to 1825. The first column of the table shows ‘types attributed to Garamont’.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4RV7r-RyGY_wGO2OhRTqzV_kg-pYD5cccOlxLS-WJvV2edhmYwuMMAQJOxhjnhVeS0AkNaUvI_cCoUVQw9UHjLDldlAYj-xi2Lrz47YEUMiqKpdBQRb6HzWiVqQPCwIY8RDrT/s1600/15+Garamont+-+IR+1847+-+1100.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 351px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4RV7r-RyGY_wGO2OhRTqzV_kg-pYD5cccOlxLS-WJvV2edhmYwuMMAQJOxhjnhVeS0AkNaUvI_cCoUVQw9UHjLDldlAYj-xi2Lrz47YEUMiqKpdBQRb6HzWiVqQPCwIY8RDrT/s400/15+Garamont+-+IR+1847+-+1100.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593861255335102226" /></a><br /><div></div>A longer note reads, ‘The existence of these types, which were known by the name of <em>caractères de l’Université</em> (types of the university), goes back to the early years of the 16th century. This date [1640] is that of the establishment of the Royal Printing-office, which used them until they could be replaced by the types of Louis XIV [that is, the <em>romain du roi</em> of the 1690s].’<br /><div></div>The specimen of 1845 appears to be the first published showing of the types that would become Arthur Christian’s ‘Garamond’. It is also the first to give an attribution to Garamont and the first published use of the term <em>caractères de l’Université</em>, although impressions of the types identified with this name (but not mentioning that of Garamont) had been included in the first volume of a complete inventory of the punches and matrices, with the printed title <em>Recueil des empreintes des poinçons et des matrices des caractères français et exotiques ... existans à l'Imprimerie royale, dressé par les ordres et sous la direction de M. le Baron de Villebois</em>, dated 1828, and on which they are designated ‘not in current use’ (<em>hors de service</em>). An exact note of the number of the matrices of the three sizes of the <em>Caractères de l'Université</em> and a valuation was also included in a manuscript ‘Inventaire du matériel de l'Imprimerie royale au 31 decembre 1838’, where they are similarly marked ‘not in use’. <br /><div></div>The text and the showing of the roman and italic types from the specimen of 1845 was reprinted not long afterwards in a <em>Notice sur les types étrangers du spécimen de l’Imprimerie royale</em>, 1847. A reduced and truncated image of this table, from which the heading and the side notes were removed, appears as fig. 327 in the second volume of Updike’s <em>Printing types</em>. In 1848, F. A. Duprat, the head of the typefoundry, wrote a little book on the state printing-office, which as a result of the revolution had become the ‘Imprimerie nationale’ and in the same year, 1848, Auguste Bernard, a corrector at the Imprimerie nationale, also published a brief note on the establishment, in which he mentions the <em>grecs du roi</em>, ‘cut by the celebrated Garamont’ and indicates that he is preparing a history of the printing-office. His <em>Histoire de l’Imprimerie royale du Louvre</em> (its history until 1789, that is), would be published in 1867. Duprat too wrote its history, on a more comprehensive scale: his <em>Histoire de l’Imprimerie impériale de France</em> was published in 1861.<br /><div></div>Both authors, like Crapelet in 1837, had used the form ‘Garamont’ in 1848. But each of them reverted to ‘Garamond’ in their historical studies of 1861 and 1867. Duprat, indeed, reprinted a revised version of his table of the roman and italic types, changing the spelling of the name to ‘Garamond’ and making their date ‘1540’.<br /><div></div>‘The roman types that this establishment made use of, and which it continued to employ until the first years of the 18th century, were not its special property’ wrote Duprat in his history of 1861. ‘Cut by Garamond in the reign of François I, who as a typefounder sold them to printers, these types showed a certain imperfection, which they would not lose until the Arts, like Letters and the Sciences, were transformed by the lively and beneficent influence of the “great century” of Louis XIV.’ (A reference to the making of the <em>romain du roi</em> in the 1690s.)<br /><div></div>Bernard, was slightly more cautious in his narrative: ‘The first types that were used at the Imprimerie royale, and of which the matrices are preserved, are attributed to Garamond, the celebrated punchcutter of the 16th century to whom we owe the greek types of François I. They are known by the name of <em>caractères de l’Université</em>. They are very elegant.’<br /><div></div>It should be said at this point that this statement is evidence of the writer’s ignorance of printing types: the works printed at the Imprimerie royale were indeed normally set in the types produced by contemporary typefounders in Paris, some of which were by Garamond and others by Robert Granjon and the elder Le Bé, and that these continued in use for the rest of the century, types like the <em>Gros Canon</em> of Garamont seen here in the <em>Imitatio Christi</em> of 1640. This appears in the type specimen of the Imprimerie royale made in 1643. It could be supplied, cast from original matrices, by the Le Bé foundry, and and perhaps it was.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQjOTQY-VImrCxEtm5QMlvTFDFyAZo9omnvAHXD1OkGfM3K4Op5J8FUPItb7ECcBlu9USCbY23vcfEt_lovIiX-EHfTYxuUg251ewAFnX9UU4cFSw-MjGBr_-w4aw04Zko3aUG/s1600/11+Garamond+Canon+1640.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQjOTQY-VImrCxEtm5QMlvTFDFyAZo9omnvAHXD1OkGfM3K4Op5J8FUPItb7ECcBlu9USCbY23vcfEt_lovIiX-EHfTYxuUg251ewAFnX9UU4cFSw-MjGBr_-w4aw04Zko3aUG/s400/11+Garamond+Canon+1640.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593861858161704850" /></a><br /><div></div>Fournier l’aîné, having become owner of the Le Bé materials in the 18th century, was well aware that the Imprimerie royale got its types from contemporary founders. This was his summary in the <em>Journal des sçavans</em> for October 1756: ‘Depuis Cramoisi, premier Directeur de cet Imprimerie jusqu’à M. Rigault [director from 1707 to 1725], on n’employa point d’autres caractéres que ceux qui étoient en usage dans l’Université; on les faisoit faire par les fondeurs ordinaires & au même prix que les autres Imprimeurs. S’il arrivoit qu’on fournît les matrices qui appartenoient au Roy, le Fondeur en donnoit son recipissé. C’étaient ordinairement les Fonderies des Sanlecque, le Bé, & Cot, qui avoient cette pratique.’<br /><div></div>The matrices to which Bernard refers were of course those of the only old matrices for roman and italic types that were in the possession of the Imprimerie royale, the <em>caractères de l'Université</em> (is the passage by Fournier l’aîné of 1756 with its reference to the [<em>caractères</em>] ‘<em>qui étoient en usage dans l’Université</em>’ an allusion to this term?), about which Beatrice Warde wrote under the name Paul Beaujon in her piece in <em>The Fleuron</em> in 1926.<br /><div></div>Warde’s identification of the source of this material, long before the dated documents relating to their purchase came to light, is one of the most celebrated of all pieces of typographical detective work. Having the name of a known printer and punchcutter – Jean Jannon – to which to link the matrices helps to offer a possible explanation for a number of things. His connection with the Academy in Sedan may be the origin of the term <em>caractères de l'Université</em>. It would be petty to deny her the credit for this discovery, although there are some parts of her own narrative of the process that are still puzzling. For example, she never indicated how she knew of the existence of the specimen of Jean Jannon dated 1621, to examine which she says she impulsively took the night train to Paris (see her text at the end of this post); nor did she say in <em>The Fleuron</em> where the original specimen could be found: the only known copy is in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, where it has the <em>cote</em> A.15226(2). Perhaps help came from the printer Marius Audin, Lyon, who was compiling the catalogue of French type specimens of which the publication was eventually made possible with the help of Morison in 1933. (Audin would later publicize her discovery, one that for some years was hardly known or acknowledged in France.)<br /><div></div>For the record, one thousand <em>livres tournois</em> were paid to Jannon for ‘six frappes de matrices assavoir gros et petits canons, gros parangons et leurs italiques avec trois moules pour fondre les caracteres desdits six frappes’. In other words, six sets of matrices for <em>gros canon, petit canon</em> and <em>gros parangon</em>, roman and italic (they would later be cast on bodies of 36, 24 and 18 points), together with three moulds. The contract dated 1 March 1641 between Jean Jannon and Sébastien Cramoisy, director of the Imprimerie royale, a detail from which is shown below, is in the Archives nationales, Paris (Étude XLIII, liasse 32). <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyJl7GWl-2vLU0BL3w9Sk8KPIUgzZdcaFtmmE-rK8lFBUBvvWp8Ase_I4G-6eIeBb8msAPiKfe6ygJoDEufWtmoT-XQ-UdIzV6GcHgx_VVWPrIsAh7LRuWcNLx2sFyyLjdFQ8w/s1600/Purchase+of+Jannon+frappes+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyJl7GWl-2vLU0BL3w9Sk8KPIUgzZdcaFtmmE-rK8lFBUBvvWp8Ase_I4G-6eIeBb8msAPiKfe6ygJoDEufWtmoT-XQ-UdIzV6GcHgx_VVWPrIsAh7LRuWcNLx2sFyyLjdFQ8w/s400/Purchase+of+Jannon+frappes+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5645462740832954594" /></a><br /><div></div>The record of this purchase became known in the 1950s and a summary of it was published for the first time in the catalogue of the exhibition held in 1951 at the Bibliothèque nationale, <em>L’art du livre à l’Imprimerie nationale</em>. It is worth noting, since nobody seems to have remarked on the fact, that the matrices are struck ‘upside down’, like a few sets of English matrices of the later 17th century, with the tails of the letters facing the upper end of the matrix.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4hi3cWsM73fdGB8LTSMI03CMu8Y9bdlJU8TW_oljrtdoxK166RvGgGmKIevA_a-V5bWQSMupYo3WvUdH3MDihtCpbJ8cIpIaZnprr74qCCiQZJ5SsuudV7yGcatywNMKBk8ST/s1600/Car+de+l%2527Univ+-+mats+-+36pt+2+-+900.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 274px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4hi3cWsM73fdGB8LTSMI03CMu8Y9bdlJU8TW_oljrtdoxK166RvGgGmKIevA_a-V5bWQSMupYo3WvUdH3MDihtCpbJ8cIpIaZnprr74qCCiQZJ5SsuudV7yGcatywNMKBk8ST/s400/Car+de+l%2527Univ+-+mats+-+36pt+2+-+900.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652570656540050530" /></a><br /><div></div>The purchase of 1641 was clearly in the mind of Henri-Jean Martin when he wrote the note on Jannon that appears in his text of 1969: <br /><div></div>‘Cet homme était le digne émule des artistes et des techniciens de la typographie du siècle précédent. On pourrait peut-être voir la consécration de ses efforts dans le fait qu’on fondit sur des matrices portant l’empreinte des ses types et par lui vendues à l’Imprimerie royale, les caractères utilisés pour les plus luxueux ouvrages publiés par cet établissement à ses débuts.’ <em>Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle</em>, p. 367. <br /><div></div>This elegantly phrased tribute, suggesting that the Jannon types served to print the finest of the early productions of the Imprimerie royale, makes it only too clear that Martin did not look closely at the works that were produced there. (The study of printing types was not one of his specialities.) Only two of the six types by Jannon for which matrices were acquired appear ever to have been used there: those for the italics for Petit Canon and for Gros Parangon, which are the two types by Jannon that are shown in the type specimen of the Imprimerie royale dated 1643 that was reproduced in facsimile with notes by Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer and André Jammes (for details see below). An italic was needed for the Petit Canon roman by Robert Granjon that was in frequent use: for an example see Updike’s fig. 172 in his <em>Printing types</em>. None of Jannon’s roman types seems to have been used, and neither the roman nor the italic of Jannon’s type for the larger body, Gros Canon (the modern 36 point), has been found in use at all at the Imprimerie royale. Use was consistently made of the equivalent size of Garamond’s roman and especially of the Gros Canon italic of Granjon, which appears in the preliminary matter of books printed at the Imprimerie royale until the new types cut by Grandjean and his successors began to be made at the end of the century.<br /><div></div>This apparent lack of enthusiasm for the Jannon types is presumably the reason why, when an inventory of materials at the Imprimerie royale was drawn up in 1691 (BnF MS nouv. acq. fr. 2511) after the death of Mabre-Cramoisy, only the two smaller Jannon italics were shown in the specimens bearing the date 1690 that were included in the document:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Y2JpdhqI7EfGMAv7RBVaoJ4VUg8QWArcf65syWcdBJUn8wqwp7yeAqYiLDZh3_9_O4vUUzBBlQnr9Wynsjogtbwm4pqtnPIVXUB6ZOkZaW3RVnyjflsp-E6Z5BPlzf6OC3wP/s1600/Jannon+mats+-+1691+inv+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Y2JpdhqI7EfGMAv7RBVaoJ4VUg8QWArcf65syWcdBJUn8wqwp7yeAqYiLDZh3_9_O4vUUzBBlQnr9Wynsjogtbwm4pqtnPIVXUB6ZOkZaW3RVnyjflsp-E6Z5BPlzf6OC3wP/s400/Jannon+mats+-+1691+inv+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646181205058231954" /></a><br /><div></div>The matrices for the three sizes of roman types were listed in the inventory of 1691 as being kept in drawers (<em>layettes</em>) but there is no suggestion that type had been cast from them, nor from either the roman or the italic of the Gros Canon.<br /><div></div>Without being ungenerous, since Warde’s essay clearly represents the result of some serious research of her own (albeit with much well-informed help from Stanley Morison and Frederic Warde, in whose company she spent some time in France during 1924 and 1925, and perhaps also from Marius Audin), one should note that it is in need of critical attention. She usefully examined many works printed in Paris in types that were candidates for those cut by Garamont, but rather oddly she shows little concern with the types that were attributed to ‘Garamond’ on the specimen sheet of Conrad Berner in Frankfurt am Main (which she calls by the name of the previous owner of the foundry, Egenolff), even though they match several that appear in Plantin’s own specimen of 1567, of which a facsimile had been published in 1924, and were thus prime candidates for material with which to build a reliable picture of the punchcutter’s achievement.<br /><div></div>In some ways Jannon is made to serve as a distraction from these elements of potential confusion. Warde’s long account of the seizure of some materials of his in Caen in 1644, imaginatively worked up from the <em>Gallia typographica</em> of Lepreux, is high romantic nonsense with echoes of Alexandre Dumas, which the contract relating to their purchase by Cramoisy in 1641 would later show to have had nothing at all to do with the acquisition of the surviving matrices. But there is a more serious flaw in her text.<br /><div></div>Early in her study, Warde has this note: ‘We owe our present knowledge of Garamont to a succession of French scholars, the brothers Fournier, Auguste Bernard, Henri Omont, and Jean Paillard. The latter succeeded in ranging all the documents then known and some new material in a small privately printed book of admirable scholarship.’<br /><div></div>Although Warde’s title is ‘The “Garamond” types’, she gives the name of the punchcutter throughout the essay as ‘Claude Garamont’, a new orthography for an anglophone writer that that she may have derived from Paillard. Her tribute to him is generously expressed, and rightly so since his was the only published text that had set out the sources for the biography of Garamont. But it is difficult to acquit her of disingenuousness in one respect. The thesis that she asserted, or that others would make on her behalf, and on which a part of her article is based, was that the claim regarding the 16th-century origin of the ‘Garamond’ types at the Imprimerie nationale had hitherto been unchallenged. <br /><div></div>Many years later she recalled that Bullen, for a time her employer at ATF, had expressed private doubts to her that they were really types of the 16th century. When she published her essay such doubts had already been expressed in print, as she must have been well aware; one can wish that she had been more frank about this to her readers. This is the comment that Harry Carter added to the note on the Monotype Garamond type that he supplied for the edition of Stanley Morison’s <em>Tally of Types</em> that was published in 1973: <br /><div></div>‘The article by Beaujon owed a good deal to [the text] by Jean Paillard ... published in 1914 by the Parisian typefounder Ollière. Paillard was the first to challenge the attribution of the <em>Caractères de l’Université</em> to Garamond. His essay has not been given the recognition that it deserved.’ <br /><div></div>In reverting to the spelling ‘Garamont’, it seems likely that Paillard was drawing on the imprints of 1545 and some of the documents with which he was familiar. The restoration of the name ‘Claude Garamont’ may well be due to his example. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwlJTYG7QOSLHVD0Y28hP7GFYKFUZV4XQguls82bpCIZym1jXF310DYuDLudFkYeDeebBC6ffnSnJrZv9wrFSZh5yCzEK1HuSFvFcMhtyOL2aw7TwMcenGFPWcc9dWTP5itzeQ/s1600/12+Paillard+-+title+det+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwlJTYG7QOSLHVD0Y28hP7GFYKFUZV4XQguls82bpCIZym1jXF310DYuDLudFkYeDeebBC6ffnSnJrZv9wrFSZh5yCzEK1HuSFvFcMhtyOL2aw7TwMcenGFPWcc9dWTP5itzeQ/s400/12+Paillard+-+title+det+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593862106401045730" /></a><br /><div></div>Paillard’s essay was set in types that had been made in 1913 following his advice, making use of photographs taken under his direction from 16th-century works at the Bibliothèque nationale. The punches were cut by Plumet, Vuarant and Malin. <br /><div></div>The date of publication makes it all too easy to guess why the little book failed to attract attention and why it is so rare. Within days of the outbreak of war in August, Paillard was under arms and at the front. He died on 24 September 1914 near Verdun. We know this from a handwritten note that his brother Etienne inscribed in the copy of the book that, since one had not reached them, he presented to the Bibliothèque nationale in 1947. It adds that Jean Paillard had wished to provide the results of his researches relating to the types of Garamont to Christian, the director of the Imprimerie nationale. ‘Monsieur Christian refused to see him, believing that no one had anything to teach him about Garamont. This is the incident that led to the printing of this little book.’ <br /><div></div>Notwithstanding Christian’s own certainties, Claudin’s preface to his monumental <em>Histoire de l’imprimerie en France au XVe et au XVIe siècle</em> (1900), the only part of the text to be set in the ‘Garamond’ types since the title page and text are in those of Grandjean, does not endorse the attribution with anything like ringing assurance: ‘The overall characteristics of these types’, he says (if they are the words of Claudin – Paillard clearly thought so but Marius Audin thought they must be Christian’s, and it is not easy to be sure), ‘do not differ much from those of the founts designed by Garamond in the reign of François I’:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-mqg-tHxYAztB3yeckmyhNB-DlZZHCy6EpgGvU-eyXviRBQ_MR0eYLnXaFcEF0e1ffqqjy16LpuQDIg4VoH2_Yi8jarksrxE8ro8iZ6P0FCgS4duo30q4NXTpDz4IZbbGf4e/s1600/13+Claudin+1900+-+Pref+-+1200.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 369px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-mqg-tHxYAztB3yeckmyhNB-DlZZHCy6EpgGvU-eyXviRBQ_MR0eYLnXaFcEF0e1ffqqjy16LpuQDIg4VoH2_Yi8jarksrxE8ro8iZ6P0FCgS4duo30q4NXTpDz4IZbbGf4e/s400/13+Claudin+1900+-+Pref+-+1200.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593867148688332690" /></a><br /><div></div>This cautious tone did not escape Paillard, as can be seen in this opening from his book, in which the mocking scepticism with which he regarded the authenticity of Christian’s cherished types is well shown:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Rw1I3N8TvQxbre0G2v93Gzskb_nu6tweyjZDm5cHWRnfQlgBRIAhSBZvxeQlvkQ6N0Jc1-AxG4FluDPrjfl03ZN3CXrRKOI347oitQ7S419mRJkxA_VIr801vymHwXjskVTb/s1600/14+Paillard+-+54-55+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 297px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Rw1I3N8TvQxbre0G2v93Gzskb_nu6tweyjZDm5cHWRnfQlgBRIAhSBZvxeQlvkQ6N0Jc1-AxG4FluDPrjfl03ZN3CXrRKOI347oitQ7S419mRJkxA_VIr801vymHwXjskVTb/s400/14+Paillard+-+54-55+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593866876853801282" /></a><br /><div></div>There is not a lot more to add to this survey. The spelling adopted by the Le Bé foundry had no doubt provided the original model for writing ‘Garamond’. It was followed by nearly all the French typographical historians – the Fourniers, the Didots, Renouard, Omont, and (apostates after their initial purist use of ‘Garamont’) Duprat and Bernard. It was thus naturally adopted by Christian at the Imprimerie nationale. It has also been the choice, among more modern writers, of Henri-Jean Martin and of André Jammes, and of all the ‘Anglo-Americans’ – Updike, Morison, Johnson, Carter and their followers. Almost all the makers of the new types, from ATF, and English Monotype (who based theirs on the types of the Imprimerie nationale), and Stempel (modelled on those of the Berner sheet), followed the convention and called the types ‘Garamond’, the traditional name that was carried on into the later 20th century, in their different ways, by other makers, including the International Typeface Corporation, Simoncini and Adobe.<br /><div></div>The chief exception outside France was Frederic Goudy who, having joined the Lanston Monotype Company in Philadelphia in 1920, drew his own version of the Garamond types of the Imprimerie nationale for them, a sympathetic rendering of the qualities of the original. ‘I suggested the name “Garamont” instead of “Garamond”,’ he wrote in 1946, ‘as that name would show at once that it was a Monotype face, not to be confused with the faces of other concerns also following the same source. The name was found by me in <em>Notice sur les Types Etrangers du Specimen de l’Imprimerie Royale</em>.’ As we have seen, this work included a table giving a character set of the Jannon type, including its swash italic capitals. D. B. Updike included a reduced facsimile of the table in his <em>Printing types</em> (1922), fig. 327, omitting a column of notes on the right. <br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Rjel3aAqaJZl7H-ZJ1kOLCZN2mQJyflWt5PH2yiEKgZs2Yz5DrXMBJloIS47Abdrom3yFbtnXWWcfTzjEyNyazq-kc-pflt6et8By-Hnmxd3uxHJsljM5VTlJqwrvya7M8em/s1600/Goudy+Garamont+ital+det+bw+500.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Rjel3aAqaJZl7H-ZJ1kOLCZN2mQJyflWt5PH2yiEKgZs2Yz5DrXMBJloIS47Abdrom3yFbtnXWWcfTzjEyNyazq-kc-pflt6et8By-Hnmxd3uxHJsljM5VTlJqwrvya7M8em/s400/Goudy+Garamont+ital+det+bw+500.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593868193512644626" /></a><br /><div></div>In France, usage began to shift more seriously after the First World War. In 1912, working with the punchcutter Henri Parmentier, Georges Peignot had begun to make a ‘Garamond’ (so named, apparently – but more information is needed) for his Peignot foundry. In its final form, for which many years of study were claimed, it is at least partly based on the types of the Imprimerie nationale, from which it derived the characteristic italic swash capitals. The typeface was only completed and placed on the market by the merged foundries of Deberny et Peignot in 1926, when it was called ‘Garamont’, perhaps at the suggestion of the historian Marius Audin, who consistently used this form in his own work. The flourish of rhetoric with which it was launched, in the year when Warde’s essay was published, does not really bear translating: <br /><div></div>‘Après de longues années d’études et de mise au point, la réalisation du “caractère d’après Garamont” qui fut commencé sur l’initiative de Georges Peignot est aujourd’hui complètement terminée. Nous avons conscience d’avoir ainsi doté la typographie française d’un moyen d’expression bien à elle, et qui faisait défaut jusqu’à présent dans la gamme de nos créations nationales.’<br /><div></div>Was Audin’s usage of ‘Garamont’, like Warde’s, possibly influenced by that of Paillard’s publication? (Morison, who had acquired a copy of Paillard’s book in Paris in December 1924 later presented it to Audin, with a dedicatory inscription. It was bought recently by the Musée de l'imprimerie, Lyon.)<br /><div></div>In a note in the exhibition catalogue of 1951 mentioned above, <em>L’art du livre à l’Imprimerie nationale</em>, in which the purchase of the Jannon matrices in 1641 is documented for the first time, Julien Cain, the director of the Bibliothèque nationale, refers to the ‘Grecs du Roi gravés par Garamond’. But the preliminary essay by Raymond Blanchot, the director of the Imprimerie nationale, having mentioned ‘le célèbre graveur Garamont’ (so spelt) as the cutter of the <em>grecs du roi</em>, makes no reference at all to the recast roman and italic types, notwithstanding their use in some of the more prominent examples of fine printing by the Imprimerie nationale, nor are the types referred to in the catalogue itself. Some rethinking had clearly taken place. <br /><div></div>In its specimen of 1948, <em>Le cabinet des poinçons</em>, mostly of the non-Latin types, the Imprimerie nationale had shown its ‘Garamond’ roman and italic:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-VrjKQ45M6S6w8W14g8qXclgunCWp0RGIVr38Ge-8pdy01NsBgx7BzW2uT0kWYJnv4enamJtfkcMSsZ_EBYI8VvhvwSZr3zW3E557kNctwr82WYprE7tvsFpMOb7xk0FeOAh/s1600/16+Cabinet+des+poincons+1948+-+Garamond+rom+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 310px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-VrjKQ45M6S6w8W14g8qXclgunCWp0RGIVr38Ge-8pdy01NsBgx7BzW2uT0kWYJnv4enamJtfkcMSsZ_EBYI8VvhvwSZr3zW3E557kNctwr82WYprE7tvsFpMOb7xk0FeOAh/s400/16+Cabinet+des+poincons+1948+-+Garamond+rom+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593863295883935138" /></a><br /><div></div>But the edition of 1963, of which the preface, by Daniel Gibelin, pays a fulsome but generalised tribute to the genius of Claude Garamont, notes that his materials were ‘dispersed’ after his death, and does not show the Jannon roman and italic, which is now demoted to the status of an ‘imitation’ in a brief note that is set, oddly enough, wholly in the Grandjean type:<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwG5sQ2SMf6SoPYaaJqyjgw_11f4OrmpG0O68NC1SPsEATvRVtT2ctOFRh301aoje-x6lwwqZBC-HXG9g1ArIftS51oZysQVm_mtrgf0A_-P7lsk8rV7lbzhN8TJA1cWwzfg73/s1600/17+Cabinet+des+poincons+1963+-+Note+on+Garamont+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 284px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwG5sQ2SMf6SoPYaaJqyjgw_11f4OrmpG0O68NC1SPsEATvRVtT2ctOFRh301aoje-x6lwwqZBC-HXG9g1ArIftS51oZysQVm_mtrgf0A_-P7lsk8rV7lbzhN8TJA1cWwzfg73/s400/17+Cabinet+des+poincons+1963+-+Note+on+Garamont+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593863556858969250" /></a><br /><div></div>The reference published in 1951 to the documents relating to the purchase from Jannon in 1641 of the matrices for the three sizes of the types at the Imprimerie nationale confirmed the flash of recognition that had made Warde’s essay celebrated, though at the same time it demolished her fantastic account of the acquisition of the materials by confiscation. In some ways it was timely, since a new epoch in historical type studies, based on materials and documents, can now be seen to have begun in 1954 with the work at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp of the team that included Harry Carter and Hendrik Vervliet on the surviving materials assembled by Christophe Plantin. A good summary of what that meant, and would mean for future typographical studies, was put into words by Matthew Carter:<br /><div></div>‘This astonishing discovery: that the finest collection of printing types made in typography’s golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle apart), was made even more valuable by the survival under the same roof of Plantin’s accounts and inventories which name the cutters of his types. The job of matching the materials to the documents took about five years, and the results, which have been published, have had considerable impact upon typographical scholarship, on bibliography, and on the aesthetic appreciation of type design of that period. It is now possible to study a sufficient corpus of confidently attributed work by half a dozen sixteenth-century cutters to get an idea of the quantity of their output, and a proper sense of their individual styles as designers. The first result of such an assessment must be, I am sure, to confirm the stature of Garamond, but to see him no longer as a solitary eminence but rather as a first among equals. Of other cutters well represented at the Museum, two were Flemish, François Guyot and Hendrik van den Keere, the latter employed extensively by Plantin; and three were French, Guillaume Le Bé, specialist in Hebrew types; Pierre Haultin, a fine and still underrated artist, a red-hot Calvinist and the most considerable printer among sixteenth-century punchcutters; and Robert Granjon.’ (Matthew Carter, ‘Galliard: a modern revival of the types of Robert Granjon’, <em>Visible language</em>, vol. 19, no. 1 (1985), pp. 77–97.)<br /><div></div>One of the chief actors in this long process has been Hendrik Vervliet, whose work, written during decades in the intervals of a demanding professional career in librarianship, was made more widely accessible by the publication in 2008 of many of his essays (including two major contributions on Garamont) that had been scattered among several different journals, and in 2010 of his <em>French Renaissance printing types, a conspectus</em>, a comprehensive illustrated summary of the non-gothic types made in France in the 16th century. (For details see below.)<br /><div></div>For Vervliet, the form of the name has always been Garamont. He was one of the group of editors of the series of <em>Type specimen facsimiles</em>, reproductions of broadside specimens (including the Berner sheet of 1592) published under the general editorship of John Dreyfus in 1963, in which this form of the name is consistently given. But ambiguities persisted: in his essay on ‘The Garamond types of Christopher Plantin’ (<em>Journal of the Printing Historical Society</em>, No. 1, 1965, pp. 14–20) Vervliet noted that ‘a distinction is made between Garamont, the punchcutter, and “Garamond” types’, and in his <em>Conspectus</em> there is a suggestion that the spelling ‘Garamond’ is acceptable as a generic term for imitations of the style. <br /><div></div>That there is a need for such a generic term is not immediately evident, and indeed it has become all the less necessary as a new generation of scholars in France, who are familiar with the known contemporary records and who have discovered others, have come to refer naturally to ‘Garamont’. In 1974 Annie Parent and Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer brought together contemporary contracts relating to the making of his types from the Archives nationales. In two of them he is ‘Claude Garamon’; in one he is ‘Claude Garamond’; in the other eleven he is ‘Claude Garamont’. And in 1997 Geneviève Guilleminot-Chrétien published the text of the will of Claude Garamont, drawn up shortly before his death in 1561, just four hundred and fifty years ago. Certain details of its wording point to the likelihood that he had adopted the ‘reformed’ or protestant religion.<br /><div></div>The spelling ‘Garamond’ of the commercial fonts will inevitably continue to exercise its influence for some time to come: it can be seen at work in the title of the novel by Anne Cuneo, <em>Le maître de Garamond: Antoine Augereau, graveur, imprimeur, éditeur, libraire</em>, published in 2002. Some writers, among whom I include myself, may still be in two minds about giving up a long-established habit. However, it should be noted that although the beautifully produced brochure made by Adobe Systems in 2005 for a revised version of the digital font by Robert Slimbach names the typeface as <em>Garamond Premier Pro</em>, it includes an authoritative biographical study by John Lane of the punchcutter, Claude Garamont.<br /><br /><strong>Some sources</strong><br /><br />As I have noted elsewhere, this post, first made on 1 April 2011, has expanded steadily to include later material, and its initial concern with the spelling of the name of the punchcutter has been overhauled by a more general wish to explore the later reputation of the ‘Garamond’ type and the work of its historians, a task that I began to tackle many years ago at a ‘colloque Garamond’ at the Bibliothèque nationale in 1993, and which I developed in an essay of 2006 as I explain in my ‘Note’ below. <br /><div></div>Since the middle of October 2011 a website dedicated to <a href="http://www.garamond.culture.fr/">Garamont</a>, created with the support of the ministry of culture in France, has come on stream. It is as full of good things as one would expect from the names of some of the talented figures who have cooperated in its making, and it has not only been willing to take some suggestions from the present post but has kindly added a link to it.<br /><div></div>Jean Paillard, <em>Claude Garamont, graveur et fondeur de lettres</em> (Paris: Ollière, 1914).<br /><div></div>Pierre Gusman, ‘Claude Garamont, “graveur des lettres grecques du roy”, “tailleur des caractères de l’Université” (1480–1561)’, <em>Byblis</em> (1925), pp. 85–96.<br /><div></div>‘Paul Beaujon’ (Beatrice Warde) ‘The Garamond types: 16th and 17th century sources considered’, <em>The Fleuron</em>, 5, 1926, pp. 131–79. <br /><div></div>Marius Audin, <em>Le Garamont, dit à tort “caractère de l'Université”</em> (Paris, 1931). <br /><div></div>Hendrik Vervliet, <em>The palaeotypography of the French Renaissance: selected papers on sixteenth-century typefaces</em> (Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2008).<br /><div></div>Hendrik Vervliet, <em>French Renaissance printing types, a conspectus</em> (London: Bibliographical Society and Printing Historical Society, 2010).<br /><div></div>Marius Audin, <em>Les livrets typographiques des fonderies françaises créées avant 1800: étude historique et bibliographique</em> (Paris, 1933).<br /><div></div>Annie Parent, ‘Les Grecs du roi et l’étude du monde antique’, in <em>L’art du livre à l’Imprimerie nationale</em> (Paris, 1973). pp. 55–67.<br /><div></div>Annie Parent and Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer,‘Claude Garamont: new documents’, <em>The Library</em>, 5th series, vol. 29 (1974), pp. 80–92. <br /><div></div>Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer, ‘La petite italique de Garamont’, in <em>Défense et illustration de la typographie française,</em> Actes du Colloque Claude Garamond, tenu par les Rencontres de Lure à la Bibliothèque nationale [les 30, 31 octobre et 1er novembre 1993]. Rencontres Internationales de Lure, 1996.<br /><div></div>Geneviève Guilleminot-Chrétien, ‘Le testament de Claude Garamont’, in <em>Le livre et l’historien: études offertes en l’honneur du Professeur Henri-Jean Martin, réunies par Frédéric Barbier </em>[et al.] (Genève: Droz, 1997), pp. 133–9.<br /><div></div>The document in the hand of Guillaume I Le Bé cited and illustrated above is Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. nouv. acq. fr. 4528, as shown in H. Omont, <em>Spécimens de caractères hébreux, grecs, latins et de musique gravés à Venise et à Paris par Guillaume Le Bé (1545-1572)</em> (Paris, 1889), reprinted from <em>Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris et de l’Île de France,</em> vol. 15 (1888), pp. 273-83. <br /><div></div><em>L’inventaire de la fonderie Le Bé, selon la transcription de Jean Pierre Fournier</em> (Paris: Imprimé à petit nombre pour André Jammes, 1957). Documents typographiques français, I. Foreword by Stanley Morison. This is a transcription of the abbreviated inventory included in the sale document of the foundry, 1730, Archives nationales, Paris, Minutier central des Notaires, Étude lxv, liasse 229. Note the <em>cote</em> or call number. It is given wrongly in this printed transcription, and it is wrong in all the many references that are derived from this source.<br /><div></div>Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer and André Jammes, <em>Les premiers caractères de l’Imprimerie royale: étude sur un spécimen inconnu de 1643</em> (Paris, 1958). Documents typographiques français, II. <br /><div></div><em>Sixteenth century French typefounders: the Le Bé memorandum,</em> edited by Harry Carter (Paris, 1967). Documents typographiques français, III.<br /><div></div>Linda Ritson, ‘Arthur Christian, Director of the Imprimerie nationale 1895–1906’, <em>Signature</em>, new series, 9 (1949), pp. 3–28.<br /><div></div>Lothar Wolf, <em>Terminologische Untersuchungen zur Einführung des Buchdrucks im französischen Sprachgebiet</em> (Tübingen, 1979). <br /><br /><strong>Sources for Jannon</strong><br /><div></div>Since its appearance in April 2011 I have used this post as a place for notes on all kinds of matters relating to Garamont, so it seems logical to use it to add some sources for Jannon and the <em>caractères de l’Université</em>. <div></div>I have placed a note above on the results of the survey I have made of printing by the Imprimerie royale after the purchase of sets of matrices for three sizes of roman and italic from Jannon in 1641: I conclude that only the two smaller Jannon italics were used. I have found no examples of the use of their romans, and none at all during the 17th century of the roman or italic of the larger size, the Gros Canon that was later cast on a 36-point body. These settings, from the Imprimerie nationale specimen of 1904, appear to be among the very first appearances of all three sizes of the Jannon roman types. Smaller sizes, some of which are shown in the specimen, were being added.<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5s1rb_Y9HCbEQCTHeSc15AnJ7_9j-Cw1kWfnsU8E9XppMNaU6X_dIhWxyXI4skWSYy0ed0SGpR_3GEoOlATJ-GFkHlX8CW67rWDWVCrzMAJYpgGvwLIK89r9JWEM-dYvU9Et4/s1600/IN+1904+-+Gara+rom+det+2.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 229px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5s1rb_Y9HCbEQCTHeSc15AnJ7_9j-Cw1kWfnsU8E9XppMNaU6X_dIhWxyXI4skWSYy0ed0SGpR_3GEoOlATJ-GFkHlX8CW67rWDWVCrzMAJYpgGvwLIK89r9JWEM-dYvU9Et4/s400/IN+1904+-+Gara+rom+det+2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5691518252809426114" /></a><br /><div></div>The standard biographical source for Jannon is the small pamphlet by J. B. Brincourt, <em>Jean Jannon, ses fils, leurs œuvres</em> (Sedan, 1887), of which a second edition with a list of works printed at his press was issued in Sedan in 1902, titles that are not easy to find in libraries. There is supplementary matter in articles with the same title in <em>Revue d’Ardenne & d’Argonne</em>, nos. 9 (1902), 10 (1903). In her article in <em>The Fleuron</em>, Warde gave a summary of the episode at Caen in 1646 relating to Jannon and Pierre de Cardonnel and the seizure of some materials, as recorded by Georges Lepreux in his <em>Gallia typographica</em> (Tome III, ‘Normandie’, 1912). I have referred to this above, noting that it can have nothing to do with the well-documented purchase in 1641 of the matrices of the type that became known as the <em>caractères de l’Université</em>. <br /><div></div>In 1987 Hugh Williamson began publication of his own study, ‘Jean Jannon of Sedan’, dealing mostly with works printed at Jannon’s printing-office, in the <em>Bulletin</em> of the Printing Historical Society, 21 (May 1987), pp. 270–6; 22 (Sep 1987) pp. 286–94; 23 (Spring 1988), pp. 304–10; 24 (Summer 1988), pp. 318–25.<br /><div></div>In 1992 a publication of 214 pages was issued in Sedan to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the attachment of the city to France, <em>1642-1992: 350ème anniversaire du rattachement de la principauté de Sedan à la France.</em> Société d’histoire et d’archéologie du Sedanais, [Sedan, 1992]. It included reproductions of works printed by Jannon from copies at the municipal library at Sedan, and of some pages from his specimen of 1621. There were also some images of his matrices and an account of Jannon by Paul-Marie Grinevald (former librarian of the Imprimerie nationale) on pages 127 to 130.<br /><br /><strong>Note</strong><br /><br />This piece began as an expansion of a single footnote relating to the spelling of the name in a study that was published as, ‘Garamond, Griffo and others: the price of celebrity’, in the journal <em>Bibliologia</em> (Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali), 1 (2006), pp. 17–41. Perhaps I should add that this piece was derived from an address that I contributed to the Colloque Garamond at the Bibliothèque nationale in 1993, at which Madame Veyrin-Forrer delivered the account of the ‘petite italique’, noted above, that was included in 1996 among its published papers. Mine was not, but having been reworked appeared in the publication of 2006 and it is now being revised again for possible republication. As part of this process it seemed to be worth enquiring a little more fully into the history of the form of the familiar name. <br /><div></div>The story has already become longer and more involved than I expected, all the more so as I have incorporated the results of some recent investigations into it, including my enquiry into the use of the Jannon types at the Imprimerie royale during the later 17th century, from which – as noted in the ‘Sources for Jannon’ just above – I conclude (but I am open to correction) that only the italics of the two smaller sizes were ever used at that date. <br /><div></div>I am grateful for their assistance towards the making of this additional note to Sébastien Morlighem, André Jammes, John Lane, Paul-Marie Grinevald, Mathieu Christe, Michel Wlassikoff, and to members of the staff of the Atelier du Livre d’Art et de l’Estampe of the Imprimerie nationale, Ivry sur Seine.<br /><div></div>Jean Paillard’s little book is rare. I know of only five copies in libraries: three in France, one in the United States and one in Great Britain. But its text was republished, with the cover title ‘Qui étiez-vous Monsieur Garamont?’, by Ofmi Garamont, La Courneuve, in 1969. The punches of the Ollière type were offered for sale by the Librairie Paul Jammes in <em>Typographia Regia</em>, its catalogue 167 of 1957. I understand that they were bought by the designer Raymond Gid. His widow has passed them to Jean-Louis Estève, who now has their care. They have recently been expertly restored by Christian Paput, former punchcutter at the Cabinet des Poinçons of the Imprimerie nationale.<br /><br /><strong>Beatrice Warde on the Jannon type</strong><br /><div></div>“Under the guise of Paul Beaujon I wrote an article on the Garamond types for <em>The Fleuron</em>. After the text had been set, proofed, and paged up, I went one afternoon to the North Library in the British Museum to check on a date. I was going through the Bagford collection of title pages when suddenly I came across a page printed by Jean Jannon of Sedan; there staring me in the face was the type I had been searching for—no possibility of a doubt.<br />I took the rest of the afternoon off, looked up references for Jannon, took the night boat to Paris and turned up the next morning on the doorstep of the Mazarine Library. There in the unique copy of Jannon’s specimen book I was able to solve the whole mystery. Jannon, cut off from the use of the Egenolff foundry by the religious wars, had learnt to cut type for himself. In an incredibly short time he had produced a whole series of types at Sedan.<br />Of course this meant entirely rewriting the article for <em>The Fleuron</em>, but Stanley Morison never begrudged the additional expense or trouble. Heaven knows what it cost to reset the article, but it was done in the nick of time...”<br /><div></div>‘I am a communicator’: a selection of writings and talks by Beatrice Warde / Paul Beaujon, <em>The Monotype Recorder</em>, vol. 44, no. 1 (Autumn 1970), p. 7. (From an interview with John Dreyfus recorded in about 1966. Published by him in ‘Beatrice Warde: the first lady of typography’, <em>Penrose Annual</em>, no. 63, 1970, pp. 66–76.)<br /><div></div>Warde says that she looked up ‘references for Jannon’. What, one wonders, can these have been? There were very few published texts at this date that mentioned the Jannon specimen and none of them seems to have said where a copy could be seen. Marius Audin would publish the information not long afterwards in his list of French type specimens, and he would be one of the few champions in France of her conclusions regarding the ‘Garamond’ type. He may have told her about the specimen and how to find it, but her text in <em>The Fleuron</em> does not mention his name, nor (even though she took such trouble to go and look at it) does it give the location of the specimen, which has the <em>cote</em> A.15226(2) at the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris. (In the notes that he added to the second edition of his <em>Printing Types</em> (1937), vol. 1, page 290, D. B. Updike said, quite wrongly, that the specimen of Jannon was ‘found by Mrs Beatrice Warde in the Collection Anisson in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris’.) It seems possible from her own account of the episode that she had not looked at it before. <br /><div></div>Was this fragment in the Bagford Collection (British Library MS. Harl. 5922) one that caught her eye?<br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibAjw4GV7tA7Mil6n8NVQdwfzAsqEyDx09byGxVAyfmv2cTmaDvg5AfrGhQ4JMLjZGcoXf7GPY4HF3PqxpGl0gK1FOQf7rJVm8dXlV-BGtN4bBMjmI0EaTJ52e6Ed93WO_-niF/s1600/Jannon+ex+Bagford+-+Theses+de+theologia+1646+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 263px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibAjw4GV7tA7Mil6n8NVQdwfzAsqEyDx09byGxVAyfmv2cTmaDvg5AfrGhQ4JMLjZGcoXf7GPY4HF3PqxpGl0gK1FOQf7rJVm8dXlV-BGtN4bBMjmI0EaTJ52e6Ed93WO_-niF/s400/Jannon+ex+Bagford+-+Theses+de+theologia+1646+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5645451873287444178" /></a><br /><br />Last edited 7 January 2012Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-88448867702495287642011-01-16T08:37:00.192+00:002013-10-13T10:58:53.460+00:00Typefoundry 2006 to 2013: a list of contentsThis is a list of all the posts to this blog with some notes saying what each piece is about. At the end there are a few words by the writer. <br />
<div>
</div>
Each of the earlier headings (35 and before) links to its post. The first date after each heading is that of the original posting, which remains with it however often the text is edited. Where a second date is added in parentheses it is that of the latest revision of any consequence, if there has been one. Amendments ranging from substantial corrections to small improvements in style are made to all the posts from time to time.<br />
<br />
<b>44</b><br />
<b>Commercial at</b><br />
7 October 2013<br />
A historical note on the @ character. Do read the <b><i>Postscript</i> </b>that follows.<br />
<br />
<strong>43</strong><br />
<strong>This is a fragment</strong><br />
17 March 2013<br />
The fragment is a piece of a slate gravestone from Nottinghamshire, which had become a paving stone, and was rescued. Its lettering is a reminder of the tradition represented by John Baskerville.<br />
<br />
<strong>42</strong><br />
<strong><em>Caractères de l’Université</em></strong><br />
29 July 2012<br />
A note on the name that was used for the types of Jannon at the Imprimerie nationale during the 19th century, suggesting that this was a mistake: <i>caractère de l’université</i> appears originally to have been a term in general use for the types by Garamont and others that were used by the Imprimerie royale during the 17th century and by other printers in Paris too.<br />
<br />
<strong>41</strong><br />
<strong>Portrait of Bodoni?</strong><br />
10 June 2012<br />
This portrait, which is of doubtful authenticity and lacks a provenance, was given to the St Bride Library by its purchasers. It was published here in the hope that information relating to its origin would be provided.<br />
<br /><strong>40</strong><br />
<strong>Types of Jean Jannon at the Imprimerie royale</strong><br />
3 February 2012<br />
A summary of some recent work on the use of the Jannon types at the Imprimerie royale during the 17th century.<br />
<br />
<strong>39<br />Type held in the hand</strong><br />
6 January 2012<br />
A note on some features of cast type in the past.<br />
<br />
<strong>38</strong><br />
<strong>Elzevir letter</strong><br />
7 November 2011<br />
The term ‘Elzevir letter’ was a jargon term used by English booksellers of the 18th century, drawing on a vague awareness of earlier books from the Low Countries in excellent small and well printed types. The question of the identity of the makers of these types is discussed.<br />
<br />
<strong>37</strong> <br />
<strong>Talbot Baines Reed, typefounder and sailor</strong><br />
31 July 2011<br />
Reed, a typefounder by trade and a distinguished historian, was a prolific writer. His fictitious stories of life in boys’ schools are well-known. This post includes a reminder that family holidays in the northern Irish counties generated writing of a high order that drew on his experience of sailing.<br />
<br />
<strong>36</strong><br />
<strong>Garamond or Garamont?</strong><br />
1 April 2011 <br />
I took the opportunity of this post, which is nominally a discussion of the proper spelling of the name of the punchcutter, to discuss some other, unresolved, questions relating to the types made by Garamont and those that have been attributed to him. The makers of the comprehensive <strong><a href="http://www.garamond.culture.fr/">Garamont </a></strong>website promoted by the Ministry of Culture in France and launched in October 2011 have kindly accepted some of its suggestions.<br />
<br />
<strong>35</strong> <br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2010/10/number-ten.html">Number Ten</a></strong>. <br />
31 October 2010 (24 December 2010) <br />
The style of the numerals painted on the door of 10 Downing Street has concerned me for some time: ever since Raymond Erith made his restoration of the building in fact. Since then the numerals that were poorly executed and historically badly informed and made against his wishes have been replaced by even worse ones which are often criticised. I originally thought that it would be nice if a more historically appropriate form could be used for them. Now it seems to me that, hidden away in their fortified environment as they are, and visible to the public only as a logo or in carefully managed images, the current numerals matter less than they did. But having been asked recently if I knew why they look the way they do, I thought I might as well post the piece I have been working on, which gives a summary of the results of my investigation so far as it goes. <br />
<br />
<strong>34 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2010/09/proclamation-of-irish-republic-notes.html">The Proclamation of the Irish Republic: notes from Dublin</a>. </strong><br />
17 September 2010 <br />
A sequel to 32. <br />
<br />
<strong>33 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2010/03/lettres-jour-public-stencil-lettering.html"><em>Lettres à jour: </em>public stencil lettering in France</a>. </strong><br />
23 March 2010 (13 September 2010) <br />
A nostalgic labour of love. <br />
<br />
<strong>32 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2010/01/image-of-proclamation-of-irish-republic.html">The Image of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic 1916</a>. </strong><br />
6 January 2010 (10 August 2010) <br />
A seemingly small puzzle – the anachronistic use of a well-known type that was made later than the document it appears in – led me into hitherto unknown territory that I found totally absorbing, and to connections that have been rewarding. <br />
<br />
<strong>31 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2009/12/eric-gills-r-italian-connection.html">Eric Gill’s R: the Italian connection</a>. </strong><br />
7 December 2009 (13 May 2010) <br />
A republication of a piece written in 1990. It enabled me to add some details and make some corrections. <br />
<br />
<strong>30 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2009/07/lost-caslon-type-long-primer-no-1.html">A lost Caslon type: Long Primer No 1</a>. </strong><br />
21 July 2009 <br />
A piece about a type which was used in many works printed in the 18th century and is a great pleasure to read there, but which, since the original punches and matrices appear not to have been preserved, was never revived. <br />
<br />
<strong>29 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2009/03/trieste-leaf-bodoni-forgery.html">The Trieste leaf: a Bodoni forgery</a>? </strong><br />
9 March 2009 (7 August 2010) <br />
When I gave a talk on this item at the Biblioteca Cantonale (its owner) in Lugano in April 2010, the <em>Corriere del Ticino </em>called my story a <em>giallo</em>: that is, a thriller, since the conclusion must be that the leaf in question is indeed a 20th-century forgery of its supposed 18th-century original, and was presumably made for money in about 1946 – but just possibly with other, political, motives as well. <br />
<br />
<strong>28 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2009/01/recasting-caslon-old-face.html">Recasting Caslon Old Face</a>. </strong><br />
4 January 2009 (4 July 2010) <br />
While the Caslon types were being vigorously promoted commercially during the later 19th century as genuine survivals of original types of the 18th century, the Caslon foundry was systematically remaking them in the form of smoother and more acceptable versions. Justin Howes began the story with notes on the recutting of the small sizes: this essay adds more documentation, with notes on the earlier remaking of the larger ones. <br />
<br />
<strong>27 </strong><br />
<strong><em><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/08/tarte-au-citron.html">Tarte au citron</a>. </em></strong><br />
22 August 2008 <br />
A salute to the calligraphy of a local much-appreciated <em>pâtissier</em>. <br />
<br />
<strong>26 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/07/cast-brass-matrices-made-for-pierre.html">Cast brass matrices made for Pierre Didot</a>. </strong><br />
26 July 2008 <br />
Follows 13 and 23. <br />
<br />
<strong>25 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/05/roman-tragedy.html">Roman tragedy</a>. </strong><br />
30 May 2008 <br />
A note on a beautiful and important inscription in the possession of the Museo Nazionale, Rome, which is currently neglected, has recently been damaged, and is virtually inaccessible, being kept in conditions that are doing it no good. This essay attempts to assess its value, which is that of a piece of stone-cut lettering of the first quality, showing a close derivation from calligraphic brush-drawn forms, the origin of which is a subject that needs more documenting. <br />
<br />
<strong>24 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/04/type-bodies-compared.html">Type bodies compared</a>. </strong><br />
30 April 2008 <br />
There are many published tables of the ‘average’ sizes of the old bodies of types, like pica and brevier. This one shows, as exactly as possible, how big some of them were, giving measurements made in London, Paris, Antwerp, Frankfurt and elsewhere from original specimens of types. <br />
<br />
<strong>23 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/03/big-brass-matrices-again-ensched.html">Big brass matrices again: the Enschedé ‘Chalcographia’ type</a>. </strong><br />
21 March 2008 <br />
Follows 13. Includes some useful illustrations. <br />
<br />
<strong>22 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/01/esszett-or.html">Esszet or ß</a>. </strong><br />
31 January 2008 <br />
This essay, which grew out of the one before (21), provoked some useful observations and corrections, which I hope now make it one of the more reliable accounts of the subject. <br />
<br />
<strong>21 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/01/long-s.html">Long s</a>. </strong><br />
25 January 2008 (15 February 2011) <br />
A brief essay originally made for giving to students. There is some recent updating. <br />
<br />
<strong>20 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/12/caslon-tomb-at-st-lukes-old-street.html">The Caslon tomb at St Luke’s, Old Street</a>. </strong><br />
18 December 2007 <br />
Historical details of this tomb, which incidentally commemorates William Caslon I and other members of the family but was made by his daughter Mary principally for herself and her husband Thomas Hanbey, a rich ironmonger. <br />
<br />
<strong>19 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/10/john-smiths-printers-grammar-1755_02.html">John Smith’s <em>Printer’s Grammar</em>, 1755</a>. </strong><br />
2 October 2007 <br />
Smith’s book is an important text, independent of Moxon’s manual. A reprint was made in 1965. To make full use of Smith’s text, the reader may find it helpful to have the index and list of contents that I made for it. They can be downloaded here. <br />
<br />
<strong>18 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/08/casting-bodonis-type.html">Casting Bodoni’s type</a>. </strong><br />
27 August 2007 <br />
A brief note on the use of one of Bodoni’s own moulds for making some trial casts from the matrices of one of his types in the Museo Bodoniano, Parma. I found a mould that worked, with a <em>Palestina </em>body, and looked out some matrices to fit it. Stan Nelson provided the melter for the typemetal, gave some ladles that he made himself, and made the first casts. I used the mould and matrices for a demonstration of typefounding to a class, one of a series on the elements of the printed book that took place at the Biblioteca Palatina during the autumn of 2009. <br />
<br />
<strong>17 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/07/unrecorded-inscription-by-eric-gill.html">An unrecorded inscription by Eric Gill</a>? </strong><br />
25 July 2007 <br />
An image of a war memorial inside the parish church of Northleach, Gloucestershire. The style is unmistakeably that of Gill, but the tablet was not listed either by Gill’s brother Evan (<em>The inscriptional work of Eric Gill: an inventory</em>, 1964), or by David Peace in his revised edition. <br />
<br />
<strong>16 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/06/fallen-and-threaded-types.html">Fallen and threaded types</a>. </strong><br />
22 June 2007 <br />
There are instances in early printed books of type that has been drawn from the forme by the inking balls and, having fallen back on the page, has left an impression. Some show what look like circular holes in the side of the type that may have served for threading the lines and binding them together. There is other evidence that this was done, summarized here. <br />
<br />
<strong>15 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/05/with-twenty-five-soldiers-of-lead-he.html">With twenty-five soldiers of lead he has conquered the world</a>. </strong><br />
14 May 2007 (24 Jan 2011) <br />
A note on the earliest known use of this phrase (1904), and some possible origins. <br />
<br />
<strong>14 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/04/drawing-typefounders-mould.html">Drawing the typefounder’s mould</a>. </strong><br />
9 April 2007 <br />
A study of the image published by Philip Gaskell in his <em>New introduction to bibliography </em>(1972), and its origins, shortcomings and some associated puzzles. <br />
<br />
<strong>13 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/03/brass-matrices-mystery-resolved.html">Big brass matrices: a mystery resolved</a>? </strong><br />
19 March 2007 <br />
Brass is too hard to be used to make large matrices by striking with steel punches, but several surviving sets of early matrices for large types are made of brass. This post gives an account of one documented method of making them. <br />
<br />
<strong>12 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/02/scotch-roman.html">Scotch Roman</a>. </strong><br />
16 February 2007 <br />
This name is loosely attached to several kinds of type. This is an attempt to give the origin of the type that appears with this name in the USA towards the end of the 19th century. It prints a corrected version of some notes that I prepared for the University Press, Cambridge, and which were included anonymously in an edition of Morison’s <em>Tally of Types </em>in 1973. <br />
<br />
<strong>11 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/02/richard-austins-address-to-printers.html">Richard Austin’s <em>Address to Printers</em>, 1819</a>. </strong><br />
14 February 2007 <br />
This is an important document relating to the history of type in Britain. It was reprinted inaccurately in W. T. Berry and A. F. Johnson, <em>Catalogue of specimens of printing types </em>(London, 1935), so it seemed useful to make this reliable version available. <br />
<br />
<strong>10 </strong><br />
<strong><em><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/01/hms-victory.html">HMS Victory</a>. </em></strong><br />
14 January 2007 <br />
The name of <em>Victory</em>, repainted on the occasion of her refurbishment to mark the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005, is in a ‘Trajan’ letter that was a well-meant but ignorant anachronism. This piece looks at visual evidence for the original name and offers some more appropriate models. <br />
<br />
<strong>9 </strong><br />
<a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/01/very-english-blunder.html"><strong>The National Gallery’s new inscription: </strong></a><strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/01/very-english-blunder.html">a very English blunder</a>. </strong><br />
7 January 2007 <br />
A polemical piece, written in a tone of high moral fervour and indignation, suggesting that the decision in 2006 of the director of the National Gallery, Charles Saumarez Smith, to have the words THE NATIONAL GALLERY cut in large gilded letters on the portico of Wilkins’s building of the 1830s was wrong in principle for a number of reasons that are set out here. The chief of them is that by making an invasive and irreversable alteration to a building of some (even if not outstanding) distinction that had survived essentially intact, the director of the gallery showed a lack of care for the existing design and violated the principles of conservation.<br />
<br />
<strong>8 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/01/nymph-and-grot-update.html">The Nymph and the Grot, an update</a>. </strong><br />
6 January 2007 <br />
‘The Nymph and the Grot: the revival of the sanserif letter’ was an essay first published in 1965 and later republished as a book to accompany an exhibition (called <em>Primitive Types</em>) at the Soane Museum, London, in 1999, which showed the part played by Soane in the revival of the letter. This post brings together notes and images relating to several things that could not be included in the book, which was printed long before materials for the exhibition were chosen. <br />
<br />
<strong>7 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2006/02/english-vernacular.html">English vernacular</a>. </strong><br />
6 February 2006 <br />
This is my name for the traditional English (or British) letter, one that has been depreciated by historians and calligraphers who have been persuaded of the superior qualities of letters made with the broad pen. This note was written to mark the centenary of the publication of the handbook of Edward Johnston (1906), the champion of the broad pen. My original study under this title, published in 1963, needs the revision on which I have been working, on and off, ever since. <br />
<br />
<strong>6 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/01/baskerville-tercentenary.html">Baskerville tercentenary</a>. </strong><br />
21 January 2006 <br />
The accepted date of birth of John Baskerville is based on the record of his baptism in January 1706, ‘old style’, which was a year that began in April 1706 and ran until the end of March in what is now the following year. The ‘new style’ for dates, adopted in Britain in 1752, made years run from January to December, as they still do. January 1706 ‘old style’ was thus what we now call January 1707, and Baskerville’s correct dates are 1707–1775. The post shows a hitherto unpublished specimen of one of Baskerville’s types.<br />
<br />
<strong>5 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2006/01/dabbing-abklatschen-clichage.html">Dabbing, <em>abklatschen</em>, <em>clichage</em></a>. </strong><br />
13 January 2006 (26 February 2011) <br />
A brief note on the making of the cast duplicates of wood blocks in typemetal, a process that has been known by these names in English, German and French. It shows one means of recognising such casts from their look on the printed page. I put most of what I know about the history of the process into my introduction to the facsimile edition published in 1998 of a German manual, issued by Johann Michael Funcke, <em>Kurtze, doch nützliche Anleitung von Form- und Stahl-Schneiden </em>(Erfurt, 1740). An account by Wolfgang Schellman of some surviving examples, just published, adds many extra references. <br />
<br />
<strong>4 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2006/01/baskervilles-french-cannon-roman.html">Baskerville’s French Cannon roman</a>. </strong><strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2006/01/g.html">Cresci, <em>Essemplare </em>(1560)</a>.</strong> <br />
7 January 2006 <br />
The first post shows an image of some of Baskerville’s original punches, made with the permission of the University Library, Cambridge, where they are now kept. Another piece posted at the same date shows a page from G. F. Cresci, <em>Essemplare di più sorti lettere </em>(Rome, 1560), and was intended to draw attention to my essay on Cresci and his influence on architectural lettering in Rome in <em>Typography papers</em>, 6. <br />
<br />
<strong>3 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2006/01/italian-writing-masters-and.html">Italian writing masters and calligraphers of the 16th and 17th centuries</a>. </strong><br />
6 January 2006 <br />
A simple catalogue, giving the names of all the writers that have been recorded, with dates of their published writing books and authorities for their life and work.<br />
<br />
<strong>2 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2006/01/materials-of-typefounding.html">The materials of typefounding</a>. </strong><br />
6 January 2006 <br />
A list of the present locations for surviving punches, matrices and other ‘materials’ for making printing types. An updated version, with an introduction, was published as ‘The materials of typefounding’, in <em>Printing history, </em>new series, no. 4 (July 2008), pp. 3–37, the journal of the American Printing History Association. <br />
<br />
<strong>1 </strong><br />
<strong><a href="http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2006/01/printing-mdailles-de-louis-le-grand.html">Printing the <em>Médailles de Louis le Grand</em></a>. </strong><br />
6 January 2006 <br />
In 2002 I curated an exhibition at the Musée de l’Imprimerie, Lyon, to mark the tercentenary of the new type made for the Imprimerie royale, Paris, which was accompanied by an illustrated book with essays by various hands, <em>Le Romain du roi: La typographie au service de l’état. </em>As often happens, during the preparation of the exhibition material came to light that was too late for inclusion in the book, and also too extensive for it. This post reprints the accounts for the printing of the second edition, 1723, of the <em>Médailles sur les principaux événements du règne de Louis le Grand, </em>which provide much technical information that is relevant to the first edition of 1702. In the end it was possible to include it, with much other related matter, in an article on ‘the making of’ the book in the <em>Bulletin du bibliophile</em>, 2 (2008), pp. 296–350.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Author’s note </strong><br />
<br />
Like anyone who pursues a number of topics at once, I keep notes about some of them that especially interest me or concern me, and they form the basis of most of the posts made here. The notes may eventually lead to publication in one form or another or become part of a larger study, but that does not always happen. Sometimes I hesitate to publish more formally because a subject so clearly needs more work on it, and can benefit from additions or corrections from others. Several of the posts here are of this kind (13, 14, 16, 23, 32, 34). <br />
<div>
</div>
Other pieces included here are texts that I did once publish and which I think may still be useful, but are now difficult to find in their original printed form, and in any case need some updating and correcting (15, 31). In a couple of instances the post makes some essential updates to existing printed texts (5, 8). Some pieces deal with topics that I think are important, but relating to which, for one reason or another, there still seems to be no reliable or adequate published survey and discussion (21, 22). A few of them are essentially catalogues and lists that I have made for my own use (2, 3, 19, 24), but which I think may be more widely helpful.<br />
<div>
</div>
Another kind of post altogether consists of pieces that I have written when I have been moved to indignation by observing instances of folly or ignorance on the part of authorities who are responsible for the care of important artefacts and buildings (9, 10, 25, 35). I wish none of them had been needed. <br />
<div>
</div>
Then there are some studies of printed documents or artefacts that are evidently not quite what they seem to be, like 28 and 29, regarding which there are puzzles that even now are not quite resolved. Posts 32 and 34, listed above as unfinished studies, come under this heading too. Lastly there are essays on personal enthusiasms or discoveries for which I should like to find other admirers (7, 12, 17, 27, 30, 33). <br />
<div>
</div>
The blog as a medium has attractions as well as perils. Its chief value is as a means of publishing information, opinion and images in a form that is cheap, universally accessible and free from outside interference. It is also, of course, a means of self-promotion. The older texts that are embedded in this blog have become more difficult to find within it because of its very limited facility for listing archives, and I have not got the technical expertise needed to adapt the format I am using in order to make it easier. But I have inserted links: a click on a title in the list above should take you to the post itself. <br />
<div>
</div>
One obvious peril is that the medium is so fragile that if the substructure collapses the texts will simply vanish. (I keep copies of them, but probably not as assiduously as I should.) I suppose that another disadvantage of this medium of publication is that some of the items, simply by accumulating so many additions, have now become far too long for easy reading on a screen. But I find it a comfort to know that most of them are now more complete, more reliable and better written and illustrated than they were when they were first posted. <br />
<div>
</div>
Most of the images are my own. Where they are not I have generally done my best to secure the permission of the owners. There have been some difficulties and a few examples of rapacity on the part of institutional owners. But I have been moved by instances of generosity from people and from institutions too, and I should like to draw attention to the notes on copyright that I have placed against some images when owners have asked for them. <br />
<div>
</div>
In the end everything published here is a personal statement, for which I take responsibility. I have disabled the facility for online comments, but there is a link that will find me and I have been pleased to receive responses from people to whom some items have been of interest or value, and also some corrections, for which I thank them. <br />
<div>
</div>
It is a seductive medium. Infelicities of style, of which I find there are far too many in the early state of a post, can gradually be dealt with and errors removed as if they had never existed. I still have a lingering and sentimental regard for the printed page, but it was never so flexible and forgiving. <br />
<br />
<em>James Mosley</em><br />
LondonUnknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-76567421197679271492010-10-31T14:16:00.195+00:002011-06-27T06:35:16.398+00:00Number Ten<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbWu2Wsdc6AmM57tUggEJOghFvjB6Es6z0RVQnNAcL2XwNyB7IOvNBoNNJzMcyhAcQ1sJ_K2vjgScwZ52EnwRuaHc3fpNcEtydha1ZgoHaaa1spddw8VFs-lJduL1yr1sAdAZ/s1600/1+-+website+image+of+facade.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 228px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534218996012323842" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbWu2Wsdc6AmM57tUggEJOghFvjB6Es6z0RVQnNAcL2XwNyB7IOvNBoNNJzMcyhAcQ1sJ_K2vjgScwZ52EnwRuaHc3fpNcEtydha1ZgoHaaa1spddw8VFs-lJduL1yr1sAdAZ/s400/1+-+website+image+of+facade.jpg" /></a><br /><br />This image, from the government web site, is designed to promote the idea that in Britain, notwithstanding its history of world-wide imperial power, for the last couple of hundred years the Prime Minister has lived in a modest but comfortable town house in an unpretentious street within a few minutes’ walk of the House of Commons.<br /><br />The façade of Ten Downing Street, which dates from about 1774, is the cosmetic mask of a structure that has been largely rebuilt during the last half century. The foundations of the house and its neighbours, begun in the late 17th century in boggy ground near the river, had not lasted well, and a programme of rebuilding was put in hand in a hurry from 1960 to 1963 in order to forestall a major collapse: nearly two-thirds of the structure was renewed. More has been done since then to adapt the complex to its function as a centre of government. More alterations were made in order to add some meretricious glamour to the interior, a move that I imagine would have been distasteful both to the restorer and to Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister for whom the earlier work was done, who ‘insisted on a certain simplicity, with no gilding of cornices’. Yet more changes have been made in the name of security.<br /><br />A single unarmed policeman used to stand by the front door, past which anyone could walk. For a long time now public access to Downing Street has been denied. There are gates, rising barriers in the road, and a permanent armed guard at both ends. The front door of number ten is a steel plate. The Prime Minister does not walk to the House of Commons.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoE3FqnVSotRHUjLNuDkagZLxzaj5MRRRa4XGvNZDk6dYERcCdLbQM6mhpPlD_Nh-eEManDlV0HaV2XHjCjAFDeQ_rED-_1F-nySHpWAViR_xvMfwMAkGSMBykixmPwV_EjooL/s1600/2+Cameron+-+2010-10+-+poppy.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 267px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534219242676695122" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoE3FqnVSotRHUjLNuDkagZLxzaj5MRRRa4XGvNZDk6dYERcCdLbQM6mhpPlD_Nh-eEManDlV0HaV2XHjCjAFDeQ_rED-_1F-nySHpWAViR_xvMfwMAkGSMBykixmPwV_EjooL/s400/2+Cameron+-+2010-10+-+poppy.jpg" /></a><br /><br />But the inaccessible façade is very familiar. It is regularly exploited as the backdrop for carefully staged political photo-opportunities. Ten Downing Street is a brand and the number that now appears on the shiny armoured door is its logo, slick in its drawing but unaccountably crude in its design, which echoes the forms of the numerals that were placed there after the rebuilding but making them much bolder, perhaps in order to secure a better image under the glare of the flashes of the photographers.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUbLqtLV73d_y263Q4LYopF8yHD6_u3WQIA5xSst9WmMCh-XECvmllNH3uUEQNVyTdmLaOmuRZ5_P9FVjoS3DZ0DVLiFUxQfWzHQOA4GcFSLB42DnmpKZH-gGuMANFsQSNqzio/s1600/3+Downing+St+-+web+page+heading+-+a+det.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 60px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534219595256349714" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUbLqtLV73d_y263Q4LYopF8yHD6_u3WQIA5xSst9WmMCh-XECvmllNH3uUEQNVyTdmLaOmuRZ5_P9FVjoS3DZ0DVLiFUxQfWzHQOA4GcFSLB42DnmpKZH-gGuMANFsQSNqzio/s400/3+Downing+St+-+web+page+heading+-+a+det.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgHi3mv4h-PUenO5vUJJj8BNzSrBqrQvTt_p0JyuQoj49k8fk6_VOkOg54koxK-xmELrv3i0rsLrf3mh2OYsYCLr-cHLSs-ph0KqwSlXF16PBA-HQaWpFBOFzne2tqdfI9s_T4/s1600/Blairs.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 216px; HEIGHT: 255px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534262985764870210" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgHi3mv4h-PUenO5vUJJj8BNzSrBqrQvTt_p0JyuQoj49k8fk6_VOkOg54koxK-xmELrv3i0rsLrf3mh2OYsYCLr-cHLSs-ph0KqwSlXF16PBA-HQaWpFBOFzne2tqdfI9s_T4/s400/Blairs.jpg" /></a><br /><br />One may not like the result, which unlike the rest of the carefully restored architectural detailing is historically badly informed: the model for the oddly tilted zero (for which an unconvincing explanation has recently been produced) will be shown below. But it could be said that both the slickness and the crudity are well suited to the present function of the site.<br /><br />In 1960–3 the rebuilding of number ten, together with the unnumbered house next to it and number eleven, was overseen by the architect Raymond Erith, who also designed a wholly new number twelve, the large house at the end of Downing Street towards the park that had been reduced to a stump of a single storey by a fire during the 19th century.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisuDGB-_x9YIZklu2nbk46zejQjJ7Tpd6i2hZimiF3wHHpxaIopxwpcG65gyscfaE5B1aJiK6pBk4ZR0bqvn3FPmHLpku2Z_DyAOm8D-a4U2DlN2Uq4yMZ38IR2aFSiIdGGhK9/s1600/4+Raymond+Erith+at+Downing+Street+1962+det+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 268px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534219849309749858" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisuDGB-_x9YIZklu2nbk46zejQjJ7Tpd6i2hZimiF3wHHpxaIopxwpcG65gyscfaE5B1aJiK6pBk4ZR0bqvn3FPmHLpku2Z_DyAOm8D-a4U2DlN2Uq4yMZ38IR2aFSiIdGGhK9/s400/4+Raymond+Erith+at+Downing+Street+1962+det+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Raymond Erith (1904–1973), seen above during the work at Downing Street, was known as a ‘classicist’. That is, he designed in a tradition that often named the work of Palladio as a model, but in his case what it produced generally looked as it had been built in England between about 1730 and 1800. Indeed, the simpler his houses are, and they are often very simple indeed, the more convincing they are as genuine survivals from the 18th century. In Erith’s case design was not so much a matter of reproducing detail, although the details are mostly flawless, as of thinking in a traditional idiom, and he achieved a reliable quality of construction from a relatively small group of builders, carpenters and masons.<br /><br />If the task at Downing Street had been simply to renovate the existing houses, keeping what could be kept and replacing some parts where this was necessary, and of course designing an enhanced number twelve that would look as if it had always been there, all might have been well. But when the occupants moved out and a proper investigation could be made, the extent of the rebuilding that it became evident would be necessary, and the specification that would make the whole complex workable as a centre of power, even in 1960, was very demanding, and the construction was undertaken by a major contractor who was overseen by the department of government known as ‘The Ministry of Works’, a name with 16th-century echoes. The administration of the large contract would test the ministry’s ability to manage labour relations a long way beyond its limits, and the architect was inevitably a victim of conflicting forces beyond his control.<br /><br />It seemed to me at the time, in an innocent and opportunist kind of way, that Erith, like most of his profession, probably knew little about the shapes of letters and numbers, and that, with his known attention to detail, he might like some suggestions about the kind of numeral that would have been placed on the door of a house of the 18th century. Being in the middle of preparing an essay on what I called ‘English vernacular’, an attempt to document and encourage the appreciation of a badly neglected tradition of British lettering, I thought I had some useful models to offer.<br /><br />He responded to me with great courtesy, promising further contact when the time came. In fact I heard nothing further from him. As the work at Downing Street progressed, one heard only distantly of the constant rows and labour disputes at the site. When the buildings were finally done and back in use, I walked past number ten (as one still could) and looked at the result and photographed it. A barely competent signwriter had painted the numerals rather badly in a small, weedy version of the Ministry’s standard ‘Trajan’ letter.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6XLnJE53qC2NxIuW7843UzSrcT2MP38vCwZXUix8YBquLLRJT_MPX_QWHELkXNkjfsYkjjUk5DsOOkIm1Lr8Nb0OvnRhQl_EB5dE9dqrbK2-LU7K7xzIChjiFOc_kM5D0Jh_B/s1600/5+10+Downing+St+door+1964+1+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 268px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534220236445442674" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6XLnJE53qC2NxIuW7843UzSrcT2MP38vCwZXUix8YBquLLRJT_MPX_QWHELkXNkjfsYkjjUk5DsOOkIm1Lr8Nb0OvnRhQl_EB5dE9dqrbK2-LU7K7xzIChjiFOc_kM5D0Jh_B/s400/5+10+Downing+St+door+1964+1+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The figure one was recognisable as a numeral, but the zero was a capital O, with the inclined axis of a calligraphic Roman inscriptional letter of the first century. Except that in this case the writer had failed to make the two sides match: the effect was of a curiously kinked form.<br /><br />When I wrote to Erith in 1964 to ask what had happened, I had a reply, courteous as ever but overwrought, which gave me some faint idea of what had gone on:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq24uZBy3h1_VFLBYfGHL22wkGp_HTW9OYuOVptlEVjze8ZU02Vu5fpGmnYfXAFVPROihypadl3TBpOfK_o7SNJF4TiOHG5W1xUEaVK1MWVifGqu03YqhLd-PNkVhp_nT0_Bu6/s1600/6+Erith+to+JM+1964+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 375px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534220499633265138" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq24uZBy3h1_VFLBYfGHL22wkGp_HTW9OYuOVptlEVjze8ZU02Vu5fpGmnYfXAFVPROihypadl3TBpOfK_o7SNJF4TiOHG5W1xUEaVK1MWVifGqu03YqhLd-PNkVhp_nT0_Bu6/s400/6+Erith+to+JM+1964+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />I do not know what kind of model Erith had supplied and, notwithstanding the courtesy of his first letter to me, I have the sense that he did not really want the involvement of an outsider, so I can’t claim to have made any contribution to his vision of number ten.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIQn_OwF0m0W5AGw0SFaUbeWIv9JzWEKW3I5OLykTqwFW_pEc7EK3QYI4rqRuQgi5joz5dnN9BzhNxesisKaVzQmpTIJZ8j35mUllJd1MgqsonHSMeCxdTm7rNz7h_yF3DN9vJ/s1600/7+Trajan+-+M+of+W+sheet.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 296px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534220791669750274" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIQn_OwF0m0W5AGw0SFaUbeWIv9JzWEKW3I5OLykTqwFW_pEc7EK3QYI4rqRuQgi5joz5dnN9BzhNxesisKaVzQmpTIJZ8j35mUllJd1MgqsonHSMeCxdTm7rNz7h_yF3DN9vJ/s400/7+Trajan+-+M+of+W+sheet.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The number on the door comprised the figures one and zero from the standard ‘Trajan’ alphabet approved for use by the Ministry of Works, in which the zero was simply the capital letter O. The capitals were derived from <em>Roman Lettering</em>, a book by L. C. Evetts published in 1938, in which the inscriptional letters, which are now recognised to be essentially calligraphic, were given a geometric construction. The figures were adapted from some by Evetts, whose subtitle was, ‘a study of the letters of the inscription at the base of the Trajan column, with an outline of the history of lettering in Britain’, and who included some quite sympathetically drawn details of letters and numerals from 18th-century gravestones. But in the adaptation made for the Ministry of Works the figures are made to range with the capitals, and the capital letter O is introduced and made to serve as zero, an incongruity that Evetts was not responsible for. As I have noted above, the number added to the door was painted with an unsure hand by a far from expert signwriter, so that the zero or O had a curious kink on the right hand side. The oblique stress of the zero, which appears to have been newly introduced in 1963, appears to have generated a pseudo-tradition that must surely be bogus.<br /><br />According to a piece in the online <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8677004.stm">BBC News Magazine</a> of 12 May 2010, which gave some current details of the door itself and some trivial historical information (under Asquith it was dark green), ‘as 10 Downing Street is a period building with many original features, the heavy high-security front door retains the Georgian panelled look of the wooden original.’ It adds that ‘the Downing Street website notes that the “0” in the number 10 is at an angle as a nod to the original, which had a badly-fixed zero.’ (I have failed to find the item there, but the Wikipedia article on 10 Downing Street has it.)<br /><br />The original? Badly-fixed? What does that mean? The suggestion seems to be that there had originally been brass numerals, attached by screws. But is there is any evidence at all for that, and if so what is it? It seems likely from the image of Raymond Erith at Downing Street that is shown above that a new wooden door, perhaps the one on which the pathetic ‘Trajan’ figures were to be painted, was made in 1960. What kind of numerals had there been before, and what do we know about them?<br /><br />There are some photographs of ten Downing Street that date back to the later 19th century, but they tend to show the whole house or indeed the street, and none that I have seen shows enough detail to enable one to discern the form of the figures on the door. However, for the early 20th century there is some useful evidence.<br /><br />Here is a deputation in its quest for votes calling on Mr Asquith in 1909:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTjmb2STIuBpyx0zaZ1i2m38c5md0poBcYaWLY64wK4eBFzzngtcnG2OJUH9Uc7vGz1_BsugdmojqUXroIx7XceH2fSNS9Bk8zCCw08N6lsbzv_v8kwj29LDqSbesAHhRlofFc/s1600/Suffragettes+1909.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 337px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534614500062087826" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTjmb2STIuBpyx0zaZ1i2m38c5md0poBcYaWLY64wK4eBFzzngtcnG2OJUH9Uc7vGz1_BsugdmojqUXroIx7XceH2fSNS9Bk8zCCw08N6lsbzv_v8kwj29LDqSbesAHhRlofFc/s400/Suffragettes+1909.jpg" /></a><br /><br />And here is a small boy on a visit to London in 1924 who was allowed to pose for a photograph in the doorway. He was Harold Wilson, who became Prime Minister. (It is an image that I once found in the <em>Evening Standard</em>.)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr57WkgK5pfFigBhvuRss9HGc_ApUpN21kGpyw6I2oTFBquiX35ZV0DqRQCjuTCu2DvsGX4fSHhd5FP6hGtyxYZoxkzwiQ-00z9Gz7D_p83JKsy7Dq1Da-xmdJmB_pj9a6LGOh/s1600/8+10+Downing+St+door+1924+-+Harold+Wilson+-+blur+2.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 268px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534221082061284658" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr57WkgK5pfFigBhvuRss9HGc_ApUpN21kGpyw6I2oTFBquiX35ZV0DqRQCjuTCu2DvsGX4fSHhd5FP6hGtyxYZoxkzwiQ-00z9Gz7D_p83JKsy7Dq1Da-xmdJmB_pj9a6LGOh/s400/8+10+Downing+St+door+1924+-+Harold+Wilson+-+blur+2.jpg" /></a><br /><br />And here is detail of a third photograph that was made in 1927:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqWNlcDnea7oaI07rhoR2fhR40W4y4j5jz1i3D_iunrwT1wzyaoWnNnBaieK_e3tVYHGANir5lkiQhHdKDi7f8C8l3V33lahOOlqyuW2P7uGur4LI0fwR6f9Wu1qKU-2XZNJey/s1600/9+10+Downing+St+door+1927+5+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 271px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534221373286568658" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqWNlcDnea7oaI07rhoR2fhR40W4y4j5jz1i3D_iunrwT1wzyaoWnNnBaieK_e3tVYHGANir5lkiQhHdKDi7f8C8l3V33lahOOlqyuW2P7uGur4LI0fwR6f9Wu1qKU-2XZNJey/s400/9+10+Downing+St+door+1927+5+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />In all these images it can be seen that the figures are painted in white by a professional signwriter, and that the axis of the curves is vertical and thus wholly unlike the oblique angle of the Trajan letter O. This is of course what one would expect from traditional English signwriting. It seems likely that the number would have been be redone every time the front door was painted, but one would expect that the form of the figures, which was conventional and traditional, would remain essentially unchanged, like the style used for the names of the successive occupants of rooms in colleges at Oxford and Cambridge or the inns of court in London. If that was so, then there is no reason to think that this number differed significantly in its appearance from one that may have been placed there in the 1770s, when the structure of the façade was renewed and the houses in the London streets were being numbered.<br /><br />If I had offered a model to Raymond Erith, it would probably have come from Bowles’s <em>Roman and Italic print alphabets </em>of 1775, a guide for signwriters among other professions which remains the only thing of its kind that we have for the period. Here are Bowles’s figures:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLvinNuw9hdXIUCnJ96bU2RSqRCSn5UQi5nzFyujzb9C3pyHtc8pmyANi-vhbI0yDDZvUnmNUftKvW9U-o-dXei5T4H2C_69oLLQ0NoShdaPPq68fDVjRLZ9a_scT-76FhNgB/s1600/10+Bowles+1775+-+figures+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 97px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534221611250126050" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLvinNuw9hdXIUCnJ96bU2RSqRCSn5UQi5nzFyujzb9C3pyHtc8pmyANi-vhbI0yDDZvUnmNUftKvW9U-o-dXei5T4H2C_69oLLQ0NoShdaPPq68fDVjRLZ9a_scT-76FhNgB/s400/10+Bowles+1775+-+figures+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Not only are they rather elaborate for use as house numbers, for which they would certainly have been simplified, but they lack a zero. At this date zero would been identical with the lower-case letter o, as the following stone-cut inscription of about 1787 shows:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDYRc-F5eFtlTSCBcAyu5Udf881QAc_tV1aZOxaMJz4N1fpcagybFUEmSRxj_5BIbVrM8Su-ZmuZkmGsDMzZe5SF4a1xBYV159_Ad8yxMyWXvLolIGHwyDYFtzFRMyNoIf2eOK/s1600/11+Nollekens+-+Tyrell+monument+c1787+-+2+det+sh+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 102px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534221858795173042" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDYRc-F5eFtlTSCBcAyu5Udf881QAc_tV1aZOxaMJz4N1fpcagybFUEmSRxj_5BIbVrM8Su-ZmuZkmGsDMzZe5SF4a1xBYV159_Ad8yxMyWXvLolIGHwyDYFtzFRMyNoIf2eOK/s400/11+Nollekens+-+Tyrell+monument+c1787+-+2+det+sh+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />In fact the capital letters of the Bowles alphabet make an even closer match. If one takes Bowles’s capital I and O and cuts off the top right hand serif of I, this is the result, one that is not so very far from the figures in the images of the old door at number ten.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzBKut0G2Ml8P0pli48ynjLI8HMOW1rMiLT7Gewf8eEzlPcXVYAGmPygux8GJ8X7idJSWCmyYGWhNMaYSppaQpdSoEKF9fyiE5BbruTHKgPSughzeg7meY73PkyDyKBWmqd-lP/s1600/12+Bowles+number+10+2+-+ed+-+jpeg+-+b.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 162px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537913566674380322" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzBKut0G2Ml8P0pli48ynjLI8HMOW1rMiLT7Gewf8eEzlPcXVYAGmPygux8GJ8X7idJSWCmyYGWhNMaYSppaQpdSoEKF9fyiE5BbruTHKgPSughzeg7meY73PkyDyKBWmqd-lP/s400/12+Bowles+number+10+2+-+ed+-+jpeg+-+b.jpg" /></a><br /><br />At some date during the 1930s – certainly by 1938, when the files of <em>Picture Post </em>begin to provide intermittent photographs of the door of number ten – the ‘traditional’ figures shown above were supplanted by a lighter pair painted lower down on the central styles or uprights of the door, between the top and middle panels. Although the poor quality of such images makes it difficult to be quite sure, these lighter figures in their new position appear to be those that are shown in the photograph below, one that appears to have been made just before the start of the rebuilding. They have strokes that are thin and meagre compared with those of their predecessors, and there is possibly (though it is difficult to be sure) a faint hint at a Trajan-style slope in the zero. However it is nothing remotely like the strongly oblique zero or capital O that appeared in 1964. Unlike that pair of figures these are competently executed, but perhaps they mark the beginning of the shift in style that can be seen to have led fatally towards the widely-disliked numerals that are in current use, and which have reverted to their old location, aligned with the upper panels.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0O-7y02-euIqoTfrqrts9Sh7Hx-Ashq4IA3727L7vyQQixL4XGfeloXrRjBpQAd3rrd63typCTzNIHJRqaq9KkzgACQe-wJwF76dVV-xkdZJ6Pa8GTuE5N2YBJVwj9TJtYxZ_/s1600/10+Downing+St+door+1961+2.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 314px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537927498443688018" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0O-7y02-euIqoTfrqrts9Sh7Hx-Ashq4IA3727L7vyQQixL4XGfeloXrRjBpQAd3rrd63typCTzNIHJRqaq9KkzgACQe-wJwF76dVV-xkdZJ6Pa8GTuE5N2YBJVwj9TJtYxZ_/s400/10+Downing+St+door+1961+2.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizc_iPi7J-FLMQGzKGa_RbPWAeS29hyphenhyphennj_AZb4Qo9kIWyQpW1US8uZb1pjt36xetE3th2i8mgECiWDtHrqxBBl41hKz9-6Z8bBcyYuS1b9bbD2b62YBHqIjuLm1ROu8M58lIsZ/s1600/10+Downing+St+door+1961+det+b.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 291px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537927641020653570" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizc_iPi7J-FLMQGzKGa_RbPWAeS29hyphenhyphennj_AZb4Qo9kIWyQpW1US8uZb1pjt36xetE3th2i8mgECiWDtHrqxBBl41hKz9-6Z8bBcyYuS1b9bbD2b62YBHqIjuLm1ROu8M58lIsZ/s400/10+Downing+St+door+1961+det+b.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Brass figures</strong><br /><br />I strongly suspect that the story about ‘badly-fixed numerals’ (presumably brass ones), that is said to be cited by the official web site as an excuse for the odd-looking zero on the door of number ten, may be a recent invention that has been produced by someone, evidently someone wholly ignorant of the use of the Trajan capital letter O in the 1960s, in order to parry tiresome questions or remarks about the ‘lopsided’, ‘wonky’ or ‘wobbly’ number – see the words of a schoolboy quoted below from the <em>Education Guardian </em>of 2 November 2010.<br /><br />But are there in fact any brass numerals on surviving house doors that can reliably be said to date from the 18th century or even the earlier 19th century? I know of none, either in London or in provincial towns like Bath, where such things are more likely to be preserved. If there are any, I’d like examples, please.<br /><br />Having made this appeal, or challenge, I should add that a friend has answered it by directing me to an online publication of the <a href="http://www.ewht.org.uk/">Edinburgh World Heritage Trust</a>, in which advice is offered on the choice of ‘ironmongery’ for the doors of old houses. The Trust has identified some doors on 18th-century houses in the New Town of Edinburgh with numerals that look contemporary with the buildings, and have encouraged a brass founder in the making of similar numerals for current sale:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH197FpdNepU5ofA0ZStRqOzBhkYLHsImcSMi-TsHJkL163GADCV64ZvMhLdyNYd9kBMoq4tgnLsnBuPI4aUZlD_Qr2z3X4jMx5SyDaozRYXzTr5uEZxBKiWH_AkLQmu5GHaIH/s1600/EWH+door+numbers.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 250px; HEIGHT: 98px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538970422250236658" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH197FpdNepU5ofA0ZStRqOzBhkYLHsImcSMi-TsHJkL163GADCV64ZvMhLdyNYd9kBMoq4tgnLsnBuPI4aUZlD_Qr2z3X4jMx5SyDaozRYXzTr5uEZxBKiWH_AkLQmu5GHaIH/s400/EWH+door+numbers.jpg" /></a><br /><br />I hope it will not seem too grudging if I say that I do not think that the newly produced numerals quite match the qualities of the old ones shown in this image (an eternal problem in conservation work), but I am delighted to find that an organization devoted to architectural ‘heritage’ should recognise that numerals, and letters too, often make up a significant detail on a building. If only English Heritage, and the Georgian Group (who are still devoutly wedded to the Trajan model), showed even a flicker of informed interest in such details.<br /><br />This is a welcome positive note to add to this post, which has been mostly negative (and I make no apology for that) in its judgement of those who have recently been responsible for maintaining the door of Number Ten. Having mentioned Bath, let me add another pair of images. Although I have failed to spot any convincing early examples of brass numerals there, I can offer these painted ones, both of which are over the door of number fifteen Lansdown Crescent.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkboJ59frPOOAyHVM21GWYeZHfRY-udisKBzXBCDI3Y6ICzSHrEJEey4Op8JK35jSzhlgsTHkimItNjA_ALscV9JO_fARor-yhRoGMXkyVcI1DV8ZuBpxWZnZy7NQhSUKc1p-_/s1600/Bath+-+Lansdowne+Crescent+4+-+upper+det.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 222px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538970342698075554" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkboJ59frPOOAyHVM21GWYeZHfRY-udisKBzXBCDI3Y6ICzSHrEJEey4Op8JK35jSzhlgsTHkimItNjA_ALscV9JO_fARor-yhRoGMXkyVcI1DV8ZuBpxWZnZy7NQhSUKc1p-_/s400/Bath+-+Lansdowne+Crescent+4+-+upper+det.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8KKVk597CvN7exSR2ZnRL_T9AioaqBLU_GJQzHfBIgn1ebD7ZCgyd0NtTYbewtn8zGijBHEFtUbIBO5KcbRBTo6CrX6exU0eQKbWbdw55mivQJjIuvJf4el9Qb7H8U-QMsWZT/s1600/Bath+-+Lansdowne+Crescent+5+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 278px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538970214835032082" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8KKVk597CvN7exSR2ZnRL_T9AioaqBLU_GJQzHfBIgn1ebD7ZCgyd0NtTYbewtn8zGijBHEFtUbIBO5KcbRBTo6CrX6exU0eQKbWbdw55mivQJjIuvJf4el9Qb7H8U-QMsWZT/s400/Bath+-+Lansdowne+Crescent+5+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The legible painted number 15, which is a survival of something early, perhaps of about 1830, is in a style that historians might call ‘slab-serif’ (or ‘Egyptian’). If sensitively handled it could make a possible model for use today. A more remarkable survival is the ghostly numeral below, an example of the traditional signwriter’s style, where the paint, long gone, protected the soft stone from erosion sufficiently to preserve a decent figure 1 and a delightfully inventive 5.<br /><br /><strong>How many doors?</strong><br /><br />The photograph of Raymond Erith reproduced above shows him next to a new-looking unpainted door that may have been intended to replace the old one, but it is far from clear whether this was done, or whether the old door was refurbished and kept in use. This is how the whole doorway looked after the restoration, in a photograph that I think I got from a news agency.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4p-7M21TprwOQtgBnyRHszoQn429tP3HJjSHqGeDwvo2Pa6Q8gODOfhLQZGUcYP3BvBN9ADxggoz6e1cUkQ4dL1lfP7AUdOyjYX0q5xkkWfMCTWATFfTMLx_m7bwXugJOL9uA/s1600/10+Downing+St+door+1964+2.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 263px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535987956762798338" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4p-7M21TprwOQtgBnyRHszoQn429tP3HJjSHqGeDwvo2Pa6Q8gODOfhLQZGUcYP3BvBN9ADxggoz6e1cUkQ4dL1lfP7AUdOyjYX0q5xkkWfMCTWATFfTMLx_m7bwXugJOL9uA/s400/10+Downing+St+door+1964+2.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The present armoured door, about which information is understandably sparse, was installed after the mortar bomb attack on Downing Street in 1991. The wooden door then in current use, which may have been the original door fitted to the new façade of the 1770s (but which is hardly likely to have been Walpole’s front door of 1735, as the report in the <em>BBC News Magazine </em>of May 2010 suggested), was transferred to the Churchill Museum in the Cabinet War Rooms, not far from Downing Street, where it can be seen, already painted with the new crude numerals:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMyuPdBuzIVpZDXWvYR9uJD3uBXGEIIOIkp_Xigo-4UBKjd0rJDyiC5vdHRD2GUy1Jwy7EWGGeCst-SHIGffP1jYkz_dbwJFoLqBMfYgxdWjDg_5-NoFzOV1E4KwPZuH_gh3MU/s1600/Number+Ten+door+-+Churchill+Museum+-+5.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 218px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535986454793938162" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMyuPdBuzIVpZDXWvYR9uJD3uBXGEIIOIkp_Xigo-4UBKjd0rJDyiC5vdHRD2GUy1Jwy7EWGGeCst-SHIGffP1jYkz_dbwJFoLqBMfYgxdWjDg_5-NoFzOV1E4KwPZuH_gh3MU/s400/Number+Ten+door+-+Churchill+Museum+-+5.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg35TwBZh4r2WxtNaTZxNflGvW0YEQzfPsQvURmMD_WNYO_6GXYohHJM8_q65KScdhEK0nU-8RZKSLWRJqgk9FfsxoQgtVHl8YFO90RTEzZNHl5LaKOa9-5YngphrkUkeCl9EeK/s1600/Number+Ten+door+-+Churchill+Museum+-+6.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 298px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535986714598856338" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg35TwBZh4r2WxtNaTZxNflGvW0YEQzfPsQvURmMD_WNYO_6GXYohHJM8_q65KScdhEK0nU-8RZKSLWRJqgk9FfsxoQgtVHl8YFO90RTEzZNHl5LaKOa9-5YngphrkUkeCl9EeK/s400/Number+Ten+door+-+Churchill+Museum+-+6.jpg" /></a><br /><br />In the BBC story a ‘replica door’ is shown, which is said to be kept to replace the armoured one when that is being repainted. Is it perhaps the new door shown in the photograph with Erith?<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSidCuYGkIjx6Cx8iCdal5TweHHUC4_VO7ZlzP_xM_og1EyUMMLxXtGHhclH6bkiaaWQomY5N0QJUrClx7cTD43a-tFSawr4MOBAdhuXrJA-vXn46luVIx73h-lUqdwdcDjmKA/s1600/Replacement+door+being+moved+-+BBC+news+2010.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 226px; HEIGHT: 160px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535986990479905586" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSidCuYGkIjx6Cx8iCdal5TweHHUC4_VO7ZlzP_xM_og1EyUMMLxXtGHhclH6bkiaaWQomY5N0QJUrClx7cTD43a-tFSawr4MOBAdhuXrJA-vXn46luVIx73h-lUqdwdcDjmKA/s400/Replacement+door+being+moved+-+BBC+news+2010.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Reluctantly, I have had to abandon one other candidate for a front door for number ten that was reported to me in good faith. In 1964, via a helpful connection, Downing College, Cambridge, was able to acquire one or more original doors that were not being retained for the rebuilding. One of these now serves there in a part of the college. See Downing College <em><a href="http://www.dow.cam.ac.uk/dow_server/info/danl/downing_record_2004.pdf">Association Newsletter and College Record</a>, </em>2004, p. 26 and back cover. From the college records and from some details of its construction it is clear that this is an interior door, but not the front door, from number ten.<br /><br /><strong>Sources</strong><br /><br />This piece originated with some remarks in a talk for ATypI 2007 in Brighton, followed up with a letter in the <em>London Review of Books</em>, 17 July 2008, in response to an essay by Peter Campbell, ‘At the door’, in the issue of 19 June. He had been under the impression (and it now appears that Number Ten had the same delusion) that the numbers were brass ones. I offer my thanks to correspondents who have encouraged the making of this post and supplied information for it.<br /><br />Just before this post was made I wrote a letter to 10 Downing Street with some brief factual queries. This, eventually, has been the response.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9XgHMINoU_T0WM-HWYG6UkU9LGyva3jyQ-BMHyPi8GBH6n7lfH96bznC1Dzu_n3lcYzzn5Y44JEJQFGOkd4Ovw8taeJCceK44PBOp0y64UYFFUHEJ7a7vOjqX7MiOf3R_przj/s1600/Downing+Street+2010-12-14.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 277px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5551939826469725890" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9XgHMINoU_T0WM-HWYG6UkU9LGyva3jyQ-BMHyPi8GBH6n7lfH96bznC1Dzu_n3lcYzzn5Y44JEJQFGOkd4Ovw8taeJCceK44PBOp0y64UYFFUHEJ7a7vOjqX7MiOf3R_przj/s400/Downing+Street+2010-12-14.jpg" /></a><br /><br />It gives some information regarding some dates that by this time I had been able to find, although it helpfully adds the date of 2008 for the last repainting. But it provides a version of the story that I have already cited – that the number 0 is oblique because it continues the tradition of one that ‘slipped’ – that is more circumstantial and even less plausible: not only is it unlikely that George Downing placed numerals on the doors of his buildings of the late 17th century, long before houses in London streets were numbered, but the visual evidence shown above indicates that the axis of the earlier numerals of which we have images was vertical, and that the ‘skewed angle’ of the 0 dates from the use of the ‘Trajan’ model in 1964 (a slight inclination having just possibly been initiated in the 1930s). In other words it must be said that the story bears all the marks of a recent fabrication. It will be noticed that Mr Smith offers no source for it at all, printed or documentary, and gives no date. I wrote back briefly on 20 December 2010, asking for a source for the story about the ‘slipped’ numeral, and for the names of the Heritage advisors. Perhaps not surprisingly there was no reply. Indeed it seems doubtful whether Mr Smith even exists: as has been widely reported, Downing Street acknowledges that it uses <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13364121">false names </a>in its public correspondence.<br /><br />A detailed narrative of the troubled work at Downing Street in 1960–3 was given by Nicholas Taylor in <em>The Architect and Building News,</em> 25 December 1963, pp. 1031–6, a reference that is cited in the biographical study of Raymond Erith by Lucy Archer, his daughter, published in 1985. See also <em>Raymond Erith, progressive classicist 1904–1973: an exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum, 8 October – 31 December 2004 </em>(London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2004). The image of Erith with the unfinished door of number ten is shown in both works. In my remarks about Erith above I associate a remark by the prime minister Harold Macmillan (‘no gilding of cornices’), quoted from Taylor’s article, with Erith’s undoubtedly genuine taste for simplicity: it occurs to me that Macmillan, who let the so-called <a href="http://www.eustonarch.org/gallery.html">Euston Arch </a>be demolished at about this time to enable a commercial development to proceed, was probably just expressing his reluctance to spend more money on the restoration than was strictly necessary. The ‘Trajan’ alphabet of the Ministry of Works was based on L. C. Evetts, <em>Roman Lettering: a study of the letters of the inscription at the base of the Trajan Column </em>(London: Pitman, 1938). The incised inscription of about 1787, presumably the work of a professional letter-cutter, from which a detail is shown above, is on the monument to Sir John Tyrell and his wife, died 1766, by Joseph Nollekens. Having been acquired from a redundant church in Essex by the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1970, the monument is on exhibition in the museum’s sculpture gallery. Bowles’s <em>Roman and italic print alphabets</em>, which has figured more than once in this blog, is more fully, <em>Bowles’s Roman and Italic print alphabets, on a large size complete; with figures, double letters, the most useful diphthongs in the modern taste; designed chiefly for the use of painters, engravers, carvers, grave-stone cutters, masons, plumbers, and other artificers; likewise very useful for merchants and tradesmen’s clerks. Printed for and sold by the proprietor, Carington Bowles, at his Map and Print Warehouse, No. 69, St. Paul’s Church Yard, London.</em> The plates are dated 6 June 1775.<br /><br /><strong>Postscript</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkgZPbWbAJPru1lCAXtvG-y_UIL_0awoe3xrnE3mvu-7nQ4PR-I93ynxVRb-dHKp_60Bt4QLtzf-JZxQ7LZr5l5riVJ3_rdGe34By7Mmuj3K3AgOINlIbbMe0s4rSIK0g2H-B1/s1600/Education+Guardian+2+Nov+2010.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 314px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534991731728727138" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkgZPbWbAJPru1lCAXtvG-y_UIL_0awoe3xrnE3mvu-7nQ4PR-I93ynxVRb-dHKp_60Bt4QLtzf-JZxQ7LZr5l5riVJ3_rdGe34By7Mmuj3K3AgOINlIbbMe0s4rSIK0g2H-B1/s400/Education+Guardian+2+Nov+2010.jpg" /></a><br /><em></em><br /><em>Education Guardian</em>, 2 November 2010.<br /><br /><strong>Addendum</strong><br /><br />The following letter to <em>The Times</em> of 18 May 2010, that I have only just come across, was written in response to one that referred to the sloped zero on the door to Number Ten but which was frankly facetious. It suggests, although without giving references, that the Trajan zero may already have been the subject of some discussion in the 1960s.<br /><br /><strong>No 10’s Trajan zero<br /></strong>Sir, Dr Frank Foster (“Zero problem”, letter, May 14) revives an old controversy on the orientation of the zero on the door of No 10, which was extensively debated in the architectural press in the early 1960s. Raymond Erith, who supervised the reconstruction of Downing Street in 1960, was the premier classical architect of his day and was expert in all aspects of Georgian design; he would most certainly not have made such an elementary error as to misalign a Trajan zero.<br />The “Roman” serif alphabet is derived from the inscription on the base of Trajan’s Column in Rome — this was published by Sebastiano Serlio in the fourth volume of his treatise on architecture in 1545, and an analysis of this by Albert R. Ross may be seen in Letters and Lettering (1921), by Frank Chouteau Brown. Given that the Romans did not use Arabic numerals, it seems reasonable to take the Trajan alphabetic capital O as how they would have represented zero. Ross shows that the outer form of the letter is circular, but the inner ellipse is “inclined to the left” by 37 degrees, according to the construction as shown.<br />It is hypothesised that the “thicks and thins” of Trajan are derived from lettering with a “chisel-tipped” brush or quill — held diagonally in the right hand this would naturally produce the effect shown. This is how all calligraphers are taught to render the Trajan zero.<br />Erith’s positioning is confirmed as corresponding to the original by the iconic 1924 photograph of the eight- year-old Harold Wilson (pictured above) in front of the door of No 10.<br />Incidentally, there is more than one No 10 door — I believe there are two or possibly three doors, with the spares being kept in reserve in a warehouse, and switched overnight as necessary when repainting or repairs are necessary. Presumably each has a duplicate set of door furniture of lion’s head knocker and the “10”.<br />Roger J. Morgan<br />London W10<br /><br />I am not sure that I follow some of the lines of argument that are deployed here, nor is it clear whether the writer knew from personal contact exactly what kind of numerals Raymond Erith had proposed. Moreover it is based on some questionable assumptions. For example, the letters of the inscription on Trajan’s column, which represent only one model in use in Imperial Rome, have had only two periods of influence on lettering in general, once in Italy during the 16th century and once more in England during the 20th; in any case the alphabet that appears in an edition of Serlio’s architectural treatise was not at all closely related to the Trajan inscription, nor did it appear in the original Italian edition of 1545 but in much later ones published in the Low Countries and England. The ‘extensive debate’ that it refers to, concerning the numerals at Number Ten in the architectural press during the early 1960s, needs some citations in its support. Examples will be welcome.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-6344702443786220892010-09-17T06:54:00.031+00:002012-09-07T06:31:04.776+00:00The Proclamation of the Irish Republic: notes from Dublin<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgArwTsqTzJ-7mRt40dOd_xJqYQy1lHA93k3bemsA_usC0AaM6skki6RHpf1r1BiEzAOk0l3kCJJsGDMsT9Qe_aQEamljwbAPZ4FHncjPKaxsIESbqGT28ULIYhKW3Bc3_Y-WBp/s1600/1+Proclamation+at+Dublin+Castle+1100.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 390px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517772635272175618" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgArwTsqTzJ-7mRt40dOd_xJqYQy1lHA93k3bemsA_usC0AaM6skki6RHpf1r1BiEzAOk0l3kCJJsGDMsT9Qe_aQEamljwbAPZ4FHncjPKaxsIESbqGT28ULIYhKW3Bc3_Y-WBp/s400/1+Proclamation+at+Dublin+Castle+1100.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The image above shows a full-size facsimile of the original Proclamation (made from a scan of the copy at the Providence Public Library, Rhode Island, USA) propped against the stonework of one of the northern gateways to the yard of Dublin Castle, which was the centre of political administration in Ireland for many hundreds of years. It was made during ‘The Word’, the typographical conference of ATypI, which took place there in September 2010. Here below, as a reminder of things past, is a photograph posted online by the National Archives, Dublin, taken just the other side of the same gate on a cold, damp, misty day early in the 20th century.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzyFpCfTFQWt5pE96TzfqU-GI3IhqlV1eBDPU6zBYc32AYpRY8cxBgGDXMRA_D9EF8ep95h3PC7yqOTWhG1-dDbIeud4q08m9cCyWQ3KPqINAfFaQ0hHDYDecjjurZ-Yc9yjb/s1600/2_DublinCastleGuardNA06-028.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 306px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517772810287465202" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzyFpCfTFQWt5pE96TzfqU-GI3IhqlV1eBDPU6zBYc32AYpRY8cxBgGDXMRA_D9EF8ep95h3PC7yqOTWhG1-dDbIeud4q08m9cCyWQ3KPqINAfFaQ0hHDYDecjjurZ-Yc9yjb/s400/2_DublinCastleGuardNA06-028.jpg" /></a><br /><br />My visit to Dublin, where I made a contribution on the Proclamation to ATypI, enabled me to see an example of the original document at Trinity College, which was my very first sight of it, and also at the National Library, together with many different versions of it of varying date and quality. During my visit to the National Library a brief radio interview was made for RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) by Luke Clancy. It can be heard and downloaded as a <a href="http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2010/pc/pod-v-10081006m24sculturefile.mp3">podcast</a>.<br /><br />Most of what I know about the Proclamation can be read in my original post, nominally made in January 2010 but which is in fact a text that ever since has been revised, expanded and corrected. Since it is already far too long for comfortable reading in its blog form, I thought it might be useful to make a few additional notes after my visit to Dublin and to post them here.<br /><br />The sight of the original document added to my respect for the abilities of the men who made it, during Sunday the 23rd of April 1916, under circumstances of great stress. There can have been no real opportunities for proofing the text except by reading it ‘in the metal’, but it is in printer’s language a very clean piece of setting, with no errors save for the inversion of a single letter ‘e’ in the first line of the last paragraph, the omission of a space between ‘worthy’ and ‘of’ in the last line but one, and of course for the use of letters from a different fount, mostly letter ‘e’, in place of the sorts that had run out in the case. As for the machining of a text that almost fills the sheet, in two successive impressions on a worn out machine, using some types that were barely printable, it is also something of a triumph of skill and ingenuity over the materials that were to hand.<br /><br />My visit did little to resolve the chief mystery relating to images of the Proclamation, namely the origin of what I called in my first blog ‘the Gill Sans version’, in which the battered wood letter of the line ‘IRISH REPUBLIC’ is replaced by one in Gill Sans Extra Bold, a typeface first made by the Monotype Corporation in England in 1931. This is the version that is now widespread on the Web, and it appears on countless artefacts made in all good faith for sale to collectors.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZqRH28ubZk3K3yNbea_4BBv_PpImE_D5IRTgYqL7MaBiMzL4VymuVCo3mYVM0YROn8DXl7r7qqsWZTe77OORtlpMGSlJC6BHx9DHh8SanqhIepJlf0Y1mDSx0Vc-_nyd0FNZE/s1600/3+Proclamation+-+GEB+-+Malins+-+Yeats+-+1965+-+NLI+-+1100.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 260px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517773223581640050" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZqRH28ubZk3K3yNbea_4BBv_PpImE_D5IRTgYqL7MaBiMzL4VymuVCo3mYVM0YROn8DXl7r7qqsWZTe77OORtlpMGSlJC6BHx9DHh8SanqhIepJlf0Y1mDSx0Vc-_nyd0FNZE/s400/3+Proclamation+-+GEB+-+Malins+-+Yeats+-+1965+-+NLI+-+1100.jpg" /></a><br /><br />However, it does look as if Edward Malins, having given me a copy of his lecture, <em>Yeats and the Easter Rising</em>, printed in Dublin at the Dolmen Press of Liam Miller in 1965, may have provided me with what is still its earliest known use in print. Thanks are expressed in it to ‘the Department of External Affairs and the National Library of Ireland’ for supplying images, but there is no indication which of them come from which source. It was all too easy to assume from this wording that the photograph of the Proclamation must have been from the National Library in Dublin. But that does not seem to have been the case: no copy of this version can be traced there. However there is one, as I noted in the previous post, at University College, Dublin. It is half the size of the original Proclamation. No date has been recorded for its acquisition, but it looks fresh and new and it appears to be printed by offset lithography. The version of the Proclamation that it reproduces (apart from that line in Gill Sans Extra Bold) is one that is well retouched, with the damage to R in IRISH eliminated, the improvised E in THE redrawn, and the damage at the end of the thick and thin rule below the top line repaired. It is not unlike, though not wholly identical with, the half-scale version that is placed online by the University of Kansas and shown in the previous post.<br /><br />So who made it, and why and when? It has been suggested to me that it is not impossible that Liam Miller himself, a great admirer of Eric Gill, might have had some involvement in its production. This may seem on the face of it to be one of the wilder guesses – but who knows? Any information, however sketchy, will be gratefully received.<br /><br />The collection in the National Library offered a possible clue to an answer to another of the current puzzles, namely the origin of the words THE PROCLAMATION OF, set in an extended version of the typeface Cheltenham, which are sometimes placed at the head of the Gill Sans version, and which do not appear in the original Proclamation. At the National Library there is a sheet in landscape orientation in which a reduced image of the Proclamation appears on the left (a neatly retouched version, like the one in Kansas). On the right is a long text set wholly in sanserif capitals, denouncing the partition that arose from the ‘truce’ with England, and urging the initiation of a fight to overturn it. It is ‘signed on behalf of the Republican Government and the Army Council of Oglaigh na h-Eireann (Irish Republican Army)’. There are six signatures, the first of which is that of Stephen Hayes, a member of the Army Council of the IRA in 1939 when it declared war on the British Government, and for a time its chief of staff. A date for the document of about 1940 seems possible, and something about its layout suggests an origin in the USA. Across the top of the sheet, centred over both the parts, are the words THE PROCLAMATION OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC, set in the same style of Cheltenham that appears in the truncated version of the phrase that is added to the ‘Gill Sans’ images. The phrase in Irish that begins the Proclamation, POBLACHT NA H EIREANN (more correctly ‘Poblacht na h-Éireann’) means ‘Irish Republic’, so there is some slight justification for the adding of these three words to images of the Proclamation. This version (below), using the same typeface, is shown, inexplicably, as an image of the heading to the genuine Proclamation in the most recent reprint (1999) of John O’Connor’s little book, <em>The 1916 proclamation</em>. This version of the Proclamation is also shown online by Wikisource.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpbDkbZjXwxD8JA-Ab_Uc76jjQ8Rosrpd9-Lhr0J70jix3MaWehn5QbADcvVNNvqr_0Jz2Ds8cHDbcdKeXTAktehPWLKBsVCfmSkVZUqhs07LNkenN2UQYxRfA1gdsgnHTjGm8/s1600/4+Proclamation+-+GEB+head+-+O%27Connor+-+950.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 185px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517773429273909282" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpbDkbZjXwxD8JA-Ab_Uc76jjQ8Rosrpd9-Lhr0J70jix3MaWehn5QbADcvVNNvqr_0Jz2Ds8cHDbcdKeXTAktehPWLKBsVCfmSkVZUqhs07LNkenN2UQYxRfA1gdsgnHTjGm8/s400/4+Proclamation+-+GEB+head+-+O%27Connor+-+950.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Here is a note of the chief versions of the image of the Proclamation that are currently in circulation.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijQTrkCa3q1nlLkgAEYWeYvqOuw5jKVfT-N-_xY-kY_OpuBzwUVqM8JmiFn7iLVquRGp9TXsqTt8VOY3wivFPpWu9zt31s0YjE1XxbQBfmBbT0T4T_ZAuhK0tMCX0Cc65pAUQ6/s1600/5+Proclamation+-+Providence+PL+a+sm+-+tr+bw+-+950.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 269px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517833607861788002" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijQTrkCa3q1nlLkgAEYWeYvqOuw5jKVfT-N-_xY-kY_OpuBzwUVqM8JmiFn7iLVquRGp9TXsqTt8VOY3wivFPpWu9zt31s0YjE1XxbQBfmBbT0T4T_ZAuhK0tMCX0Cc65pAUQ6/s400/5+Proclamation+-+Providence+PL+a+sm+-+tr+bw+-+950.jpg" /></a><br /><br />First of all are the reproductions of the original, made from one of the 12 copies that are in publicly accessible institutions and identified, so that it is clear which of them has been used. I gave a summary list of these in my earlier posting, and I am working on a more detailed and revised census of copies to which I shall be glad to receive additions. The monograph by Charles Townsend, <em>Easter 1916: the Irish rebellion </em>(London: Allen Lane, 2005) includes a good reproduction, properly acknowledged, of one of the copies in the National Museum of Ireland. A slightly reduced facsimile of the copy at the General Post Office is included in <em>The 1916 proclamation: a brief history and wall poster, </em>with a text by Stephen Ferguson, available from the museum within the Post Office in O’Connell Street. The copy at the National Library can be seen in its post on <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/4510216993">Flickr</a>. The image above is from the example at Providence Public Library.<br /><br />It should be added that there are many anonymous reproductions of the original of which the origin is not given, some of which are full-scale (the original is 30 by 20 inches) and some are on a smaller scale, generally 50 per cent linear (15 by 10 inches). These are mostly simple unscreened black and white images which exaggerate the visible faults of impression and inking of the original.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-iQGHr1x8hio0wYr6Bv9gCpa_-6sp_gRjVSgQR4vTfDbGcBAdJYqpetwSZBWTB9lbZUKIQFoVefOzDEltl8bnxwjfC6sdRFZimfLejiJpMVn45DOqxJyH2zUu82EEYSs5lK5p/s1600/6+SinnFein+-+ProvPL+-+scan+of+20-05-2010+-+working+copy+b.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 247px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517773967177176578" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-iQGHr1x8hio0wYr6Bv9gCpa_-6sp_gRjVSgQR4vTfDbGcBAdJYqpetwSZBWTB9lbZUKIQFoVefOzDEltl8bnxwjfC6sdRFZimfLejiJpMVn45DOqxJyH2zUu82EEYSs5lK5p/s400/6+SinnFein+-+ProvPL+-+scan+of+20-05-2010+-+working+copy+b.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The second, above, is the version that appears to be the origin of the image offered online by Wikipedia. It is the ‘line block’ printed in the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em>, a compilation from the texts of its own printed reports by the <em>Irish Times</em>, and apparently first published in August 1916. This is probably the first image ever to have been printed. It was small, and it was made from a photograph the quality of which was evidently not really adequate for reproduction, and was extensively and roughly retouched. There is a characteristic droop to the top lines, perhaps the result of distortion from the camera lens. This version has been widely used in print, and it is also frequently seen on the Web. As I have noted, it has received some official endorsement by being placed on the web site of the Taoiseach, though its appearance there seems slightly compressed in its proportions.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw_UoT_0pmG7rzb3a7HsMNjBaOCacKADIKpoR_jxI2OYDW2ZwoA8mWcicx6tWH2HLQPC0QLAs1K92gC_COXgqePOzWA83v5TESxZs6Ugqoavs92DU0Q2QAQGjBhcdh8lOhxMDk/s1600/7+Taoiseach+page.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 385px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517774228564296018" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw_UoT_0pmG7rzb3a7HsMNjBaOCacKADIKpoR_jxI2OYDW2ZwoA8mWcicx6tWH2HLQPC0QLAs1K92gC_COXgqePOzWA83v5TESxZs6Ugqoavs92DU0Q2QAQGjBhcdh8lOhxMDk/s400/7+Taoiseach+page.jpg" /></a><br /><br />There are also more carefully retouched examples, of which the 'Kansas' (see the earlier post) is one of the better; but these are open to the same objection: the retouching of selected parts, however skilfully, has produced a false image of the original.<br /><br />Thirdly, there is the ‘Gill Sans’ version, and its variant with the first line reading ‘THE PROCLAMATION OF’. Although its origin is so mysterious and its degree of authenticity wholly inadequate, this appears to be the version that is currently most widely seen on the Web, and on artefacts produced for sale, from T-shirts to framed facsimiles.<br /><br />I need hardly say that the first of these options is the only one that seems to me worth adopting. The second image in its most common form is not only inferior in quality, with a poor rendering of the type of the text, but certain details of the heading, like the damaged R in IRISH and the improvised E below it, are crudely redrawn, so that it does not give a faithful picture of the document, and the same basic objection applies to the more carefully retouched examples. Using the third version, with its anachronistic substitution of one line in a type that did not exist in 1916 and the occasional addition of a first line that is not in the original, seems to me simply wrong. It would be helpful if an image of one of the better copies of the original, in a variety of file sizes, were more widely available.<br /><br />‘Iconic’ is a much abused term, but it applies in a real sense to the ‘image of the Proclamation’, a term that I borrowed inadvertently for my first post from the title of an excellent essay of 2001 by Linda King. As she pointed out, its form can be widely recognized independently of the text that it carries, and it is thus one of the most enduring symbols of the Irish Republic.<br /><br />I should like to express my thanks to those who helped me in Dublin, especially to Honora Faul of the National Library of Ireland and Charles Benson at Trinity College. And my thanks once again to Providence Public Library for the scan of their copy of the Proclamation.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-65986278513524636932010-03-23T09:11:00.062+00:002012-01-14T08:21:29.860+00:00Lettres à jour: public stencil lettering in France<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXSvsJ3LZMHh_MMlJO-Gk195HBcJa95icEuqEpcBRggD0oFJbI4DgRCvIAVwdZM1b-4tbPsw9Azu_Slj-IDxcbdYNP2g-QC7TXxWDLVDupCyW1DgeROrPjseQFFX_6iAUsxM9g/s1600-h/80mm+3+a+-+850.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 378px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451759431363576146" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXSvsJ3LZMHh_MMlJO-Gk195HBcJa95icEuqEpcBRggD0oFJbI4DgRCvIAVwdZM1b-4tbPsw9Azu_Slj-IDxcbdYNP2g-QC7TXxWDLVDupCyW1DgeROrPjseQFFX_6iAUsxM9g/s400/80mm+3+a+-+850.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><em>Last edited 13 September 2010</em><br /><br /><div>Almost since my first visit to France I have been delighted by the look of the improvised public notices that are made with stencils, pochoirs, or (to use a more old-fashioned term) <em>lettres à jour </em>– letters pierced in metal that let the daylight show through them. Quite often the setting-out is irregular, even chaotic, but in France the roman letters are beautiful and formal. At their best, set out manually, one by one, they make notices that have authority but also a living quality.<br /></div><div>Stencils were used in the 17th and 18th centuries in France and Germany to make the texts of big liturgical books. They were also used for marking playing cards. The first description of how the stencils themselves were made was written in the 1690s for the ‘Description des Arts et Métiers’ – the account of all trades that was prepared by a little group of specialists for the Academy of Sciences in Paris but most of which was not published at the time, leaving Diderot to carry out the idea in his <em>Encyclopédie</em>. In the 18th century you could buy your own alphabets, in plain but elegant roman letters or elaborate fancy script, or get labels or visiting cards cut to order. Some that Benjamin Franklin bought from a supplier called Bery in Paris are among his surviving possessions in Philadelphia:<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihWFKbPPmb3umfTsuXTmo82q2T1KRdq_7lfK5Y5gIUSW7WOZqobKfPG21m4Oq77KQG9es5Bc36yrEMUXrNeorSZhTcIt-OTvonJMmPfex8qEKshbGNUqh7if-kfpiiV6BjhiCC/s1600-h/B%C3%A9ry+b+-+EK.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 330px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451759635781334498" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihWFKbPPmb3umfTsuXTmo82q2T1KRdq_7lfK5Y5gIUSW7WOZqobKfPG21m4Oq77KQG9es5Bc36yrEMUXrNeorSZhTcIt-OTvonJMmPfex8qEKshbGNUqh7if-kfpiiV6BjhiCC/s400/B%C3%A9ry+b+-+EK.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>In fact owning a small-scale personal stencil was not uncommon at the time. Here is an English example in a book of the late 18th century.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoj3bdH8QTHe04phq_jkpfLWaw0kLRDGk-VCfwHrSIjCSU3i6sh-eeNT8qqkG2qhB2M2aDmvdH-N1MIOJkzuKKRGTo1Z5yr-lIu8cyyF4AV4kjrKLtIYXnwy-zbbJGldnyXbiS/s1600-h/Thistlethwayte+4.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 372px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451760183404226578" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoj3bdH8QTHe04phq_jkpfLWaw0kLRDGk-VCfwHrSIjCSU3i6sh-eeNT8qqkG2qhB2M2aDmvdH-N1MIOJkzuKKRGTo1Z5yr-lIu8cyyF4AV4kjrKLtIYXnwy-zbbJGldnyXbiS/s400/Thistlethwayte+4.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>In the 19th century the French stencils took on the look of the bold ‘Didot’ capitals, which became ubiquitous in architectural lettering in France (the example below was in Autun, many decades ago), and they have retained that style.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisJ_op8TKy_1KIz7u9Ybmu5lANcUfrotQ2p1QXD9d9PaQr94L3PqeLyHKuCO3a9WA_zlyki8SnGanGkapVjlMKOXNfHcXMAPAdDyk3D9gnxt8jyh-ByMAd-pZZPI45TS0xutlb/s1600-h/Autun+-+Pharmacie+du+Progr%C3%A8s+1975+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 216px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451798660478267442" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisJ_op8TKy_1KIz7u9Ybmu5lANcUfrotQ2p1QXD9d9PaQr94L3PqeLyHKuCO3a9WA_zlyki8SnGanGkapVjlMKOXNfHcXMAPAdDyk3D9gnxt8jyh-ByMAd-pZZPI45TS0xutlb/s400/Autun+-+Pharmacie+du+Progr%C3%A8s+1975+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>Among the first images of the familiar stencils that are still sold in France must be this one that appears among the sketches that accompany the manuscript, written in about 1836, of Stendhal’s semi-autobiographical novel <em>La vie de Henry Brulard</em>, recalling the passionate and irrational desire he felt in his adolescence for buying certain objects set out for sale in the street market in Grenoble. In this case, they were ‘portable letters cut through a thin plate of brass the size of a playing card’.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmj0X7SmFUeeUcUd478CiOd1Pas2OEJ42qrAQvjUkVS05qY7ydVs4s9l9JaHCIpPEx04dg9haYoODse_PQ32U-cEhP7I-j_jCE2THygxFiXcXUH0eG9eH4QEUcRBlKcLetfEzK/s1600-h/Stendhal+2+b.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 310px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451760632582872626" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmj0X7SmFUeeUcUd478CiOd1Pas2OEJ42qrAQvjUkVS05qY7ydVs4s9l9JaHCIpPEx04dg9haYoODse_PQ32U-cEhP7I-j_jCE2THygxFiXcXUH0eG9eH4QEUcRBlKcLetfEzK/s400/Stendhal+2+b.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>Georges Braque used the common stencil as a part of the surrounding scene in his painting <em>Le Portugais </em>(1911) to simulate the effect of posters in a Parisian café, and the idea of using these ‘everyday letters’ caught on. They are in the paintings of Fernand Léger. In the 1920s El Lissitsky and Man Ray incorporated French stencil letters into their designs and photograms. Le Corbusier used them to mark his architectural drawings. The US designer Paul Rand bought a set in Paris and took them home with him to use in his own designs for book and magazine covers.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8iTH65c2yxq9d_Uaojr3EyHUsb9ocHBERQ6t9BYel49del9Q5kflsEqWN6x9a5w7Q8RaJvS6p1Z7hagRxyYNF4xpRAYpYZ209p6iDhgEUibARx4iWllLgeQGi07g70HSkhptm/s1600-h/TNP+-+Chaillot+4.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 292px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451761018018518946" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8iTH65c2yxq9d_Uaojr3EyHUsb9ocHBERQ6t9BYel49del9Q5kflsEqWN6x9a5w7Q8RaJvS6p1Z7hagRxyYNF4xpRAYpYZ209p6iDhgEUibARx4iWllLgeQGi07g70HSkhptm/s400/TNP+-+Chaillot+4.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>One of my favourite examples of the idea of the stencil and its associations is Marcel Jacno’s logo and lettering for the Théâtre National Populaire of Jean Vilar in the 1950s, where the informality of the stencil letter, which he called <em>Chaillot </em>after the Palais de Chaillot in Paris where the company had its base, stood for the popular quality of the company, where you could pay a few francs to see rising stars like Gérard Philipe and Maria Casarès in <em>Le Cid.</em> I have never discovered exactly how the NT logo of the British National Theatre came to be such a close visual echo of Jacno’s TNP. A half-conscious memory?<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR0UikSn2KyfSb6H18M4DG2bhL9ons1xRQqo0uLRdMUKLChyJd4wOAPW9XFDswotzWBVEd4K_-4bNxCvyJ_6aL-l-3gPHV9svCHqjj03lgSeLFZkWWEQnhSfFmuCNk5tykHzaH/s1600-h/TNP+-+Chaillot+3+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 280px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451761349615203186" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR0UikSn2KyfSb6H18M4DG2bhL9ons1xRQqo0uLRdMUKLChyJd4wOAPW9XFDswotzWBVEd4K_-4bNxCvyJ_6aL-l-3gPHV9svCHqjj03lgSeLFZkWWEQnhSfFmuCNk5tykHzaH/s400/TNP+-+Chaillot+3+a.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>I bought sets of stencils myself in Paris and used them to mark all kinds of things – folders of current work, and the numbers on new mobile shelving that was being installed in the St Bride Library, where they still survive.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4q_khfiy_aZGV_lhso0MjN-nZWC4XJ5Dqg77Q_U_eOT7SGu7zbxWiEhdquH_s0_bLOKB7cIWAb1Tns_eu_8XNupw985DeB7euMO9aMvBKE8Z_KxuZCyQSqBYZ9pXpYx2XLier/s1600-h/StB+stencils+on+stacks+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 298px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451761662554778082" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4q_khfiy_aZGV_lhso0MjN-nZWC4XJ5Dqg77Q_U_eOT7SGu7zbxWiEhdquH_s0_bLOKB7cIWAb1Tns_eu_8XNupw985DeB7euMO9aMvBKE8Z_KxuZCyQSqBYZ9pXpYx2XLier/s400/StB+stencils+on+stacks+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>When the makers of ‘Rapitype’, a rival to Letraset’s rub-down lettering, launched their product in about 1970 and were seeking new designs, I offered my stencils. They were marketed under the original name of ‘French Stencil’, and were perhaps the first font of this kind to be made.<br /></div><div>Letraset did not get the message for another decade. When Letraset France launched an almost identical font under the name of ‘Charrette’ (the French word for a rustic two-wheeled cart, which the English company misspelled ‘Charette’), it got into trouble with the Fondation Le Corbusier for having used letters that they piously believed to have been designed by the great man for his own exclusive use. So the Letraset catalogues obediently and absurdly marked them ‘© Le Corbusier’.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzHLY1iKUxQcUbmEpnvGBcm_Bv7oFVIAmCM8MIIjzNdT57B6LStwhALaqXJ7Fe8pRzI7c323rFHj0bxxueKePVheTKOnyMcTljImtK_V9SVnl83GrIKWpPJZ2E79-azM7Fl6RD/s1600-h/Charette+3.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 284px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451762088915637874" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzHLY1iKUxQcUbmEpnvGBcm_Bv7oFVIAmCM8MIIjzNdT57B6LStwhALaqXJ7Fe8pRzI7c323rFHj0bxxueKePVheTKOnyMcTljImtK_V9SVnl83GrIKWpPJZ2E79-azM7Fl6RD/s400/Charette+3.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>In fact the leading maker of these traditional stencils was known as ‘T & C’. That was all they ever put on the label. But the American designer Dave Siegel – who had plans to make his own stencil type – told me more:<br /></div><div>“Somewhere around 1992, I went to Paris and found the company that makes these stencils they use everywhere. The company is called Thevenon, which at the time was located on rue Montmorency in Paris’s 4th arrondissement. There I met Madame Thevenon, the daughter of the man who started the company. she was in her seventies, yet she still ran the company every day. I learned a lot from her, and I’ll summarize here. The stencils are produced somewhere in the center of France. In the early 1900s, there were two companies producing stencils – mostly for signage. Both these companies also made many other stamped and cut metal products, and they also made the enameled signs you see everywhere in France for denoting the numbers of the street addresses on all the houses and buildings. It was a friendly competition, and the two companies’ products were quite similar. The cool thing about these stencils was that they were designed differently at every size, so you could watch the transformation in design from a few millimeters to 1 meter (their largest size). Sometime in the fifties, the two companies merged to become Thevenon. The other company’s name was dropped.”<br /></div><div>Thévenon & Cie are very much still in business as <a href="http://www.thevenonsa.com/">Établissements Thévenon</a> at Gergy, a little town on the River Saône in Burgundy not far from places with resonant names like Mâcon and Cluny. The company makes all kinds of things in metal, like tokens and signs, and also the traditional stencils. I don’t know if they still make those metre-high ones, but I hope so. Stencils are still shown on the web site. If you want to buy them off the shelf, try the Bazaar de l’Hôtel de Ville (BHV) in Paris, or traditional ironmongers in French provincial towns where they still survive.<br /></div><div>The trouble with the look of texts made with fonts based on stencils is that they lack the irregular spontaneity which is one of the charms of the medium. I know, having made one myself. Just van Rossum tried to get over this with his ‘badly-inked’ stencil type <em>Flightcase </em>(1992) but unless you can make a kind of self-degrading stencil font on the model of <em>Beowulf</em> (worth trying perhaps), it does not compete with the real thing. So this is essentially an assembly of some examples that I have found in use, and that I have thought good enough to be worth sharing.<br /></div><div>How long will these stencils go on being used? When the line opened the location of the numbered Eurostar carriages was marked by big stencilled figures on the platform at the Gare du Nord, but they are no longer there. However there are some encouraging examples with which to conclude my piece – from the boats on the pond in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2n-0vWOIbMlHiGrEdjllHE2Mr3pZIsTPrKnd7DF8dODnSCGRX2QGIcj1MsCx4r16Ic137RHW1JvMN17ARTjNYpunhPW7L0dNsYNqDCg0DXl1ZV_mbel8rpLZ6pBRzd3qYtS71/s1600-h/Paris+-+boats+0508+-+3+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 339px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451762990435199426" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2n-0vWOIbMlHiGrEdjllHE2Mr3pZIsTPrKnd7DF8dODnSCGRX2QGIcj1MsCx4r16Ic137RHW1JvMN17ARTjNYpunhPW7L0dNsYNqDCg0DXl1ZV_mbel8rpLZ6pBRzd3qYtS71/s400/Paris+-+boats+0508+-+3+a.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>to the parking instructions for airplanes at the high-tech environment of Satolas airport, now <em>l’aéroport Lyon Saint Exupéry</em><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJpt2sl3rUVus-OAneIyVwfdvVG16S2VMh-ugKVd68eLNLRoraXNOmTCl3WuTeRu_dn-4zoud0aqs6DbqWKy-w3SQX9E5OcBOjjo3XBh_U2iO6XFSBa8uyMaXZw7m-b25qKwT/s1600-h/Satolas3+bb.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 362px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451763328771214850" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJpt2sl3rUVus-OAneIyVwfdvVG16S2VMh-ugKVd68eLNLRoraXNOmTCl3WuTeRu_dn-4zoud0aqs6DbqWKy-w3SQX9E5OcBOjjo3XBh_U2iO6XFSBa8uyMaXZw7m-b25qKwT/s400/Satolas3+bb.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>and the <em>Site François Mitterand</em> of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in the district in eastern Paris known as Tolbiac.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_QDxWp8ysXdrCYzhb0rHansPkTGg12jm0d6eOHTj_kGkyd_6hv-rmp1TIaEjlZyICtov4PawYZrM7a11DcfZWv28x7NhHXZM7uiQFMyNKt9c8-eHFubxBU7ulBinCd5FHgj9/s1600-h/Tolbiac+-+hydrant+5.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 366px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451763899306492178" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_QDxWp8ysXdrCYzhb0rHansPkTGg12jm0d6eOHTj_kGkyd_6hv-rmp1TIaEjlZyICtov4PawYZrM7a11DcfZWv28x7NhHXZM7uiQFMyNKt9c8-eHFubxBU7ulBinCd5FHgj9/s400/Tolbiac+-+hydrant+5.jpg" /></a><br /><br /></div><div><strong>Note</strong><br /><br />Like my note on Gill’s letter R, this brief piece is another example of self-publishing. It is a slightly edited version of the summary of my text that I prepared for the conference on ‘Temporary Type’ held at the St Bride Library in 2005. In fact the text is still on the library’s web site, but for some reason the selected images that I supplied with it were never added. Since it was written with the images in mind and does not make much sense without them I thought I would show some with this reissue of the text and add a few more. Alas, the model sailing boats, identified with stencilled letters on their sails, seem now to have vanished from the pool in the Jardin du Luxembourg, a reminder that we must enjoy examples that remain while they are still to be seen. (For my talk I had contrived a version of the image above, showing yacht GB triumphing over the combined forces of F and E, since this was 2005, and the conference was held in the week before the bicentenary of Trafalgar.) <em>Editorial note: some of the yachts were back by the summer of 2010.</em><br /></div><div>Two correspondents have reminded me that, as one of them had once told me, <em>Charrette </em>(meaning a simple horse-drawn cart), the name of Letraset’s font, was ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so. In studios it had acquired the additional informal sense of a ‘rush-job’, or as the excellent <em>Robert de Poche</em> puts it, ‘période de travail intensif’. I am also told that, in an odd twist, Letraset’s name <em>Charrette </em>was borrowed in the USA for the marketing of real metal stencils, which were used in their offices by architects, in homage to Corb.<br /></div><div>The choice of this subject was encouraged, as I indicate, by my own pleasure in the form of stencil that pleases me most and of which the future survival in practical use may be precarious. I should add that Eric Kindel, my teaching colleague at Reading, has taken broader historical research in this field forward in a most professional manner. He has acquired a formidable collection of examples of stencils of all kinds, many of the 19th century and earlier from Europe and the United States. He also set up a practical project, in collaboration with the designer Fred Smeijers, in order to recreate the method of making stencils for producing the text of liturgical books that was first described as part of the Description des Arts et Métiers by Gilles Filleau des Billettes. His overview of the making and use of stencils is ‘Recollecting stencil letters’, <em>Typography papers</em>, 5 (2003), pp. 65–101, and his most recent contribution to the literature, an account of the 17th-century use by Christiaan Huygens of stencils as a means of publishing scientific texts, appears in the <em>Journal of the Printing Historical Society</em>, new series 14 (2009). Here, by way of conclusion, are a couple of examples of stencilling from the papers in the Archives nationales, Paris, of Sébastien Truchet, a fellow-member with Des Billettes of the ‘Commission Bignon’, mathematician, hydraulic engineer, and inventor of standard bodies for printing types.<br /></div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXA5gTad_nayhvsK3Bm1g58yIUBAsLACsLJBs_qDGVSmHab2obXNnvA8g99GocaARjOXDj1XveXbIXf8ktD1rKpexi-UwO37cIxdtIknTqsDt17qWupKep3x4aUTcx1qOqblbb/s1600-h/Truchet+stencils+1+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 232px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451764318662478706" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXA5gTad_nayhvsK3Bm1g58yIUBAsLACsLJBs_qDGVSmHab2obXNnvA8g99GocaARjOXDj1XveXbIXf8ktD1rKpexi-UwO37cIxdtIknTqsDt17qWupKep3x4aUTcx1qOqblbb/s400/Truchet+stencils+1+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl7yp-5IgRrwov9_Nhbxwiq69ZLfo2fWyyIGnyeO59zB1avzJYi6Ewc8D8asimgpnvfRf6-rpYjWcS_uqr6Oe8f-Y17JJ2ad3st4OMSTiB6uPK5LbRlUW1VKrLYcJiafQGAO52/s1600-h/Truchet+playing+card+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 264px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451764538065295410" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl7yp-5IgRrwov9_Nhbxwiq69ZLfo2fWyyIGnyeO59zB1avzJYi6Ewc8D8asimgpnvfRf6-rpYjWcS_uqr6Oe8f-Y17JJ2ad3st4OMSTiB6uPK5LbRlUW1VKrLYcJiafQGAO52/s400/Truchet+playing+card+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><br />My thanks to Eric Kindel for the image of the Bery stencil, and to Dave Siegel for his narrative relating to Thévenon.</div><br /><br /><strong>Some more images</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcptEbC52BftrACqD9NyJXqvQLyBkX0g2MCY2Jv0a0rsnaY4rMFda01HRnPYQATyHorsdApp_HBFpA6AiRYmV3L-flenw9wInoCo1UCTLodNhFVWLGX2JsND0kvbakhhD-90Kn/s1600-h/Descente+interdite+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 316px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451790682274727746" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcptEbC52BftrACqD9NyJXqvQLyBkX0g2MCY2Jv0a0rsnaY4rMFda01HRnPYQATyHorsdApp_HBFpA6AiRYmV3L-flenw9wInoCo1UCTLodNhFVWLGX2JsND0kvbakhhD-90Kn/s400/Descente+interdite+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1WrPkGVW14kUD1xJBBx3KOuGYRvf6Gp4yyII0-GoMPtksAB_41PznCG_aSyexyy4TPetuC5JRZmhWk8663lfr9WPdyqBSO99t5S65PU79sPONyRrWHOuPAgYggVigB2C6k2ai/s1600-h/D%C3%A9fense+d%27entrer+b.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 267px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451791914815738642" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1WrPkGVW14kUD1xJBBx3KOuGYRvf6Gp4yyII0-GoMPtksAB_41PznCG_aSyexyy4TPetuC5JRZmhWk8663lfr9WPdyqBSO99t5S65PU79sPONyRrWHOuPAgYggVigB2C6k2ai/s400/D%C3%A9fense+d%27entrer+b.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIog2MCG1xBVkriU64vPlD9st8jQ_JMYMR1mHCGKMJahkd8JZhLXS9Kg-8j3nrFMKjA2V0rP522ywf3SKpk-Jvjl4eu4bdTzPgmndLhLCKL-XgusPLZkB2xl6Yq0aT_mmWJpkm/s1600-h/Licence+plate,+Paris,+1972.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 293px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451790596824650834" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIog2MCG1xBVkriU64vPlD9st8jQ_JMYMR1mHCGKMJahkd8JZhLXS9Kg-8j3nrFMKjA2V0rP522ywf3SKpk-Jvjl4eu4bdTzPgmndLhLCKL-XgusPLZkB2xl6Yq0aT_mmWJpkm/s400/Licence+plate,+Paris,+1972.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmO8lwv2ucE657b3BiPiExizbqOGLOlV8DO6PbI3GgV9xeaO_kaHB1a0e0lOqi84zw1t9sd4_6y95NH-lZqgPGFyUrAEq3SN1NsCoOW37oD7djbzGn0BstC6mTX4SGAzkl0jqn/s1600-h/Etretat+-+boat+Avenir+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 265px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451790360829816754" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmO8lwv2ucE657b3BiPiExizbqOGLOlV8DO6PbI3GgV9xeaO_kaHB1a0e0lOqi84zw1t9sd4_6y95NH-lZqgPGFyUrAEq3SN1NsCoOW37oD7djbzGn0BstC6mTX4SGAzkl0jqn/s400/Etretat+-+boat+Avenir+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxkYYpu62ZQ9-X6eSmIl1KPFzay3q_tBH1gD3vV6E2LyZ1racnmzhX3pIomtHrjwJed85AFE2_HO5TC6E4aQZcXLhPdiJEbrKdYfTegLWJ75Yi2FjbMknQaVWulyH9XqllUt4d/s1600-h/Riberac+-+chichis+3+aa.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 90px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451791444192667890" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxkYYpu62ZQ9-X6eSmIl1KPFzay3q_tBH1gD3vV6E2LyZ1racnmzhX3pIomtHrjwJed85AFE2_HO5TC6E4aQZcXLhPdiJEbrKdYfTegLWJ75Yi2FjbMknQaVWulyH9XqllUt4d/s400/Riberac+-+chichis+3+aa.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmEQvBAOtKkp6PV2sWMJoNfP1ZVX0WFHiM-fdYhGgsV5Cf_YCguvc5qCkEiJFtm9gwff-q7iXeyvwCZQkzBe-QtQKUwB7VwhfADItm3jJpGievsU7Zf3kv1uxkwAq87RfhEDAM/s1600-h/Riberac+-+chichis+2+aa.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 107px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451791377370466914" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmEQvBAOtKkp6PV2sWMJoNfP1ZVX0WFHiM-fdYhGgsV5Cf_YCguvc5qCkEiJFtm9gwff-q7iXeyvwCZQkzBe-QtQKUwB7VwhfADItm3jJpGievsU7Zf3kv1uxkwAq87RfhEDAM/s400/Riberac+-+chichis+2+aa.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5e2_31s9psStA30cPgo9R_wfmJs_UW8gHDAcuxX2t0-2rBBsH416ZtDlXdfujkBINiRRYUvJ2AL7-MoPuU34XtHIkSFeruTIehSR-Sz8_bDWEMF5JBSF61G6YEUzAWnRHD484/s1600-h/Riberac+-+chichis+1+aa.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 106px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451791319024947410" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5e2_31s9psStA30cPgo9R_wfmJs_UW8gHDAcuxX2t0-2rBBsH416ZtDlXdfujkBINiRRYUvJ2AL7-MoPuU34XtHIkSFeruTIehSR-Sz8_bDWEMF5JBSF61G6YEUzAWnRHD484/s400/Riberac+-+chichis+1+aa.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4aVFznwlO36KkV_sKuiN4B48ZoF_wJlLqmofmgDXg6eACsLNqGVMovzBBpgOP9m05cXkzLSrj6dfuBJZkqAIzoSzh3qKtVMLO0I6-VcUN4kXZG3acVtiPgVWEGUWrM3TQjyWE/s1600-h/Riberac+-+sandwiches+1.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 312px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451791162905314322" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4aVFznwlO36KkV_sKuiN4B48ZoF_wJlLqmofmgDXg6eACsLNqGVMovzBBpgOP9m05cXkzLSrj6dfuBJZkqAIzoSzh3qKtVMLO0I6-VcUN4kXZG3acVtiPgVWEGUWrM3TQjyWE/s400/Riberac+-+sandwiches+1.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSDXI7oQ8RGxCQzxjzy-ks_-hjpUQdpQ9503qRUHSwnFnzigYGM-wQDGYhyZT4jWKJQXeoGG7SrZhbw6owvGVQVPO0QEYkf2xtNjczl3mBGp_hdCBKWfTdlEnYVYN8MlL6-fal/s1600-h/Riberac+-+cordonnier+sh.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 265px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451791062196655122" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSDXI7oQ8RGxCQzxjzy-ks_-hjpUQdpQ9503qRUHSwnFnzigYGM-wQDGYhyZT4jWKJQXeoGG7SrZhbw6owvGVQVPO0QEYkf2xtNjczl3mBGp_hdCBKWfTdlEnYVYN8MlL6-fal/s400/Riberac+-+cordonnier+sh.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVJrDhJArMlqBrxsy-mkErjztga2oeHPvw1umzl_7uu47PeLvofzRz1txVlYqNTdLurjWKIjnccXHCgI0C33qcWiCY6TZmtw4_0FQ2ESc2I5vM8oEtRXHMf02hvhe_iMHsYIVF/s1600-h/Etretat+boat+1997+5+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 254px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451798574506720818" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVJrDhJArMlqBrxsy-mkErjztga2oeHPvw1umzl_7uu47PeLvofzRz1txVlYqNTdLurjWKIjnccXHCgI0C33qcWiCY6TZmtw4_0FQ2ESc2I5vM8oEtRXHMf02hvhe_iMHsYIVF/s400/Etretat+boat+1997+5+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvKobn5LwIiGnhPcTUb5wjXB2SPgT8no59wvWKcs0mNctf_7t0c2OdeUY4z7uRxGpv7OSZ1bcK-O2-wafOyPXgu9PDLDQYOu1vXtEI_AjbWYE1hzDyRK0jjV0uId1z91uN3kwf/s1600-h/Attention+chevaux+a+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 250px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451798389636333794" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvKobn5LwIiGnhPcTUb5wjXB2SPgT8no59wvWKcs0mNctf_7t0c2OdeUY4z7uRxGpv7OSZ1bcK-O2-wafOyPXgu9PDLDQYOu1vXtEI_AjbWYE1hzDyRK0jjV0uId1z91uN3kwf/s400/Attention+chevaux+a+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6MhI7tdMsDJ7rD649N8jZQCwH74gT831zH09u79zcDsRS9hU6n96qm4FqUmorAlI2Ovrqucj550EkmfffZ6RSwZm9YBXS0RfluwAsWysODi2JZtEYOB1W3KkeWfdQbEkEEND8/s1600-h/Camping,+Etretat+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 212px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451856843878671154" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6MhI7tdMsDJ7rD649N8jZQCwH74gT831zH09u79zcDsRS9hU6n96qm4FqUmorAlI2Ovrqucj550EkmfffZ6RSwZm9YBXS0RfluwAsWysODi2JZtEYOB1W3KkeWfdQbEkEEND8/s400/Camping,+Etretat+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiejmDTizhXiI2uLGCIShqnUj-D2s18uozOA97-eCmDsN5suZCtMKRqZPaf-xPXnB8PFbqgrhWGi7Ed4ewjUeFDdVLMFgs_8x5E38jp-42KcPzef0P9LTlNUGuGJDyjlVSOpmL8/s1600-h/Paris+-+Versille+pochoirs+2+a+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 249px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451856750340435346" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiejmDTizhXiI2uLGCIShqnUj-D2s18uozOA97-eCmDsN5suZCtMKRqZPaf-xPXnB8PFbqgrhWGi7Ed4ewjUeFDdVLMFgs_8x5E38jp-42KcPzef0P9LTlNUGuGJDyjlVSOpmL8/s400/Paris+-+Versille+pochoirs+2+a+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUtvOFp05pnO0O_jn3nGaA8ehyphenhyphenp7OScqso9Msr0-Me9xRaM_zqYZZrpSJJgauEG6shwK6ytf1gnH4X38M6hXEokZpVRglk7IvhDKThQPmVSq-8MKLl21MT4ZWnDq9RTPpyB9BN/s1600-h/D%C3%A9fense+de+poser+des+2+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 269px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451856679537400546" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUtvOFp05pnO0O_jn3nGaA8ehyphenhyphenp7OScqso9Msr0-Me9xRaM_zqYZZrpSJJgauEG6shwK6ytf1gnH4X38M6hXEokZpVRglk7IvhDKThQPmVSq-8MKLl21MT4ZWnDq9RTPpyB9BN/s400/D%C3%A9fense+de+poser+des+2+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggjQ_TVCnajgSXZwFDi6o_gJQW7yMiNXQsRLFQIiSBY2DsUm5dxQoZFhamfZIt_fDS2lYxOSwxNQKWxGA7JZm4BY4TGR3qQaK3QzTd83MaXpro4WbL1MMq3LNKFYVVQcvTEIbB/s1600-h/Vends+ail+a+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 250px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451856597454711890" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggjQ_TVCnajgSXZwFDi6o_gJQW7yMiNXQsRLFQIiSBY2DsUm5dxQoZFhamfZIt_fDS2lYxOSwxNQKWxGA7JZm4BY4TGR3qQaK3QzTd83MaXpro4WbL1MMq3LNKFYVVQcvTEIbB/s400/Vends+ail+a+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCJIPkvIDd7x1w5-VOvhLYv2DWKlvk1uyFO-_to9UmsoNVecetWAmB0E8P9qzytFosxyXJIGOrI1j5EYlgYvDjXVzaIzo-ZgaAtuwEf4uoxGgPveQAt_Z6uAGzHoNe8MGzwFm1/s1600-h/Peche+interdite+b+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 258px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451856527365994210" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCJIPkvIDd7x1w5-VOvhLYv2DWKlvk1uyFO-_to9UmsoNVecetWAmB0E8P9qzytFosxyXJIGOrI1j5EYlgYvDjXVzaIzo-ZgaAtuwEf4uoxGgPveQAt_Z6uAGzHoNe8MGzwFm1/s400/Peche+interdite+b+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaOJsrwOIvIiSh9j8AGP24GY2QBmdBacfTXJpMeyEsBk2pA4vSg5__c-NUhjzfL19aIDTccHDmqWs_w8VX0WSsWn2IUkNvPuNAM-mmawjPdxsUGd25cfVlsHd4W77FHuv_aDl/s1600-h/Derniere+station+avant+St+Malo+a+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 287px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451856460018130770" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaOJsrwOIvIiSh9j8AGP24GY2QBmdBacfTXJpMeyEsBk2pA4vSg5__c-NUhjzfL19aIDTccHDmqWs_w8VX0WSsWn2IUkNvPuNAM-mmawjPdxsUGd25cfVlsHd4W77FHuv_aDl/s400/Derniere+station+avant+St+Malo+a+-+800.jpg" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-64909486528555407502010-01-06T10:15:00.244+00:002011-04-16T07:15:57.873+00:00The image of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic 1916<em>Last edited 10 August 2010</em><br /><br />In a lecture that he gave at Sligo in 1962 the Yeats scholar Edward Malins traced the poet’s shifting attitude in 1916 to the events that had taken place in Dublin in April, and his attempts during the months that followed to find words for his thoughts. One haunting and enduring phrase captures the alteration that took place, both in his own mood and more widely too in Ireland:<br /><br />‘All changed, changed utterly.’<br /><br />We now know that the ‘Easter Rising’, which began in confusion and and ended in surrender and apparent failure, coming as it did after so many other fruitless historical ‘rebellions’, proved to be the genesis of the present Irish Republic.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNkqnSzd5BxWA0jK1I7yB0lhPfkTJotVw4hMxVH-aMdynKLyCM4SO4pAVzK0sRfnxwG90o-TZscPlecfdFWg_cH7CNs7mhAebI6YpNjoLSQzCe1Cqsr3S6nfcni_bDFlVlN6oh/s1600-h/1+Proclamation+-+GEB+-+Malins+-+Yeats+-+1965+-+NLI+-+1100.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 260px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423575320345555170" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNkqnSzd5BxWA0jK1I7yB0lhPfkTJotVw4hMxVH-aMdynKLyCM4SO4pAVzK0sRfnxwG90o-TZscPlecfdFWg_cH7CNs7mhAebI6YpNjoLSQzCe1Cqsr3S6nfcni_bDFlVlN6oh/s400/1+Proclamation+-+GEB+-+Malins+-+Yeats+-+1965+-+NLI+-+1100.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The lecture was published in Dublin in 1965 under the title of <em>Yeats and the Easter Rising</em>, the first of a series of Dolmen Press Yeats Centenary Studies. Edward Malins, a friend of a friend, kindly sent me a copy. It included the illustration of the ‘Proclamation of the Irish Republic’ that appears above. When I first saw it, the image immediately struck me as odd, absurd, or even worse. A fake? A forgery? Whatever the answer might be, when I put the question it did not seem to arouse much interest at the time. However it now appears to me that for a number of reasons this may be a good moment for the image of the Proclamation to be examined rather more critically and closely. One of them is the multiplication of different versions on the Internet, the authenticity of some of which appears questionable. And another is that preparations to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising, of which the Proclamation is one of the accepted symbols, appear to be already under way. It seems to me that it may be useful to know which image to trust.<br /><br />The incongruous feature of the illustration in the essay by Malins (as many readers of this blog will already have spotted) is that the line IRISH REPUBLIC is set in a well-known typeface that did not exist in 1916. It is Gill Sans Extra Bold, made in 1931 by the English Monotype Corporation as a variant of its Gill Sans of 1928. This is how the line looks, set in the present-day digital version of the type:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCR9yBSuEtAD0zDuUwPdvRf9zBYZdiWVAELDT7pNQXWOAFQu0keUGNJEpskiZFSMw_dXStQrlAs52PIzXFoHr1HjQOANmCHlM3WJfO7j7E8FjqMOJEJpu-zMfd7P9SDSrYxYwv/s1600-h/2+Irish+Republic++-+Gill+Extra+Bold+2+sm.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 51px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423575617840019778" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCR9yBSuEtAD0zDuUwPdvRf9zBYZdiWVAELDT7pNQXWOAFQu0keUGNJEpskiZFSMw_dXStQrlAs52PIzXFoHr1HjQOANmCHlM3WJfO7j7E8FjqMOJEJpu-zMfd7P9SDSrYxYwv/s400/2+Irish+Republic++-+Gill+Extra+Bold+2+sm.jpg" /></a><br /><br />And this is how it had appeared in the original Proclamation.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1MlKmWBdL5YHQEleAE2_i5WQM9gRyHdTeFemuBOL8UJzdzX9OvuDCVKTqgVwnJ1wX5Y8uynXbnzURlN9yCG8nuGtQT6-P3n53-uqkDkUtq-9u6Rl2XqTHfVKjZovdin_aUq5l/s1600-h/3+Proclamation+-+Heading+line+4+Prov+1+bw+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 36px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423575974817425794" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1MlKmWBdL5YHQEleAE2_i5WQM9gRyHdTeFemuBOL8UJzdzX9OvuDCVKTqgVwnJ1wX5Y8uynXbnzURlN9yCG8nuGtQT6-P3n53-uqkDkUtq-9u6Rl2XqTHfVKjZovdin_aUq5l/s400/3+Proclamation+-+Heading+line+4+Prov+1+bw+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The photograph of the Proclamation used in the printed lecture in 1965 appears to have been supplied to the Dolmen Press by the National Library of Ireland in Dublin. The error was all the more unfortunate because the library does possess a genuine <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/4510216993">original </a>that was presented to it by its former employee, Seán O’Kelly, who had helped to distribute the Proclamation in 1916. Later, as President of Ireland, he gave another copy to <a href="http://www.oireachtas.ie/ViewDoc.asp?fn=%2Fdocuments%2Ftour%2Fphotos_artefacts.htm">Leinster House</a>, the home of the Irish parliament, where it is displayed. He is said to have described himself as bill-poster to the republic.<br /><br />Of course this example illustrates yet again, as in the case of the Trieste Leaf, the value of at least some knowledge of the history of printing types to librarians who may need to assess the authenticity and the date of a piece of anonymous printing; but it also suggests that there was at the time, as there still is today, widespread uncertainty about the exact details of the original Proclamation. The date of the ‘Gill Sans’ version, if we may call it that, clearly cannot be earlier than 1931. In fact it seems likely to be considerably later, but at present there are no clues to the identity of its maker nor to its exact date. Nor is it easy to guess why this line, among the others in the heading, all of which were set in types that were more or less battered and not at all modern, should have been replaced with one in a widely used and familiar style. (There are in fact a few instances of the ‘Gill Sans’ version of the Proclamation, one of which appears below, in which the line appears artificially ‘distressed’ in the manner of fake antique furniture.) A copy of this version that is in the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library of University College, Dublin, measures 38 cm in height, just half the size of the original, with which it is therefore unlikely to be confused. However, as an image of the Proclamation on web pages, where questions of scale are irrelevant, the ‘Gill Sans’ version is currently in increasingly common use. To use the current phrase, it has ‘gone viral’. A detailed account of the Easter Rising by the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/insurrection/in04.shtml">BBC </a>shows it and, by implication, endorses it as an authentic image. And so, no doubt in equally good faith, do a great many web sites, based on both sides of the Atlantic, that are dedicated to the Irish republican movement. It is an element in posters that commemorate the seven signatories and the Easter Rising; it appears on T-shirts and mugs; and it is available framed, on a reduced scale but described as ‘a faithful copy of the original document’, for hanging at home.<br /><br />In his recent account of the Easter Rising Charles Townshend called the making of the Proclamation ‘a minor epic of printing’, and so it was. And he adds this passage on the text of the document:<br /><br />‘Reproduced countless times, and still serving as the title deed of Irish republicanism, the terms of the proclamation were a kind of distillation of national doctrine, a kind of national poem: lucid, terse, and strangely moving, even to unbelievers.’<br /><br />The original printed text, produced in circumstances of personal danger to all those involved and completed in the face of formidable difficulties, is a rare and fragile document of which the evident technical imperfections make one all the more aware how risky the whole enterprise was. For this reason the original would seem to be the right image to show, and the present exercise is an attempt to find why there are so many cosmetically enhanced imitations in circulation. The example cited above is only one, albeit one of the worst, of several versions of the Proclamation that do not represent the original printed document with any fidelity. In practical terms, a Google image search for ‘Proclamation of the Irish Republic’ produces more inauthentic versions than genuine originals, without offering any way of distinguishing between them. Thus the object of this enquiry is to identify the different versions, to find where they come from, to see how they differ from the original, and to try to clear up some of the present confusion. This is still very much work in progress, but it seems to be worth reporting on. The project could not have got as far as it has without some very generous help from others, notably from curators of the collections where copies are to be found.<br /><br />The proliferation of so many images of the document on the Web is a development that has largely taken place during the last decade. So, too, is another element in the story, namely the greatly increased prices that copies have brought in the sale room, from £26,000 at Mealy’s in Dublin in December 1998 to €360,000 in April 2008 and €220,000 in April 2009 at joint sales by Adam's and Mealy’s. Eleven copies have been put up for sale since 1998 to my knowledge, and ten have sold. (See the summary at the end of this post.) They confirm the prominent place that the document holds among the relics of the Rising. It should be said that, thanks not least to careful cataloguing by the auctioneers and the fact that their texts and images are published online, there is not the least doubt that every one of the examples that have been sold has been an original copy.<br /><br />Any attempt to identify the original Proclamation and to distinguish the various images that are derived from it must begin with the records, such as they are, of its making. There have been effectively only two published accounts that attempt to tell the story (I will give full details and some other references at the end), but an unexpectedly vivid first-hand account has recently been made available, that of the compositor Michael Molloy, which fills in some detail that was lacking.<br /><br />In 1936, twenty years after the events of 1916, Joseph Bouch published the paper on ‘The Republican Proclamation of Easter Monday, 1916’ that he had given to the Irish Bibliographical Society. In 1986, Michael O’Connor published his own narrative, giving much of his information in Bouch’s own words but adding some further details, including a useful list of copies of the original Proclamation and their locations, and his text was issued in a revised and expanded edition in 1999. Bouch had the advantage of having spoken to the original printers, and his text is on the whole a piece of sober and precise bibliographical description. Unfortunately it is all too clear that there were limits to his understanding of the materials and processes used in printing, and this occasionally makes it unwise to rely on his text. O’Connor evidently used other sources too, including some more recent ones, and the additional detail he provides is useful. But one wishes that he could have said what they were and brought some critical judgement to bear on them.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnieucZykcW5QNQrRERcPu9GJkQ9nZHPCwMjO8LD_d0Newu9ZJXpkeNSo0j0yd2-_glLLrwF69wEcaWFoQ1UXMV5g-jT160BIs05nTkzNGEsb2ztHn9SdWWnEODnAPhpif7gb-/s1600-h/4+Proclamation+-+Providence+PL+a+sm+-+tr+bw+-+950.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 269px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426907855981117634" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnieucZykcW5QNQrRERcPu9GJkQ9nZHPCwMjO8LD_d0Newu9ZJXpkeNSo0j0yd2-_glLLrwF69wEcaWFoQ1UXMV5g-jT160BIs05nTkzNGEsb2ztHn9SdWWnEODnAPhpif7gb-/s400/4+Proclamation+-+Providence+PL+a+sm+-+tr+bw+-+950.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The image of the original Proclamation shown above (click on it to enlarge it), and some other details of it that appear here, are from a copy that is shown by courtesy of the Providence Public Library, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt4oONtvFWSD4cfyKzynjB1TLPrUTSPP3vdanWStvu1lucYnSrhCrvAOizFD0qrmcWJKM6pOTz9I7qyNKPGb4iRYxkMe__qTl8lcVAjuP5KYT_zSGF6hcqk1fgsmCTuK7hl6Q/s1600-h/5+Liberty+Hall+shelled+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 264px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423576609114997090" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt4oONtvFWSD4cfyKzynjB1TLPrUTSPP3vdanWStvu1lucYnSrhCrvAOizFD0qrmcWJKM6pOTz9I7qyNKPGb4iRYxkMe__qTl8lcVAjuP5KYT_zSGF6hcqk1fgsmCTuK7hl6Q/s400/5+Liberty+Hall+shelled+-+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyT7mWQ5QR1pUUngcl_0xxu8cwVIZLa5yJQni89DcQ4ZDLCHIGY4s2jfJXtlIejJpwmDxhgT-RS0rvdWmSHmJZ5kRdKkVFtRmbqbtJp-x9dz1ThE0sKZtvCbYc6WWCcsPS8jzf/s1600-h/5a+Workers%27+Republic+15+Apr+1916+-+heading+bw+-+900.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 177px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423680058466500882" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyT7mWQ5QR1pUUngcl_0xxu8cwVIZLa5yJQni89DcQ4ZDLCHIGY4s2jfJXtlIejJpwmDxhgT-RS0rvdWmSHmJZ5kRdKkVFtRmbqbtJp-x9dz1ThE0sKZtvCbYc6WWCcsPS8jzf/s400/5a+Workers%27+Republic+15+Apr+1916+-+heading+bw+-+900.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The Proclamation was printed during Sunday 23 April 1916, on an old and poorly-maintained Wharfedale machine in the printing office that had been set up by James Connolly in the basement at Liberty Hall in Beresford Place, the headquarters building of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union of which he was General Secretary, in order to print his paper <em>The Workers’ Republic</em>. (‘Wharfedale’ was a generic name for the stop cylinder printing machine, originally made by manufacturers at Otley in Wharfedale, Yorkshire, that was widely used at the time.)<br /><br />Bouch names Michael Molloy and Liam O’Brien, the compositors and Christopher Brady, in charge of the machine, as the source of some of his information, but has little personal information regarding Molloy. However Molloy himself filled in a great deal of detail in the statement that he made to the Bureau of Military History in 1952, and which was inaccessible until these documents were released in 2003.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/1916/WS716/1.html">whole statement </a>can now be seen online, but here is a summary and some extracts. Molloy had joined the Irish Volunteers in about 1914, and when James Connolly started his paper in 1915 Molloy was recruited through this connection and asked ‘to go and take charge as compositor in the printing office of Liberty Hall’. This paragraph gives some idea of the status of the printing office:<br /><br />‘The Countess Markievicz and Helena Molony ran a Baby Clothing Stores on Eden Quay and it was known as “The Co-Operative Stores”. At the back of this shop you could get direct to the room where the printing in Liberty Hall was carried on. Several times the Co-Operative Stores were raided by plain-clothes detectives. While the reason given for raids on these stores was to search for pamphlets and literature regarded as illegal and seditious the main purpose was to try to locate the exact position of Connolly’s printing press. They were not successful in this because the search party never got past the Countess Markievicz who prevented them at the point of the gun from entering Liberty Hall through her premises. Liberty Hall at that time had 99 rooms and men of the Citizen Army were always there on guard.’<br /><br />It may be worth adding a note here on an episode which is related in <em>The Workers’ Republic</em> for 1 April 1916, and was clearly written by Connolly himself, since it suggests one reason why the Proclamation was printed at Liberty Hall, in a printing office that was less than ideally equipped to produce it. Some weeks earlier the administration had decided to suppress a Nationalist journal, <em>The Gael</em>. On 24 March ‘a body of military and police raided the premises of the printers in Liffey Street [that is, the printing office of Joseph Stanley in Upper Liffey Street, known as the Gaelic Press], seized all the type formes, dismantled the machinery and carried all the vital parts off to Dublin Castle.’ Members of the DMP (Dublin Metropolitan Police) came to the shop of the Workers’ Cooperative Society at 31 Eden Quay looking for copies of the journal. Connolly was called, and he asked if they had a search warrant. When they admitted that they had not, Connolly pointed his revolver and said, ‘Then drop those papers or I’ll drop you.’ At this point Countess Markievicz arrived with news of the raid on the printing plant of <em>The Gael</em>, and the Citizen Army was moblilized to protect Liberty Hall. Other sources suggest that a warrant was obtained eventually.<br /><br />‘On Good Friday’, Molloy continues in his statement of 1952, ‘James Connolly sent for William O’Brien, Chris Brady and myself. He said that he wanted us to turn out a Bill for Easter Sunday that would be in the nature of a Proclamation, but that we would have to get suitable type for it and he would bear the expenses.’ Molloy recalled in his interview with the <em>Evening Herald </em>in 1966 that Connolly had said that it should be similar in appearance to an auctioneer’s notice.<br /><br />‘He said, “when you have the type ready let me know”. I knew that to meet Connolly’s requirements I would have to get a [Double Great Primer] and it would take two sets of cases, upper and lower, for the purpose. I visited a few places and I was not successful. On going to the third place, which chanced to be West’s of Capel Street, I told him what I wanted. He told me to go upstairs and see Graham, the man in charge of the case room and to tell him what I wanted. I told Graham that Mr. West had sent me up and that I was to get all the [Double Great Primer] that he had, giving Mr. West and Mr. Graham a promise that should anything happen [to] the type the firm would be compensated. Graham at first put many objections in my way and I told him if he did not give it voluntarily it would be taken. Eventually he agreed. He brought it downstairs and put it on the hand-cart which was being pushed by a member of the Citizen Army nick-named “Dazzler”. On returning to Liberty Hall I notified Connolly of my success. He summoned the three of us again to his office and then he told us that he would require us on Sunday morning at 9 o’clock. I told him that I was warned to mobilize with my Company on that morning and he said, “Tell your Captain that you are engaged by me and that I will take responsibility for you”’. In his interview of 1966, Molloy said, ‘Connolly told us that what we would print would be a document that would live in history.’<br /><br />When the three men arrived on Sunday morning, Connolly told them that the mobilization had been called off – but added ‘We are going ahead with it. If we are able to hold the Capital for 48 hours we would, in fact, be in a position to declare ourselves a Republic.’ He gave them the manuscript of the Proclamation, asked if it was clear, and offered to get some signatures added to it to reassure them.<br /><br />‘While the Proclamation was being signed we were busy transferring the cases of the type required from the case-room which was in the basement of Liberty Hall to a small room at the back of the Co-Operative Stores on Eden Quay, the idea being that there was an Easter Sunday night commemoration concert in the hall of Liberty Hall. To get from the original case-room to the machine-room we would have to pass through the hall while the concert was on and this would have given rise to suspicion. No one was allowed to contact us in Liberty Hall as we were under a guard of the Citizen Army who were posted on the fanlight over the door entrance to the Co-Operative Stores, also the door leading from the Concert Hall into the Machine Room and also at a rear entrance. At about 11 a.m. we set to work on setting the type and when we had the top portion of it set half way down, even to complete that half we had to treat letters with sealing wax. We could not go any further for the moment. So we sent up a message to Connolly that we would have to print the Proclamation in two halves. And the answer was, “Go ahead”. We then ran off, I think, 1,000 copies with half the Proclamation printed. We then took the form [forme] off the machine and made arrangements for the setting up of the second half which would complete the Proclamation. This was laborious and slow, and the second and final half of the Proclamation was not printed until about midnight on Easter Sunday night.’<br /><br />The type of the first part of the text was distributed and reused to set the three last paragraphs and the signatures. This section was made up in a forme that was printed at a second impression on the lower part of same sheet, the difficulties of getting good register from the clapped-out machine generally resulting in a gap between the two impressions that varies slightly from copy to copy. ‘It is a wonder how we produced it at all,’ said Molloy in his interview fifty years later. That remark is backed up by the evidence of several witnesses to the Royal Commission on the rebellion that was held during the summer in 1916 and produced its findings very rapidly. (It can be read in the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em>.) A raid on Liberty Hall, which was believed to house a large stock of gelignite, had been seriously discussed for Sunday evening, just as the printing of the Proclamation was being completed, but the plan was reluctantly abandoned.<br /><br />Vivid and circumstantial though Molloy’s account is, there are still some details of the printing office at Liberty Hall that need to be clarified. O’Connor wrote simply that it was small, measuring seven feet by nine; but that would have been a space smaller than the printing machine itself. (A Double Crown machine listed for sale by the Edinburgh typefounders Miller & Richard was 9 ft 9 in by 6 ft 5 in overall.) As Molloy indicates, there was a separate ‘case-room’ for the storage of type and a ‘machine-room’ which housed the printing machine. Space would also have been needed for frames at which to set the type, a proofing device and a stone on which to make up the formes. Molloy suggests that on this occasion a small room was found to act as an improvised composing room close to the machine, and this was presumably the area to which O’Connor refers.<br /><br />As for the materials of the Proclamation, the paper, bought specially for the job and sufficient to print 2,500 copies, was a poor quality Double Crown, a common size for a poster, nominally 30 × 20 inches (about 76 × 51 cm). The larger types are of wood. They are very worn and some are damaged. In original copies, it can be seen that the tail of the letter R of IRISH in the line IRISH REPUBLIC in the heading shows the impact of some square object, and some corners of both R’s are bruised. There is slight damage to the right hand end of the thick and thin rule below the first line of the heading. The E of the word THE in the line TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND is the letter that was contrived by adding a piece of sealing wax to the foot of an F, since there were no more E’s in the fount. (Mind you, sealing wax is, or was, fragile stuff, and it is difficult to imagine it standing up to the stresses of printing a thousand copies or so on a machine. But that is the story, repeatedly told.)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqLRF0PfRzchsM3CRPJ2SzgFCZxCgtN8bOr5RaRztny-08e0m1ePlFKqNgJ1rpFKGUPNFaNQTzDjOrQtSzOIyFONoRCPimv2WiO7GUmDOMtvR4LnacN7L-P76_iRVZbNPQJJBp/s1600-h/6+M%26R+2GP+Antique+8+bb+850.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 157px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423580136130848498" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqLRF0PfRzchsM3CRPJ2SzgFCZxCgtN8bOr5RaRztny-08e0m1ePlFKqNgJ1rpFKGUPNFaNQTzDjOrQtSzOIyFONoRCPimv2WiO7GUmDOMtvR4LnacN7L-P76_iRVZbNPQJJBp/s400/6+M%26R+2GP+Antique+8+bb+850.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The Two-line Great Primer type (about 36 points) that was used to set the text of the Proclamation can be identified as the Antique No. 8 of the typefounders Miller & Richard of Edinburgh, a type of the latter part of the 19th century that was still in common use for poster work. The text has 4 points of leading: that is, strips of lead to a measurement of 4 points are inserted between the lines. Parts of the leads that have been inked are visible in some copies.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihOkszZJQGN-vTrjycS0RKjNqozYwiEylmMZXFUPzHd3rkGUVcwYtSEMkT9i9km_lEGLDzyAh86Yg97-FbR_kqJQqgdw_RvhybqiZ8KaWm-4aWK0o_0X4p9zNH0isVOi-nQ6kW/s1600-h/4a+wf+letter+e+-+Prov.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 108px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423585979942642642" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihOkszZJQGN-vTrjycS0RKjNqozYwiEylmMZXFUPzHd3rkGUVcwYtSEMkT9i9km_lEGLDzyAh86Yg97-FbR_kqJQqgdw_RvhybqiZ8KaWm-4aWK0o_0X4p9zNH0isVOi-nQ6kW/s400/4a+wf+letter+e+-+Prov.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Work came to a halt, as Molloy relates, because there was not enough of it to set even the first three paragraphs of the text. So, as he told Bouch, the letter e from a very different fount, Abbey Text, was used in the last lines of the third paragraph in order to eke out the failing supply of this letter. This was a gothic type of US origin that was cast in Britain by Stephenson, Blake & Co., Sheffield. In fact the types look more like a similar but broader design, Miller & Richard’s Tudor Black. An inverted e appears in first line of the last paragraph of all.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVYUZSBMLZBDDpToScfjLzu3Nru9V3O7CcEUfaMHj9uybtw8hlnuo3bznRqDP0RLwp5pA2Xwxrymuz-A5AdAENk71fiOCYIFPnGZV6UDCwdTioUXXvi8Fdq-kF81cvlX_WL6pG/s1600-h/Irish+Citizen+Army+mobilization+-+850.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 265px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424645655499594962" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVYUZSBMLZBDDpToScfjLzu3Nru9V3O7CcEUfaMHj9uybtw8hlnuo3bznRqDP0RLwp5pA2Xwxrymuz-A5AdAENk71fiOCYIFPnGZV6UDCwdTioUXXvi8Fdq-kF81cvlX_WL6pG/s400/Irish+Citizen+Army+mobilization+-+850.jpg" /></a><br /><br />There are a few other wrong-fount characters throughout the text of the Proclamation. (One of them is the t in ‘to’ in the third line of the detail of the setting of the Proclamation shown above.) They appear to be De Vinne, of which an example is shown just above, a common type that was used for display setting in <em>The Workers’ Republic </em>and in other items printed at Liberty Hall. The 24-point size of De Vinne is used for the line ‘Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government,’ in the Proclamation.<br /><br />Molloy said that it took about three hours to complete a thousand copies of the Proclamation on the ‘old crook machine’, finishing late on Saturday night. ‘Nolan, Connolly’s confidential man’, picked up the copies and took them away. Molloy spent the rest of the week on guard duties at Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, one of the strongholds of the rebels in Dublin.<br /><br />The forme of the ‘half-sheet’ that was set to complete the text remained intact on the machine and, notwithstanding the damage that was done to Liberty Hall during the next few days by artillery fire, according to Bouch, when British soldiers entered on 27 April, they found the machine and printed some copies which they gave or sold to ‘their admirers and other sightseers’. (According to the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em>, ‘bundles’ of the Proclamation itself were also found.) One of the half-sheets came into the hands of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, who – it appears from an <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/1916/other_material/20.html">annotated letter </a>in the National Archives, Dublin, addressed to the Chief Commissioner and dated 11 May – had at that date still failed to locate a complete copy of the Proclamation.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtibUwLFsVXZGHYN3hNxhijE1eZFtDZ8ycI19wmnhW7c5XQIIvRGeewDxh8SHOLWvzD3TRRAmQC4Jww6192NnwbtQq11PNeY0_wZ-lrGIe6vneMHxThJGg1cwSvnnq8l-w4q6/s1600/DMP_letter_re_the_half_proclamation.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 251px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453219009165868098" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtibUwLFsVXZGHYN3hNxhijE1eZFtDZ8ycI19wmnhW7c5XQIIvRGeewDxh8SHOLWvzD3TRRAmQC4Jww6192NnwbtQq11PNeY0_wZ-lrGIe6vneMHxThJGg1cwSvnnq8l-w4q6/s400/DMP_letter_re_the_half_proclamation.jpg" /></a><br /><br />There are copies of the half-sheet at the National Museum of Ireland and Kilmainham Jail Museum. One, as noted below, is among the documents in the National Archives of the United Kingdom relating to the Courts Martial that were held in May. Four have come into the sale room during the last decade.<br /><br />The complete wording of the Proclamation (and of an extract from the <em>Irish War News</em> that is referred to below) was reprinted, set in type, in the issue of the <em>Weekly Irish Times </em>for 13 May. It is in column 4 of page 8, under the heading: ‘Irish Republic declared. The Proclamation of the Rebels. Text of the Document.’ It seems likely that this was the first widely distributed printed text of the Proclamation.<br /><br />The earliest reproduction of the Proclamation that has so far been identified appears in the so-called <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em>, a very detailed and relatively objective account in book form of the events of the week of 24 to 29 April, from the taking of the General Post Office to the surrender of the rebels, that appeared in the special issue of the <em>Weekly Irish Times</em> dated 13 May 1916 and in later issues. It reprints many of the documents produced by the authorities and the rebels (including, as noted below, an image of the Proclamation). The rebels, as the wording of their text made clear, were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and of James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army and nothing to do with Sinn Féin, who at first were generally believed to have been responsible for the Rising. The narrative was compiled from material gathered day by day by the reporters of the <em>Irish Times</em>. At the time the journal was frankly hostile to the actions that had resulted in what it called in this promply produced account ‘The darkest week in the history of Dublin — an orgie [sic] of fire and slaughter.’ Several editions of the <em>Handbook </em>were published from 1916 to 1918. A copy in the British Library lacks a title page but bears a printer’s imprint dated ‘August 1916’.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLrWLCOHzTj8yJHUBGEwWckDnF9Q1hsNK0-DbMGeri99FUunjCjG55UD6ab92edoD5e2HS2JsGLE0cnrLzBiPPyWQue6_znG87Y7ck15XkhgTHJWJ1jZEmIhjZViWm1Sohggen/s1600/SinnFein+-+ProvPL+-+scan+of+20-05-2010+-+900.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 249px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5473641527830779298" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLrWLCOHzTj8yJHUBGEwWckDnF9Q1hsNK0-DbMGeri99FUunjCjG55UD6ab92edoD5e2HS2JsGLE0cnrLzBiPPyWQue6_znG87Y7ck15XkhgTHJWJ1jZEmIhjZViWm1Sohggen/s400/SinnFein+-+ProvPL+-+scan+of+20-05-2010+-+900.jpg" /></a><br /><br />This is the reduced image of the original Proclamation that was published in the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em>, from a scan kindly supplied by the Providence Public Library. It is a photographic ‘line block’ or ‘zinc etching’ 220 × 145 mm in size. Line blocks were relief plates that were made from photographs that reduced an image to black or white, with no intermediate tones. The image was printed onto a zinc plate to act as as a ‘resist,’ and the exposed metal was etched away, thus creating a relief plate that was mounted on a wooden base for printing. It was common practice to ‘spot out’ the inevitable specks of dust and other unwanted marks that appeared on the negative and would have printed. The block maker, with or without encouragement, would often ‘improve’ the image in other ways before the block was made, restoring defective parts, a habit that was all too familiar to publishers of facsimiles of early printing who often found that long s had been helpfully converted to f by completing its apparently damaged crossbar. Something of the kind happened to Bouch, who mentions the damage to the tail of the R in IRISH in the original Proclamation; but his reader may have been puzzled, since in the image that accompanies his text the damage he refers to had been removed by retouching.<br /><br />In the reproduction shown above, the image of the Proclamation has been very thoroughly improved, especially in the lines of the heading, where there is much redrawing. The damage to the two R’s in line 4 was eliminated. The improvised E in line 5 was completely redrawn to match the others, and the two inconsistent O's in the same line were made more like the others by filling in their decorative indents, though nothing could be done to make their different widths equal. The counter (the enclosed space) in the P of POBLACHT was enlarged horizontally. One last, small-scale piece of retouching in line 5 is worth noticing. The lower left-hand serif of the L in IRELAND failed to print well because the E to its left was higher, perhaps because it was less worn. At all events it prints heavily. The retoucher carefully restored the imperfect serif on L.<br /><br />To give some idea of the quality of the retouching, here is a detail from the top left hand part of the original Proclamation, showing the conspicuously damaged R of IRISH and the improvised letter E. Below it is the same area from the reproduction in the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook.</em> In the original the letters of the first line, IRISH, are about 34 mm high, or one inch and three eighths. The reproduction is of course on a much smaller scale.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixpyU4Vu-m7mo0gAvTEqGWIUOl19iK2bymjSaTjwEY1wYMYpMhLmStD3JDmcdYVUjBFs9GPuR2QKUKwgnrEVh45nUHJjwqfAYdjEs21I3-I_ZtqnbJrp1lwm1JG2Np9z1Si_wA/s1600-h/7+Proclamation+-+Providence+PL+-+det+IRISH+and+F+-+1100.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 309px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423577602721758882" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixpyU4Vu-m7mo0gAvTEqGWIUOl19iK2bymjSaTjwEY1wYMYpMhLmStD3JDmcdYVUjBFs9GPuR2QKUKwgnrEVh45nUHJjwqfAYdjEs21I3-I_ZtqnbJrp1lwm1JG2Np9z1Si_wA/s400/7+Proclamation+-+Providence+PL+-+det+IRISH+and+F+-+1100.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxMDTQR0g1cY0zdCjg1qbdf6W_rFGOOIEwbj60mXz7A-rsEW0jhTMfI9hyphenhyphensEhyxijrJus5YhhXNkGWdL9_vLauH_qZ-yP4I5qwbBdLphysqWnOplcOjfbXb_d1ULOHYhSWuziw/s1600/2+Proclamation+-+Sinn+Fein+R+H+-+detail+-+PPL.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 304px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5473646978388926738" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxMDTQR0g1cY0zdCjg1qbdf6W_rFGOOIEwbj60mXz7A-rsEW0jhTMfI9hyphenhyphensEhyxijrJus5YhhXNkGWdL9_vLauH_qZ-yP4I5qwbBdLphysqWnOplcOjfbXb_d1ULOHYhSWuziw/s400/2+Proclamation+-+Sinn+Fein+R+H+-+detail+-+PPL.jpg" /></a><br /><br />This image, unfaithful to the original as it is in many details, is nevertheless of considerable importance in the iconography of the Proclamation. It appears not only to have been the basis of countless reproductions in printed publications ever since, but it is also the source of one of the images that is most frequently found online and downloaded, since it is the version offered by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_Irish_Republic">Wikipedia</a>, and it can be seen on the web site of the <a href="http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Taoiseach_and_Government/History_of_Government/1916_Commemorations/Proclamation_of_Independence.html">Taoiseach</a>. Such ‘improving’ of the image would have been found completely normal and even praiseworthy at the date when it was done, but the result is not authentic by modern standards and it does complicate the task of the historian of the original document.<br /><br />For details of the making of the next version of the Proclamation we have only the account given by Bouch, who has a long section on the ‘re-printing and re-posting of the Irish Republican Proclamation at Easter, 1917’ to mark the anniversary of the Rising. This, he says, was done as part of a plan ‘to resuscitate the spirit of rebellion, and once more fan the flames of patriotism and intense nationalism’. Its promoters were, in his cautious phrase, ‘a small group of women attached to the Irish Citizen Army.’ They were members, as later commentators have added, of Cumann na mBan. ‘Their plan was to print and post up once more the printed Proclamation upon all the public buildings and vantage points in the City of Dublin’.<br /><br />This is what Bouch wrote:<br /><br />‘Mr. Walker (senior) and his son Mr. Frank Walker, employees of Mr. Joseph Stanley, a well-known Dublin printer, were the actual printers of this rare publication, and the order was given, by one of these women, for a re-issue which should bear more than a close resemblance to the original. Here again these two men had to work through the whole of Good Friday and part of Saturday, in the workshop at Upper Liffey Street, to fulfil their promise to carry out the order in time to allow of its distribution and posting. Such type as remained in the workshop at the rere [sic] of the “Co-op.” in Liberty Hall was collected, and it is of undoubted interest to relate that the same old fount was here again used for the second occasion. Naturally all the type sent out by West of Capel Street in the first instance could not be collected, but as much as possible was gathered and handed over to the printers. As results turned out they succeeded very well.’<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgFirNnEJrnN5DWXj34-YVL0uAkHdhguUq4IhBe7flSEAdB_YSLt8rqD2Ln1hSiVW0vh3jOYWbAbsx-ADt5EnFDAVidCSsC54Ltvbd12kPijAAKiUSpHYcnNzysa5o7SheLkI/s1600-h/10+Proclamation+-+Bouch+2++%27reprint+1917%27+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 236px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423580922451764722" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgFirNnEJrnN5DWXj34-YVL0uAkHdhguUq4IhBe7flSEAdB_YSLt8rqD2Ln1hSiVW0vh3jOYWbAbsx-ADt5EnFDAVidCSsC54Ltvbd12kPijAAKiUSpHYcnNzysa5o7SheLkI/s400/10+Proclamation+-+Bouch+2++%27reprint+1917%27+-+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />This account looks to me like nonsense. It is highly unlikely that enough of the original type, which could not set the whole text in the first place, was recovered to make a complete resetting. The illustration of the ‘reprint’ that is given by Bouch shows that it reproduced the original setting of the text very exactly, with all its wrong fount characters and variable word-spacing, although the inverted letter ‘e’ near the end is corrected. (Characters in the right-hand margin are lost in the image shown here, made from a tightly bound copy.) But he also says that the type measure (the length of line) in the reprint was 17.75 inches instead of the 18.25 of the original. Reducing the measure, even by only half an inch, would have made an exact resetting with the original type, line for line, a great deal more difficult if not impossible, and even supposing that it had been possible to find enough of the original type in the Capel office, to attempt to recreate the exact mix of the wrong-fount characters and the inconsistent spacing of the original (including the gap between the third and fourth paragraphs) would have been pointlessly laborious.<br /><br />The inevitable conclusion is that the ‘reprint of 1917’ was not printed from reset type at all but was produced by means of a photographic process, either a line block or (perhaps more likely in this case, given the size of the sheet) photolithography. The ‘improvement’ to this image is similar to that of the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em>: a redrawn E is substituted for the adapted F, the damaged R of IRISH is repaired and, as noted above, the inverted e in the sixth paragraph is corrected, making this the only known reproduction of the Proclamation in which this was done. The M in the name of Eamonn Ceannt among the signatures, obscured by dirt in the original printing, is mistakenly retouched as N. All the variable spacing of the original is exactly reproduced, and the wrong-fount letters of the original are all in their places. The questions that are raised concerning Bouch’s own account of this version are hardly worth pursuing at length, since no original copy is known to survive today. Bouch’s account of the recovery of the original types and their reuse was perhaps derived from a story, one that may not have been meant to be taken too literally, that was offered by the printers to the women of Cumann na mBan. However, since the myth of reprinting from the original type has been accepted uncritically by later sources it needs to be questioned here, since it is abundantly clear that photographic processes were used for this and for all subsequent reprints of the original document. (A few of the original types do survive, and can be seen on display in the National Museum in Dublin.) Bouch was well aware of the habit of photographers of retouching images in order ‘to help them get a satisfactory result’, and he warned his readers not to look ‘in all the reduced facsimiles and photos’ for the minute typographical details of the text that he had described. Paradoxically, the warning is valid where the damaged big R of IRISH is concerned and the improvised E, but in fact, because a photographic process was used, the detailed setting of the text with all its peculiar features was inevitably reproduced more or less faithfully in all the ‘reduced facsimiles’.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgijB3iazc2dgP-sRZWigrQf6pvw2fImOTdNo_BciqE6VVk3pFQ8-PmcdbkfHge83k9gLzKNYfkxVEttHeIfgWTiQAWP1eKvk-iO9eogxIkUrBSf1KiTto9DF73qR2cqYQdO4_t/s1600-h/Kansas+for+blog+-+900.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 266px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424436448791700418" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgijB3iazc2dgP-sRZWigrQf6pvw2fImOTdNo_BciqE6VVk3pFQ8-PmcdbkfHge83k9gLzKNYfkxVEttHeIfgWTiQAWP1eKvk-iO9eogxIkUrBSf1KiTto9DF73qR2cqYQdO4_t/s400/Kansas+for+blog+-+900.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The only other version of the Proclamation that needs to be looked at here, reproduced above, is also known in only one copy, but the conspicuous damage makes it easy to recognise and a relatively high-resolution image is easy to find on line, coming up early in a Google image search. It is closely related in its details to the ubiquitous ‘Gill Sans’ version. This is the version of the <a href="http://spencer.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/25th/sc35b.jpg">Proclamation </a>in the O’Hegarty Collection of the Spencer Research Library of the University of Kansas, a half-scale reproduction that is 38 cm in height. There is extensive retouching, but it has been done quite independently of the version in the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em>. The retouching was applied not only to the heading but to some quite minute details throughout the whole text, where imperfections in the original are painstakingly redrawn. The M in the name of Eamonn Ceannt is cleaner and sharper than it was in the original. The damage to the R’s in line 4 of the heading is repaired, and the improvised E in line 5 is of course redrawn, but in a different manner from that of the <em>Irish Times </em>version, and several letters like H, of which the serifs were almost closed up, have had them opened out. Another instance of redrawing that is not found elsewhere is the F of OF in line 5 which has a sharp top right-angled corner which looks very different from the equivalent letter in the original. On the other hand, the serif of the L in the same line is not retouched (nor had it been in the ‘1917’ reprint). The broken end to the rule under the first line is repaired for the first time. It seemed worth taking some trouble to analyse this half-scale version because it corresponds closely – with the exception of the reset line – with the ‘Gill Sans’ proclamation with which we began. However, there is one other detail in the ‘Kansas’ version that does not appear in the ‘Gill Sans’ one. On the right hand side of paragraph 4, the first part of the text that was reset, some spaces between the words have risen in several of the lines and their inked impressions are visible. These rising spaces can be seen in a few copies of the original Proclamation: those at <a href="http://www.oireachtas.ie/ViewDoc.asp?fn=%2Fdocuments%2Ftour%2Fphotos_artefacts.htm">Leinster House </a>and the Ulster Museum, for example. In the ‘Gill Sans’ version they are all eliminated.<br /><br />In the relatively high-resolution image of the ‘Kansas’ version that has kindly been provided and is shown above by courtesy of the Spencer Research Library, it can be seen that the printing has the even overall ‘colour’ of a photographic reproduction, and is clearly the product either of a line block or photolithography. There appears to be no evidence with which to establish an exact date for this document, and one would need to examine it carefully to be sure of the process used, but it does not show the irregular inking and impression produced by the worn and damaged types of the original Proclamation. If the half-scale ‘Gill Sans’ version was produced in the 1950s or later, as seems at least possible, then printing by offset lithography may have been be the more likely process for its production.<br /><br />There is a variant of the ‘Gill Sans’ version that has an added and wholly fictitious first line, THE PROCLAMATION OF, which is set in Cheltenham Bold Extended, an ingenious choice since it is a typeface of which the date was more or less contemporary with that of the Proclamation.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcMv7yytUDOPuUBozihJwd5bGAevEufvDDrpSQu1AB7488SZuwN1SkPlwkeNS9psREeRsPfDIj4q54b0ty0fXtSxZSxCcniSeDs4x-b2CXn_kG8reo8Xb4f7uN0Zq9UUyrnvzJ/s1600-h/O'Connor+heading+1999+p30.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 185px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423585534561966674" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcMv7yytUDOPuUBozihJwd5bGAevEufvDDrpSQu1AB7488SZuwN1SkPlwkeNS9psREeRsPfDIj4q54b0ty0fXtSxZSxCcniSeDs4x-b2CXn_kG8reo8Xb4f7uN0Zq9UUyrnvzJ/s400/O'Connor+heading+1999+p30.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Not only does this especially inauthentic version of the ‘Gill Sans’ Proclamation appear in Wikipedia’s related site <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_Irish_Republic">Wikisource</a>, and on some artefacts, including mugs and T-shirts, but in the second edition of O’Connor’s book we find it reproduced (see above) with the claim that it is an image of the heading to the original Proclamation.<br /><br /><strong>Conclusions</strong><br />There are several puzzles relating to some of these later versions that are still to be resolved (who made them, and when and where?), but here, for the time being, is a summary of my conclusions.<br /><br />The original Proclamation measures about 30 × 20 inches in size, and it was printed from visibly worn and damaged type on a poor-quality paper. The damage to the tail of the R in IRISH in the heading is very prominent, and it can generally be spotted in reproductions, even in thumbnail-size images, where it has not been removed by retouching.<br /><br />There are two basic variations of the image of the Proclamation in common use, and both are retouched:<br /><br />The earliest appears to be the version made for the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em> by August 1916, adopted by Wikipedia among many other current users, and, since it is on the web site of the Taoiseach, might be said to be the version with official approval.<br /><br />The second is the post-1930 (and possibly post c. 1950) ‘Gill Sans’ version that has recently multiplied in ‘viral’ mode across the Internet. With the exception of the words IRISH REPUBLIC, set in Gill Sans Extra Bold, it appears to be derived partly from the half-scale ‘Kansas’ facsimile, to which no date or maker can at present be assigned.<br /><br />And finally there is the variant of the ‘Gill Sans’ version with the wholly fictitious first line reading ‘THE PROCLAMATION OF’.<br /><br />There are at least two largely unretouched reproductions of the original – and who knows how many more there may be? A image of the original Proclamation appears online among illustrations of exhibits in an <a href="http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/exhibitions/irish/praiseirish/walls/index.html">exhibition </a>that was mounted in 2008 at the University Library, Otago, New Zealand, entitled ‘Éire á Móradh: Singing the Praises of Ireland’. The caption reads: ‘Facsimile, celebrating the 50th Anniversary, 1966. Private Collection.’ It is not known who made this large scale (perhaps full-scale) reproduction, nor from which original copy, nor whether more copies of it were made. The colour of the paper appears curiously reddish, but seen online, in its frame, it looks remarkably convincing.<br /><br />The Historical Documents Company, Philadelphia, produces a series of ‘antiqued parchment replicas that look and feel old’, mostly of documents relating to the history of the United States. Among them is a <a href="http://www.histdocs.com/home/productpages/937.php?cat=Miscellaneous">reduced reproduction </a>of the original Proclamation on a sheet measuring 16 × 14 inches. The reproduction appears not to be retouched, except for a slight reduction to the damage to the R of IRISH in the heading, but it is of course smaller than the original, and the image is not very sharp. The words ‘Easter Monday April 24, 1916’ are added in an incongruous later sanserif typeface at the lower left hand corner.<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Copies of the original Proclamation </strong><br />A census of copies of the original is in preparation. This is a list of the copies that are known to exist in publicly accessible collections.<br /><br />There are eight copies in Dublin, at these locations: General Post Office, Kilmainham Jail Museum, National Library of Ireland, National Museum of Ireland (3 copies), National Print Museum, Parliament Buildings (Leinster House), Trinity College Library (2 copies).<br /><br />Only four copies are known to exist outside Dublin. One is at the Ulster Museum, to which it was presented by a Belfast man who, being in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916, reputedly had a copy thrust into his hands as he passed the GPO and later realised its historical significance. It is on view in the new ‘Plantation to Power-sharing’ history gallery of the museum, which was re-opened after refurbishment in October 2009. Three copies are known in the United States. One is at the Providence Public Library, Providence, Rhode Island (which incidentally houses the typographical library of D. B. Updike), by whose courtesy a scan has been provided from which some of the images in this essay are derived. It was acquired in Dublin in 1949. Another, at the Chapin Library, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, was acquired in 1917. A third copy, of which the provenance is uncertain, belongs to the Irish Historical Society in New York. A report that there is a copy at Harvard turns out to be unfounded. The half-scale reproduction at Lawrence, Kansas, an image of which can be found online, is discussed above.<br /><br />The presence on the Web of some online images of the original Proclamation that do not appear to tally with any of the copies listed above suggests that there may be some in small museums or other collections in Ireland or elsewhere. These are under investigation, but suggestions for additions to the list will be welcome. There are certainly copies in private hands, including many of those sold recently at auction.<br /><br />The catalogue entry for the copy sold at Whyte’s, Dublin, 12 June 2005, included this statement: ‘Two [copies] exist in British Government archives and there is one in the Royal Collection in Buckingham Palace.’ The custodians of the Royal Collections say that they are not aware of one. It is not impossible that there may be copies in England: O’Connor writes (but without giving a source) that a letter of 25 April from Wimborne, the Lord Lieutenant, to the Prime Minister, Asquith, enclosed a copy.<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Reprints of the text</strong><br />The manuscript copy for the text of the Proclamation is not known to survive. The chief hand in its composition is often said to be that of P. H. Pearse, but all the signatories took responsibility for it. The text is read aloud on national occasions and it has been cast in bronze. It appeared as a small book, designed by Liam Miller, set in the Hammer Uncial type and printed at the Dolmen Press in 1975. Many versions of the wording are, of course, findable on the Web. Reprints of the text have been made ever since 1916, and the first of these to be at all widely distributed, as noted above, appears to have been in the issue of the <em>Weekly Irish Times </em>dated 13 May 1916. I have collected details of many of these later reprints but, with one important exception which is shown and discussed below, they do not really belong to the present essay. However there are many reprints that have been modelled closely on the original in size, or layout, or the choice of type (and sometimes in all three). They should be given close and wary examination.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFshxVaTeNVUHmrUcesDTfhEiST9Wg-_aBVfRNLjiR8s1ev3iCk901JHiXTRiwlyeKgX-i5nn6CwxhaoDpW-qC1z3WUFKAT-8hRq83Jn2yRH5TCWpgwW9WohcFvtpVFe6Mfniq/s1600-h/21+Proclamation+-+AN+1+-+bw+-+900.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 264px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426910349606980706" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFshxVaTeNVUHmrUcesDTfhEiST9Wg-_aBVfRNLjiR8s1ev3iCk901JHiXTRiwlyeKgX-i5nn6CwxhaoDpW-qC1z3WUFKAT-8hRq83Jn2yRH5TCWpgwW9WohcFvtpVFe6Mfniq/s400/21+Proclamation+-+AN+1+-+bw+-+900.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4OgPgmXqpY5hXL5AaD7IAF1KdYBkLlqf2hPjw6Dw39QtTUXNIPheYHNAUy1_E5v_VvDsgPgUwJjt4Qfvuus0yVRrTbUCn02_ENtz_H3Kyvj6k267iE0r6x6zMyho592T0hAG/s1600-h/22+The+provisional+government+-+bw+-+900.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 263px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427669051854418882" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4OgPgmXqpY5hXL5AaD7IAF1KdYBkLlqf2hPjw6Dw39QtTUXNIPheYHNAUy1_E5v_VvDsgPgUwJjt4Qfvuus0yVRrTbUCn02_ENtz_H3Kyvj6k267iE0r6x6zMyho592T0hAG/s400/22+The+provisional+government+-+bw+-+900.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The first of the two images above is probably the first reprinting of the text of the Proclamation that was made, and it is worth recording because it is not widely known and also because it is intimately tied to the original version by its date and the personalities who appear to have been responsible for it. A barely legible note in ink on the reverse of this copy appears to include the date 30/4/16. It is a small leaflet on poor quality paper 218 × 142 mm, which is in the British National Archives at Kew, among the personal papers of William Wylie, the young KC who was selected as prosecutor at the Courts Martial of May 1916. There is also a copy at the National Library of Ireland, with the call number POL/1910-20/12 (Size 2) and a manuscript annotation ‘1916’.<br /><br />The type that is used in this small-format Proclamation for the words IRISH REPUBLIC, a sanserif titling (a distinctive type in its way, but virtually identical versions were made by the two English typefoundries Caslon and Stephenson, Blake), is also used to set CITIZENS OF DUBLIN in the leaflet that is shown below it, which is the same size and is printed on similar paper. It was reproduced in the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook </em>and it is known to historians as ‘the Second War Bulletin’. The lines ‘The Provisional Government of the’ in the small-format Proclamation and ‘Sovereign Independent Republic’ in the Second War Bulletin are set in the same size of De Vinne. The first line of the Proclamation and Pearse’s signature in the Second War Bulletin are also set in an identical type, apparently the Long Primer Wide Latin of the London typefoundry Pavyer & Bullen. Where three different and distinctive types can all be identified in use in two very similar documents of about the same date, there is a strong probability that they may be the work of the same printing-office.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaUTlpK6vxwiNxWQO3HvZ5bT0VG91T5z3aq5BUQ2OjZwJ67bVP3ZaP6IaxxF-WYn4ncD5kuiXwRMRxWvzkNmDmIMIAYaM6lAKV7ID-88Sze8uhlZ-ODAyp0WfHYaHR4W38tAMS/s1600-h/23+Irish+War+News,+No.+1+-+25+Apr+1916+-+heading+2.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 180px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423582706529365218" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaUTlpK6vxwiNxWQO3HvZ5bT0VG91T5z3aq5BUQ2OjZwJ67bVP3ZaP6IaxxF-WYn4ncD5kuiXwRMRxWvzkNmDmIMIAYaM6lAKV7ID-88Sze8uhlZ-ODAyp0WfHYaHR4W38tAMS/s400/23+Irish+War+News,+No.+1+-+25+Apr+1916+-+heading+2.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The same distinctive sanserif titling type is also used to set the words THE IRISH REPUBLIC in the heading of the first and only issue of <em>Irish War News</em>, dated Tuesday 25 April, which prints a text that is known as ‘the First War Bulletin’. O’Connor tells how, having lost much of his own printing material in the police raid in March 1916, Joseph Stanley commandeered the printing office of O’Keeffe in Halston Street on behalf of Pearse and Connolly in order to print the bulletins that would carry their messages from the Post Office to the outside world, and he put Matthew Walker (from whom he had acquired his own plant) in charge. It thus seems highly probable that this small-format version of the Proclamation, like the bulletins, was printed at the O’Keeffe printing office during the week of the Rising, under Stanley’s supervision and with the authority of Pearse and Connolly.<br /><br />In the memoir he wrote for his daughter in 1939 (having destroyed all the original notes that he made at the time), William Wylie included this passage relating to the trial of Thomas MacDonagh in May 1916:<br /><br />‘It was during this trial that General Blackadder [Brigadier-General C. Blackader, the president of the court] asked me wasn’t there a proclamation of a Republic which was signed by McDonagh amongst others and why did I not draw their attention to it. I said that I understood there was such a document (as matter of fact I had a copy in my pocket) but I was not in a position to prove it. The General asked “why not”? I replied that a printed document with printed names at the end of it was not proof against any of the alleged signatories. That my name or the General’s might have been put there by the printer. That unless I could get the original and prove the accused’s signature to it, that it was not evidence against the accused and that I must ask the Court to obliterate all knowledge of it from their minds.’<br /><br />It seems highly likely that the small format Proclamation that is shown here was the copy that Wylie refers to. No complete copy of the original Proclamation has been found among the records of the courts martial in the National Archives at Kew, though there is a very under-inked copy of the lower half, with all the signatures, in the dossier relating to Sean MacDermott. It does not appear to have been referred to during the trial. However notwithstanding Wylie’s exchange with Blackader, there is no doubt that the Proclamation was a factor in the execution of the signatories. In a note of 11 May addressed to Asquith, General Maxwell, the military commander in Dublin, included among the categories of rebels condemned to death ‘those who signed [the] proclamation on behalf of [the] Provisional Government.’<br /><br /><strong></strong><strong>The Proclamation in the sale room, 1998 to 2009 </strong><br />This is a summary list of recent auctions at which copies of the Proclamation have been put up for sale, with a note of the prices realized. I shall be grateful for additions and corrections.<br />5 December 1998. Mealy’s, Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny. £26,000.<br />1 January 2001. Whyte’s, Dublin. £52,000.<br />11 December 2003. Sotheby’s, London (L03409). Lot 5. £69,600.<br />8 July 2004. Sotheby’s, London (L04407). Lot 9. £123,200.<br />16 December 2004. Sotheby’s, London (L04413), Lot 35. £168,000.<br />12 June 2005. Whyte’s, Dublin. €125,000.<br />12 April 2006. James Adam & Sons, Dublin. Lot 404. €200,000.<br />17 April 2007. James Adam & Sons, Dublin. Lot 409, €240,000.<br />15 April 2008. Adam’s and Mealy’s, Dublin. Lot 587. €360,000.<br />11 December 2008. Sotheby’s, New York (N08501). Lot 179. Estimate $180,000 to $275,000. No sale.<br />28 April 2009. Adam’s and Mealy’s, Dublin. Lot 630. €220,000.<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Sources </strong><br />These are the chief printed sources that relate directly to the printing of the Proclamation:<br /><br />Joseph J. Bouch, <em>The Republican Proclamation of Easter Monday, 1916 </em>(Dublin, 1936). Bibliographical Society of Ireland. <em>Publications</em>, vol. 5, no. 3. Reprinted 1954.<br />John O’Connor, <em>The 1916 Proclamation </em>(Dublin: Anvil Books in association with Irish Books and Media, Minneapolis, 1999; revised reprint Anvil Books, 2007). Second revised edition of <em>The Story of the 1916 Proclamation </em>(Dublin: Abbey Press, 1986).<br />Tom Reilly, <em>Joe Stanley, printer to the Rising </em>(Dingle, Co. Kerry: Brandon Books, Mount Eagle Publications, 2005).<br />Michael J. Molloy, ‘He helped to print the Proclamation.’ <em>My Easter week, by members of the rank and file. </em>The first in a special daily series of first-hand accounts of events during, or leading up to, the Easter Rising. <em>Evening Herald</em>, Dublin, 4 April 1966, page 6.<br /><br />Charles Townshend, <em>Easter 1916: the Irish rebellion </em>(London: Allen Lane, 2005), cited above, is the most recent general study, with an up to date bibliography and list of sources.<br /><br />Among online sources, the <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/focus/easterrising/"><em>Irish Times </em>web site</a>, made in 2006 in association with the Department of Education & Science, gives an excellent overview of the events and has an extensive reading list.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi97ptQqULOoEHhBgDRMklFW5QxrYeiwwhGwYfJluhO_hPNTLDkK_DFZPY1itdUxkfQIDClc9kWJcKFXDU5ORP2y2IxS85tMl7ocKR1g0d5vggUbyjxfvS_-yJiOB-cx6VDsayX/s1600-h/31+Proclamation+-+McWeeny+-+72+dpi.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 286px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423601486657854146" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi97ptQqULOoEHhBgDRMklFW5QxrYeiwwhGwYfJluhO_hPNTLDkK_DFZPY1itdUxkfQIDClc9kWJcKFXDU5ORP2y2IxS85tMl7ocKR1g0d5vggUbyjxfvS_-yJiOB-cx6VDsayX/s400/31+Proclamation+-+McWeeny+-+72+dpi.jpg" /></a><br /><br />See also <em>The 1916 rising: personalities and perspectives</em>, the <a href="http://www.nli.ie/1916/">online exhibition </a>of the National Library of Ireland. The image above, which gives a useful reminder of the true scale of the original, is from the exhibition and is shown here by courtesy of the National Library. Its caption, with the reference to the original photograph, is: ‘Dr Edward McWeeney reading a copy of the Proclamation on Easter Monday, 24 April. Seeing it posted on the railings of 86 St. Stephen’s Green, McWeeney, a University College Dublin academic, took it to the garden at the back where he had this photograph taken by Fr Sherwin CC. (PC04, Lot 28)’.<br /><br />The records of the Bureau of Military History, which for many years were inaccessible, were released to historians in 2003. Duplicate copies of the Witness Statements were placed in the National Archives in Dublin, and a small selection from them has been placed online, including that of <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/1916/WS716/1.html">Michael Molloy </a>(1952) from which some extracts are quoted above.<br /><em></em><br /><em>The Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em>, cited above, compiled and published by the <em>Weekly Irish Times, </em>is an invaluable narrative of the events. It appears to have been reprinted several times between 1916 and 1918, mostly from existing stereotype plates but with the addition of some new matter. Fortunately – since it was printed on an acidic ‘mechanical wood’ paper that has decayed badly – there is a digital version of the 1917 edition, issued by Archive CD Books Ireland, Dublin.<br /><br /><strong></strong><strong>Acknowledgements<br /></strong>This text could not have been compiled without the help of members of the staff of many institutions who have responded with great generosity to my queries. I would like to thank most especially individuals at the National Library of Ireland, the National Museum of Ireland, Trinity College and University College, Dublin; the Ulster Museum, Belfast; the National Archives, Kew; the Chapin Library, Williams College, Williamstown, MA; the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS; and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. My especially heartfelt thanks are due to Richard Ring, curator of special collections at Providence Public Library, Providence, RI, USA, for his help, and to the library for providing and permitting the use of a scan of the copy of the Proclamation in their possession. It is a part of the George W. Potter and Alfred M. Williams Memorial Collection on Irish Culture, and was acquired in Dublin in 1949. The notes that are given above on the types used in the Proclamation, however limited in their scope they may be, were made possible by the use of this image. The library also supplied the image of the reproduction of the Proclamation that appears in the <em>Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook</em> of 1916.<br /><br />I should mention the following text as one that came belatedly to my notice, and with the title of which, unintentionally on my part, that of this post shares a word: Linda King, ‘Text as image: the Proclamation of the Irish Republic’, in <em>History, technology, criticism: a collection of essays</em>, pp. 4–7. Published by <em>Circa</em>, issue 98 (Winter 2001), for Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.<br /><br />I shall be grateful to receive notice of things to add and to correct.<br /><br />Last edited 10 August 2010.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-46144778998137633872009-12-07T13:27:00.082+00:002011-11-30T09:10:27.625+00:00Eric Gill’s R: the Italian connection<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieR2DOOsQOEskMpb8vEgmzQ_3uf0Jy-sQtRgwtPM4D4T1tx69Uun_P4XKGvevVWzIG9cB_ThGtAc6rtMJ7pIv2i6aTPnmiriaCJTR8CTbfoXS2hVXkcSWclsOqhobwszLRjTxP/s1600-h/EG+Joanna+drwg+R+1200.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 340px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412546209110716130" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieR2DOOsQOEskMpb8vEgmzQ_3uf0Jy-sQtRgwtPM4D4T1tx69Uun_P4XKGvevVWzIG9cB_ThGtAc6rtMJ7pIv2i6aTPnmiriaCJTR8CTbfoXS2hVXkcSWclsOqhobwszLRjTxP/s400/EG+Joanna+drwg+R+1200.jpg" /></a><br /><div><br /><em>Last edited 13 May 2010</em></div><div></div><div>The letter R in any of Gill’s types is unmistakeably his own: the tail springs from the relatively small upper bowl with a dynamic curve and then, straightening, continues at an angle to the base line below, which it meets with a flat terminal, sometimes enlivened (as in Perpetua and Joanna) with a hint at a serif.<br /></div><div>In 1930 Beatrice Warde picked out the R as one of the letters which helps Gill Sans to ‘achieve a personality of its own’, adding that it ‘would be recognised by anyone who had watched this letter develop out of Mr. Gill’s straight-tailed R’. A study of Gill’s lettering shows that this form of R did not so much develop as happen rather abruptly in about 1907.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhAilALcOkwY1y5ie3ejN9TuXmknxjVxuQqmrmqznbQyIo7QQJIQcOVZTh0ZwDGkVOF0DHJfxkrYnZUeT72ZUvmOgwca5PRnav1irHEna99XrNmolrstLCgbztTj9QJuikmNTm/s1600-h/Gill+%26+Christie+plate+-+det+bw.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 150px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412490736147799522" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhAilALcOkwY1y5ie3ejN9TuXmknxjVxuQqmrmqznbQyIo7QQJIQcOVZTh0ZwDGkVOF0DHJfxkrYnZUeT72ZUvmOgwca5PRnav1irHEna99XrNmolrstLCgbztTj9QJuikmNTm/s400/Gill+%26+Christie+plate+-+det+bw.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>Gill had begun to use a ‘straight-tailed R’ when he submitted to the discipline of the calligraphic teaching of Edward Johnston.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4lSyOOYYC_KB4cY4U66-Zxy6o2poJK4DhTi_TP4BpZgBh65dAHwkzU5ccedIgp2lPiWjkH-sByfPsJinC17YBK0yAcQ5w4nobCycfZzfrsWxoJgDpKGint-ZS3mwYAvJTTpho/s1600-h/BERS+caps+from+EJ+W%26I%26L+1906+fig+159+-+3a+-+1200.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 216px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412491533370762850" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4lSyOOYYC_KB4cY4U66-Zxy6o2poJK4DhTi_TP4BpZgBh65dAHwkzU5ccedIgp2lPiWjkH-sByfPsJinC17YBK0yAcQ5w4nobCycfZzfrsWxoJgDpKGint-ZS3mwYAvJTTpho/s400/BERS+caps+from+EJ+W%26I%26L+1906+fig+159+-+3a+-+1200.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>This R, with its tail springing from the main stem, was shown by Johnston in his <em>Writing and illuminating and lettering </em>(1906), above, as (slightly surprisingly) one of the ‘narrow letters’ in his list of the essential forms of ‘the Roman alphabet and its derivatives’.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip9Z04-eBjKN35dpv6fJQEhicgEcsxDfTeA01QZuUlSSymi8DHGxptUTpiphQusNSVBgvDpYknjOA0PF3-WACv_1ycq-_xWms0dij06vtLNAZWBunZueBAZxJ9O09j4CRp5c48/s1600-h/R+from+EG+in+EJ+W%26I%26L+1906+fig+215+1+-+1100.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 382px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412491965292867586" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip9Z04-eBjKN35dpv6fJQEhicgEcsxDfTeA01QZuUlSSymi8DHGxptUTpiphQusNSVBgvDpYknjOA0PF3-WACv_1ycq-_xWms0dij06vtLNAZWBunZueBAZxJ9O09j4CRp5c48/s400/R+from+EG+in+EJ+W%26I%26L+1906+fig+215+1+-+1100.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>In the chapter on lettercutting that Gill contributed to Johnston’s book he showed the same shape (above) adapted for cutting in stone, and he suggested that ‘beauty of form may safely be left to a right use of the chisel combined with a well-advised study of the best examples of inscriptions: such as that on the Trajan Column and other Roman inscriptions in the South Kensington and British Museums.’<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYgdqzGFsJqWK44t1yT7dIFzKSLJpGAFSHvK32F7HjEpOMOpIJW-eWsTxKIm2ADTa4SrM7bkGss061DtGVIJ9tZDrCDPujMv3IIGNURCiwnGaIxmF7KopzGhcZ79iAoVo7xcch/s1600-h/EG+Nichols+mem+1907.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 253px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412492343013262386" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYgdqzGFsJqWK44t1yT7dIFzKSLJpGAFSHvK32F7HjEpOMOpIJW-eWsTxKIm2ADTa4SrM7bkGss061DtGVIJ9tZDrCDPujMv3IIGNURCiwnGaIxmF7KopzGhcZ79iAoVo7xcch/s400/EG+Nichols+mem+1907.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>But in an inscription that Gill cut in 1907 to the memory of Irene Nichols, a detail from which is shown above, several of the letters depart from his current style. The bracketing of the serifs extends so far up the stems of the thin strokes that these are almost wedge-shaped. E is a curved uncial form. G is curly. M has a high centre, and R has a curved tail springing from the bowl. None of these shapes is sanctioned by Johnston, although the high-centred M appears in his Underground letter. None resembles the letters of the Trajan column nor any other lettering of Imperial Rome. However all of them are present, sometimes as alternative forms, in an inscription (although it is not a Roman one), that is indeed in the South Kensington (now the Victoria & Albert) Museum, which acquired it in 1887.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0mO9mY-ahOiB15ITgG3txSdfYkhTwHPnqifJxu94JJTjg6f34MTLoLs9GYKLkiX2CMIbWRqJMBSUmY18PcBisUvP32-jjIwGg8uC40e-ZnLF9pR_7KK9L0gxGfVICjtsGkQ_b/s1600-h/Spinetta+Malaspina+04+1200.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412503617398766834" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0mO9mY-ahOiB15ITgG3txSdfYkhTwHPnqifJxu94JJTjg6f34MTLoLs9GYKLkiX2CMIbWRqJMBSUmY18PcBisUvP32-jjIwGg8uC40e-ZnLF9pR_7KK9L0gxGfVICjtsGkQ_b/s400/Spinetta+Malaspina+04+1200.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglwUWrSdJP5jLIOF9q5KT9Jttuk6x0dcuqECiFzHAUX7CBWE_F7efPrWigZ25RI3DKS_aj48mRMEXOVICQUNHnEl8-KDcTaJG5NBLkmGOWdwZ8CjKywDGZmoMiuaY1ayCzXo3a/s1600-h/Spinetta+3.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 216px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412515029900985106" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglwUWrSdJP5jLIOF9q5KT9Jttuk6x0dcuqECiFzHAUX7CBWE_F7efPrWigZ25RI3DKS_aj48mRMEXOVICQUNHnEl8-KDcTaJG5NBLkmGOWdwZ8CjKywDGZmoMiuaY1ayCzXo3a/s400/Spinetta+3.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>The monument to the Marchese Spinetta Malaspina, dating from the second quarter of the fifteenth century, is from a vanished church in Verona. The wedge-shaped strokes of the letters of the inscription, which are cut to a uniform height of just under 4 cm, the high centre to M and the ‘sprung’ tail to the small-bowled R, are all characteristic of Italian, and especially Florentine, work of this period, and the resemblance to Gill’s Nichols inscription of 1907 is striking.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtEUHi3NG70g4Xts6XiEuSjfvf57i0KZzk96u9vVkVpToOpgCHYE9naCC77esTAORBPqPSeLkPacfLRc9ulk6dZlU6F08TeoL74Cq6Dr0Hui5K7Y0l2yD6bpZCciDFAfEr4lCZ/s1600-h/EG+Nichols+mem+det.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 283px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412509956143486338" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtEUHi3NG70g4Xts6XiEuSjfvf57i0KZzk96u9vVkVpToOpgCHYE9naCC77esTAORBPqPSeLkPacfLRc9ulk6dZlU6F08TeoL74Cq6Dr0Hui5K7Y0l2yD6bpZCciDFAfEr4lCZ/s400/EG+Nichols+mem+det.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>Gill was not the only British designer to have felt the appeal of this style of letter, whose influence can be seen in work by William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Gill’s mature letter forms are powerfully stamped with his own character, but they are a fusion of material from many sources.<br /></div><div>In the Florentine R, however he discovered it, Gill found a form that would serve him for the rest of his life.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrfmUdY3rCm7TAaj-CbwYFKLdwaBAamM7b35XYCUSrnuG11It5mQc7ul14SgQOYWKkPWs5GiJTkXW5gwf-8eFJMr6CrIuSKqti36cZvn3et7DCJQN2iHUEJrWI0vFzEhC0N6dR/s1600-h/EG+R+in+1920+layout+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 270px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412609535226397618" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrfmUdY3rCm7TAaj-CbwYFKLdwaBAamM7b35XYCUSrnuG11It5mQc7ul14SgQOYWKkPWs5GiJTkXW5gwf-8eFJMr6CrIuSKqti36cZvn3et7DCJQN2iHUEJrWI0vFzEhC0N6dR/s400/EG+R+in+1920+layout+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Note</strong><br /></div><div>Gill was not historically minded, and his freedom from dependence on obvious models is not the least of the secrets of the appeal of his lettering at its best. The reader of this piece must decide if the suggestion that appears here is convincing. It originally appeared in the <em>Monotype Recorder</em>, new series, no. 8 (Autumn 1990), pp. 38-9. Most of that issue of the journal consisted of essays by other hands, leaving only two pages at the end for the words and images of what I called a ‘tailpiece’. That meant its wording had to be short, no bad thing in a blog from time to time, so I have left the original words more or less untouched. But I thought it might be useful to add something by way of amplification.<br /></div><div>Irene Nichols (1862–1907) was for a time a bookbinder. She had travelled in Russia and Poland, and then in Italy. She learned bookbinding in Rome, and when she returned to England she took lessons privately from T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at his own workshop, but she never joined the Doves Bindery, and after the death of her mother in 1892 (did she perhaps inherit an income?) she largely gave up binding for ‘social work’. Her health, which had never been strong, became worse and she died in her forties from influenza. We know this much from a brief note published in her memory. Her monument, number 125 in Evan Gill’s list of his brother’s inscriptions, was set up at Ryde, Isle of Wight. Was her own evidently close association with Italy in any way responsible for this use by Gill in his lettering of an idiom that was new? There seems to be no way of discovering, but as we see, the effect of at least one detail seems to have been enduring.<br /></div><div>As for the more general influence of the ‘Florentine’ style on ideas about lettering, which would continue to be seen in drawn and incised lettering, and also in types like the Florentine and Della Robbia of the American Type Founders Company, I imagine this to be a natural effect of the widespread study during the later 19th century of the Florentine sculpture with which the inscriptions are often associated. In the cast court of the South Kensington Museum there were casts of the Donatello Judith and Holofernes from the Piazza della Signoria, with his signature in a mature <em>littera antiqua </em>(for some reason it has just been moved next to the fragment of the façade of the late 16th-century London house of Sir Paul Pindar in the museum’s new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries in which the Spinetta Malaspina monument has been re-installed), and of the <em>Cantoria</em>, the singing gallery of Luca della Robbia (1431–8), intended for the cathedral, which is exhibited in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. Its painted inscription is carefully reproduced on the museum’s cast. (The eastern cast court is closed at present. The image of a detail of the <em>Cantoria</em> shown here was made at a distance from a gallery that overlooks the court.)<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGFhIbteoPoBQqUFtz0ehM_7LvA1HMLM-mbgxaI2Tlv0I48M3JV-_8inTgcEHtbW7mgP5e5FbwFkMbYr-OQm-UsNirfrD6BRv8tS6b5CMF53DB2xNYhBuUJWJlRJ_91nUffJh-/s1600-h/Della+Robbia+-+Cantoria+-+cast+V%26A+1+-+900.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 266px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428891200451825618" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGFhIbteoPoBQqUFtz0ehM_7LvA1HMLM-mbgxaI2Tlv0I48M3JV-_8inTgcEHtbW7mgP5e5FbwFkMbYr-OQm-UsNirfrD6BRv8tS6b5CMF53DB2xNYhBuUJWJlRJ_91nUffJh-/s400/Della+Robbia+-+Cantoria+-+cast+V%26A+1+-+900.jpg" /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiLPpa7GRMs2BAiRUPuTlmwfJLd8SzV3pbwibhlu_1B8tRizjixCt9UVZ4Y8Db1XKZeO7ajpksNeC_A3Kp-yAUkcGwD_mXXPj42Tv052bVs2h0najVs6n351cB1Wr1HFJedMSP/s1600-h/Red+House+weathercock+-+det+a+-+850.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 267px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436925891471368178" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiLPpa7GRMs2BAiRUPuTlmwfJLd8SzV3pbwibhlu_1B8tRizjixCt9UVZ4Y8Db1XKZeO7ajpksNeC_A3Kp-yAUkcGwD_mXXPj42Tv052bVs2h0najVs6n351cB1Wr1HFJedMSP/s400/Red+House+weathercock+-+det+a+-+850.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>When I mentioned the influence of the Florentine letter on William Morris, someone whose lack of enthusiasm for Italian models generally might make his choice of this one seem surprising, I was thinking of the pierced brass weather vane at his Red House at Bexleyheath. (Perhaps I should add that my image was made in the garden at Red House when the original drawing had been brought there by John Brandon Jones with some other items on the occasion of a visit organized by the William Morris Society.) But the design is by his friend Philip Webb, the architect of Red House, and not by Morris himself. The drawing, on a scale of half an inch to one foot, is now among the RIBA Drawings and Archives, [33], 5 (folder PB86/Webb), held at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It is signed and dated Nov. 1859, shows the initals W and J, for William and Jane, intertwined, height 140 mm (5½ in), and the date in a fascinating and extraordinary set of numerals. It is one of the earliest examples that I know of the revived Florentine letter. As for Johnston’s use in his Underground letter of the non-classical Florentine M with its high centre, the form is repeated in Gill Sans, and it is tempting to speculate whether this may have been was a part of the contribution to the project that it is known that Gill was paid for.<br /></div><div>The essay by Beatrice Warde / Paul Beaujon that I cited in my original text was ‘Eric Gill, sculptor of letters’, in <em>The Fleuron </em>7 (1930), pp. 27–60 (at p. 41). The examples of Eric Gill’s work are from the St Bride Library. My thanks to Paul Donoghue for some useful discussion of Red House.</div><div></div><div>Last edited 13 May 2010.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-56108638778719483512009-07-21T14:17:00.094+00:002011-09-19T08:35:00.296+00:00A lost Caslon type: Long Primer No 1<p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal">When the 18th-century types of the Caslon foundry were recast from surviving matrices in the 19th century, not all of the original types were revived. One of these missing types is the subject of this essay.</p><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiII_xh-O91hPg3ONwvIq7maxvgpSXhqHxXskrt9LhYoCRn3bVvVnYBC3CHEEagMy5zN_fKSSmYsc4KQTsnOnTGeIcmApQVi1UZf4MLdkIlufkeNaYK5mvwSw2BEIsuPHTDwyaT/s1600-h/Caslon+LP+1+%26+2+1734+sheet+1+1200.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5370112851223863474" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiII_xh-O91hPg3ONwvIq7maxvgpSXhqHxXskrt9LhYoCRn3bVvVnYBC3CHEEagMy5zN_fKSSmYsc4KQTsnOnTGeIcmApQVi1UZf4MLdkIlufkeNaYK5mvwSw2BEIsuPHTDwyaT/s400/Caslon+LP+1+%26+2+1734+sheet+1+1200.jpg" /></a><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal">The first surviving Caslon type specimen sheet, issued from Ironmonger Row and bearing the date 1734, shows two roman types with the body of Long Primer (very approximately ten points), No 1 and No 2. They share the same capitals. The image above is from the first widely published printing of this sheet, with the foundry’s new address in Chiswell Street, as it appeared in the second edition of Chambers’s <em>Cyclopaedia</em>, London, 1738. It is never easy to know how to interpret the meaning of the ordinal numbers attached to the types of English founders, but in this instance it looks as if No 2 was the earlier type. It is used in Thomas Parsons, <em>A Sermon preach’d at the Funeral of John, Earl of Rochester, </em>13th edition, London, 1728, whereas the earliest use that has been found of the No 1 (which is the better of the two), is in the <em>Gentleman’s Magazine </em>for May 1732.</p><br />This was an appropriate place to find it, since this type became ubiquitous in English newspapers and magazines during the middle years of the 18th century.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcIDlU7rVfxMIYWMauEu6vQUf3CmvHMPtYzJsd7_KGvClFg6iF89vhxYc4nspF6dfcE8f8B5vmMXhyphenhyphenhyphenhyphenatLrdT8heCbxF5pyJaESzbgPBPDJdOxT80WDZe85-EWwMhDa9VexfH/s1600-h/1+AR+1779+-+1200.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 368px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360920208729330770" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcIDlU7rVfxMIYWMauEu6vQUf3CmvHMPtYzJsd7_KGvClFg6iF89vhxYc4nspF6dfcE8f8B5vmMXhyphenhyphenhyphenhyphenatLrdT8heCbxF5pyJaESzbgPBPDJdOxT80WDZe85-EWwMhDa9VexfH/s400/1+AR+1779+-+1200.jpg" /></a><br />Here it is, above, many years after its creation, in a detail from the two-column octavo page of the <em>Annual Register </em>for 1779, recording the words of the President of the Court Martial that acquitted Admiral Augustus Keppel of the charge of lack of zeal in pursuing the enemy, in language that will be familiar to readers of Patrick O’Brian.<br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG-3sk8m0Hvo1TLzXzmGv5NOyHtlJWEdAsIfikKJAE1hx2IJ7MELUA7szKiGm6lqc0EgxcfzpeXZRiD_o4ANnjxI6kxFaY6j4vgPoQPiXWEaAC4ThgLLumPkj6seQo4DbysudY/s1600-h/2+North+Briton+45+-+1200.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 325px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360921833964340194" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG-3sk8m0Hvo1TLzXzmGv5NOyHtlJWEdAsIfikKJAE1hx2IJ7MELUA7szKiGm6lqc0EgxcfzpeXZRiD_o4ANnjxI6kxFaY6j4vgPoQPiXWEaAC4ThgLLumPkj6seQo4DbysudY/s400/2+North+Briton+45+-+1200.jpg" /></a><br />It is well known that John Wilkes was charged with seditious libel for publishing number 45 of of his weekly journal <em>The North Briton </em>in 1763. It is rather less widely known that the administration, having failed to find evidence to tie him to the printing of the original No 45, suborned the workmen who were reprinting the whole journal in his own house in Great George Street. This elegant little foolscap octavo edition was set in the Long Primer. Another work begun at the press was a pornographic <em>Essay on Woman </em>that was mostly the work of his more disreputable friends. The proofs of this text, which were secured by government spies, were used to bring a simultaneous charge of obscene libel. This fatal measure – the setting up of his private press – was his undoing, said John Almon.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht6cp9J6Ifm5gg7_Kw2btJ5NFufcK1KI5jiC4uR6cwVKdxxBnXyBkC5YKeYD33pympFXiMxHEKjpkDG6Gm0-rtZrkbkVJFrFOytYIRzW7tvGY945l8YgT4cAc7lVdp-8OEwlJu/s1600-h/Boulanger+3+900.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 321px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361243638820713314" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht6cp9J6Ifm5gg7_Kw2btJ5NFufcK1KI5jiC4uR6cwVKdxxBnXyBkC5YKeYD33pympFXiMxHEKjpkDG6Gm0-rtZrkbkVJFrFOytYIRzW7tvGY945l8YgT4cAc7lVdp-8OEwlJu/s400/Boulanger+3+900.jpg" /></a><br />A work of political scepticism, <em>Recherches sur l’origine du despotisme oriental, </em>written by the <em>encylopédiste </em>N. A. Boulanger, was also set in the Long Primer No 1 and printed at Wilkes’s press; it completed the trio of challenges to contemporary received ideas. The two first titles led (when he omitted to turn up to answer the charges) to Wilkes’s outlawry and a not unenjoyable period in France and Italy. This was followed by his triumphant return, and, after two years in prison to purge his crime, to his re-election as a member of parliament and election as Lord Mayor of London.</p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal">The materials for the private press that Wilkes so rashly created had been supplied by Dryden Leach, a printer in Crane Court, Fleet Street, who had stepped in to print two numbers of the regular <em>North Briton </em>(25 and 26) when its first printer had been frightened off by government menaces, and was able to collect substantial damages for his arrest on the unjustified charge of printing No 45. In 1763 Leach had printed the first of the type specimen books of the Caslon typefoundry. </p><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhulEFWUsQFfIIFtY7i7yCU8W6kNqnekAVVgu2H751MMAca6k8YncAdjcEvjIkj86WNBpwMf2qnxFMYhsOHVHmYVvcpR6nQEDHif7DOpysGxzVIX27vRWlvSRoX-VTmqHdb2uKl/s1600-h/3+-+Caslon+LP1+1766+-+1200.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 267px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360924138522946962" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhulEFWUsQFfIIFtY7i7yCU8W6kNqnekAVVgu2H751MMAca6k8YncAdjcEvjIkj86WNBpwMf2qnxFMYhsOHVHmYVvcpR6nQEDHif7DOpysGxzVIX27vRWlvSRoX-VTmqHdb2uKl/s400/3+-+Caslon+LP1+1766+-+1200.jpg" /></a><br />Here is a close detail of the Long Primer No 1, from the printing of 1766. (It was from this impression that the complete facsimile of the specimen in Journal 16 of the Printing Historical Society was made.)</p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJH38Hq3YYrKWAc6E0J8H6hOJGggqCCp1C9uPTEm2U_qiVRvx3q3MDPdx4qmGq20o7L-8w7df0V8epu0xYn-9T-LgsKT3WPbh2gc2G3GRrBqXx_kzNEfhp1PlCMBwQxwgTWSZO/s1600-h/4+Capell+-+Prolusions+-+6+-+C+PS1+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 256px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360925465642056818" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJH38Hq3YYrKWAc6E0J8H6hOJGggqCCp1C9uPTEm2U_qiVRvx3q3MDPdx4qmGq20o7L-8w7df0V8epu0xYn-9T-LgsKT3WPbh2gc2G3GRrBqXx_kzNEfhp1PlCMBwQxwgTWSZO/s400/4+Capell+-+Prolusions+-+6+-+C+PS1+-+1000.jpg" /></a><br />Leach, who had a reputation as one of the more distinguished London printers,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>produced some texts for a demanding client, Edward Capell. Capell’s <em>Prolusions, or select pieces of antient poetry</em>, was published in 1760, with long s used only for the unvoiced sound of the consonant (so ‘apprise’ with its voiced consonant in the text above has a ‘short s’) and with a colophon evidently designed to echo the practice of early printers, naming Leach as the printer and giving the date of the completion of printing in 1759. It was set in the Caslon Long Primer No 1 and excellently printed on wove paper that was presumably supplied by James Whatman. (It is among the earliest examples of the use of such paper.) The Long Primer was also used for Capell’s edition of Shakespeare, another small octavo, printed on wove paper like the <em>Prolusions</em>, which Leach began to set in 1760.</p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLGhRDVOtb_OSOibLs7fO4JEExVEOE9rN9E6KMfV63X3L-S-xXT_ov9pqULNX5OKNOx8qEL5TLv57WKxk5r755Wyws7jAO_hM-eLflhyphenhyphens8EQb8kmLHnNl4zqN0Q8GLE0Av1qji/s1600-h/5a+Gray+-+1.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 278px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360926242582371026" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLGhRDVOtb_OSOibLs7fO4JEExVEOE9rN9E6KMfV63X3L-S-xXT_ov9pqULNX5OKNOx8qEL5TLv57WKxk5r755Wyws7jAO_hM-eLflhyphenhyphens8EQb8kmLHnNl4zqN0Q8GLE0Av1qji/s400/5a+Gray+-+1.jpg" /></a><br />A popular collection of contemporary poetry during the 18th century, with a steady sale, was the <em>Collection of poems in six volumes by several hands</em>, published by R. & J. Dodsley. Gray’s <em>Elegy </em>opens the fourth volume of the fifth edition, 1758. The work was set in the Long Primer No 1 and printed by J. Hughs, who like Leach had a contemporary reputation as a good craftsman, conscientious and capable of excellent, simply designed work. The poems in Dodsley’s <em>Collection </em>are divided by lines of the type ornaments, many of which are derived from 16th-century models, that came from the Caslon foundry.</p><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAwymllkHNEOTmSZ1cA3pklD6TWUGJS-z-p7sPfXJCV9Sci1FgJPKs7ISiNIwcotnOvo8lQA2YtGihB4ds2XuHJN_kqVprxSeJcbbwzkiSp9udOGkhfpKafn28ncfC229fkdjO/s1600-h/Dodsley+flowers+1+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 269px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361239370579110514" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAwymllkHNEOTmSZ1cA3pklD6TWUGJS-z-p7sPfXJCV9Sci1FgJPKs7ISiNIwcotnOvo8lQA2YtGihB4ds2XuHJN_kqVprxSeJcbbwzkiSp9udOGkhfpKafn28ncfC229fkdjO/s400/Dodsley+flowers+1+800.jpg" /></a><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal">To those who consult original printed texts of the 18th century, a work set in Caslon’s Long Primer No 1 can give a pleasure for reasons of which the reader may be barely conscious and can hardly analyze. It is not an overtly elegant type. To work well on so small a scale the type needs its rugged and slightly reinforced detail, features that if need be can survive contemporary presswork at the wooden hand press on laid paper that is not always of the finest quality. The detail of the the specimen of 1766 above shows type that is rather too heavily impressed but being relatively newly-cast, it clearly shows the elements of the design.</p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal">The Long Primer No 1 is a type with generous proportions and and it was normally cast with letter-spacing that was not too tight, characteristics that are needed in types on a small body. And yet it is so soundly made that words that are set in it keep their shape and are comfortably readable. The nearest parallel that I can think of in later metal types is among the smaller sizes of Imprint, the typeface made by Monotype in England in 1912, which was intended as an interpretation of Caslon Old Face for 20th-century machine setting and printing. Imprint is not an obviously elegant typeface, but it is one that, well set and machined, can be deeply satisfying to read. It is a pity that its adaptation was one of the least successful results of Monotype’s conversion of its fonts to digital form. It is equally regrettable that the matrices of Caslon’s Long Primer No 1 were not used when Caslon Old Face was revived in the 19th century. They seem not to have survived. The recast Long Primer type was from the matrices of the relatively mediocre Long Primer No 2.</p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal">None of the images shown here on screen can give a true idea of the charm of this type at first hand on its original scale and as it was intended to appear. For that experience one needs to read original 18th-century materials, but they need not be elaborate or grandiose editions. It is a type that works best in the narrow measure of a two-column page or in quite modest octavos.</p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5etgHW3syFP2lgC_Rn1Ri_u42NAHj0ElxHX2gq2YiHRebvnkvyvQBb_3S4XAou1BhcCbLrVQQEUdLlTeOtB2zPQpv3d7N8e1t7I_ZTKQBaLiDBpP8sbxGoAhi8_3WNTDGe8br/s1600-h/6+-+Wesley+Memorial.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 279px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360926579254974322" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5etgHW3syFP2lgC_Rn1Ri_u42NAHj0ElxHX2gq2YiHRebvnkvyvQBb_3S4XAou1BhcCbLrVQQEUdLlTeOtB2zPQpv3d7N8e1t7I_ZTKQBaLiDBpP8sbxGoAhi8_3WNTDGe8br/s400/6+-+Wesley+Memorial.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The Caslon Long Primer No 1 has been revived, but on a scale and in a medium that have little to do with typography. </p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal">On 24 May 1738 an Anglican minister, John Wesley (1703–91), attending a prayer meeting in Aldersgate Street, just outside the City of London, felt his heart ‘strangely warm’d’. He was moved to undertake the life of tireless itinerant preaching that led to the founding of Methodism. In about 1980 a group of Methodists, wishing to commemorate his experience on the spot where it had taken place, had the idea of setting up a memorial in the form of a flame, about fifteen feet high, cast in bronze, on which there was to be visible the description of Wesley’s account of his conversion in his own words, as printed in the first edition of his journal. Would it be possible, they asked, to reconstruct the printed page, on a monumental scale, but as exactly and faithfully as possible. </p><br /><p style="MARGIN: 0pc 0pc 0pt" class="MsoNormal">This seemed likely to be a hugely demanding operation, calling for great sensitivity and skill on the part of the foundry. The type used for the text of the <em>Journal </em>was the Caslon Long Primer No 1. A photograph was made from the showing of the type in the Caslon specimen of 1766 at the St Bride Library. From this image, large relief pattern letters were made, with which the page of text was recreated for casting. A few of the patterns slightly misinterpret the form of the type (lower case i is one of these), but by and large the project was realized very well. The flame memorial, dedicated in 1981, can be seen just outside the entrance to the Museum of London on the pedestrian walkway that crosses what remains of Aldersgate Street after the rebuilding of the area that is now known as the Barbican. Among the credits discreetly added to the memorial is one giving the name of the original maker of the letters, William Caslon.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-24533757816214820972009-03-09T13:50:00.249+00:002010-12-18T14:48:46.311+00:00The Trieste leaf: a Bodoni forgery?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQaaz96nbL0SKQVaoNTM3ZLIstJZCQvIoHMQCHjeQNNpWiTPfPd5lpdKRBYB5Pknxpv5jLw7kZB_Ki-cDs93hu9XgtBDxtIKmgIS6ODAhcb7RdkoSMWhCyvc4HaJdBe_4OWbUl/s1600-h/1+Man+tip+1788+-+Mardersteig+facsim+1964+f+71+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 267px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311187547846333394" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQaaz96nbL0SKQVaoNTM3ZLIstJZCQvIoHMQCHjeQNNpWiTPfPd5lpdKRBYB5Pknxpv5jLw7kZB_Ki-cDs93hu9XgtBDxtIKmgIS6ODAhcb7RdkoSMWhCyvc4HaJdBe_4OWbUl/s400/1+Man+tip+1788+-+Mardersteig+facsim+1964+f+71+-+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><em>Last edited 7 August 2010</em><br /><br />This leaf is from the facsimile edition of Giambattista Bodoni’s first comprehensive specimen of his own types, his <em>Manuale tipografico </em>dated 1788, printed by Giovanni Mardersteig at the Officina Bodoni, Verona, in 1968.<br /><br />The original work, which was printed in several formats, is one of the rarest of the Bodoni specimens, and its production was the outcome of some years of activity during which Bodoni cut many new types, of which he printed specimen pages with different typographical treatments. It appears, moreover, to have been produced in two parts, and Bodoni’s close confidant in Rome, José Nicolás de Azara, who acknowledged the receipt of leaves 1 to 50 in January 1788, complained two years later that he had still not had the rest of the specimen (A. Ciavarella, ed. <em>De Azara–Bodoni, </em>Parma: Museo Bodoniano, 1979).<br /><br />The types that are shown in Bodoni’s early specimens have never been examined systematically, which is something that needs to be done, since many of them were not included in the more formal specimens. And although the inventory of his materials drawn up in 1843 includes an extensive list of ‘Punzoni e matrici de’ primi lavori i quali facevano parte del Manuale del 1788, molti dei quali sono servibili’ (punches and matrices of the early works that appear in the Manuale of 1788, many of which are usable), it is not known for certain whether all of them survive among the collections at Parma. There are collections of these early leaves in several places, and there is a summary of them in the list of Italian type specimens that was published in <em>La Bibliofilía </em>in 2000. (For the reference, see <strong>Sources</strong>, below.)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXhqXtWp50gqJ9STigKFNqyAFqAHOdD-Y70BB0I5RsRiyIGQQgI2gx3PCf01vdhKV8Q-bPkT0md_D1_lLz4uHemwLQp5LqO10rPsfqeq6ML41m7QMwpCAKTV039xsgpYckXebV/s1600-h/2+GBB+1788+MT+-+Silvio+&+MS+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 261px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311187928373984274" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXhqXtWp50gqJ9STigKFNqyAFqAHOdD-Y70BB0I5RsRiyIGQQgI2gx3PCf01vdhKV8Q-bPkT0md_D1_lLz4uHemwLQp5LqO10rPsfqeq6ML41m7QMwpCAKTV039xsgpYckXebV/s400/2+GBB+1788+MT+-+Silvio+%26+MS+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />This proof for one of these trial leaves, annotated by Bodoni himself, is from a volume that was in the collection of the Marchese Saporiti della Sforzesca, at the sale of which in London in 1886 William Blades and Talbot Baines Reed bought many items that are now in the St Bride Library.<br /><br />The texts used for all these specimens are short descriptions of cities. Some of the earlier examples include the names of foreign cities – Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Madrid – as well as Italian ones. But the cities that are named on the leaves of the <em>Manuale tipografico </em>dated 1788 are all Italian, and they provided an identity for each type and its punches and matrices when several designs were made for the same body. Roman and italic types in the smaller sizes are shown on the same leaf, but after leaf 50 the roman is shown on one leaf, with the text in Italian, and the italic, with the text in French, is on another leaf, bearing the same number but in roman numerals. Three types appear in two states, one later in style than the other, and Mardersteig includes examples of these in his facsimile.<br /><br />Here, below, is a leaf showing a type for the body of Canoncino (about 28 points) with a text describing Crema, a town near Milan which at this date formed a detached part of the Venetian Republic. And below it is the leaf numbered 72 in the <em>Manuale tipografico</em>, showing not only a revised state of the type, but a setting in which the long s has been discarded. (But note that this is not the type that bears the name of Crema in the <em>Manuale tipografico</em> of 1818, which is a very different design.)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiktg5-ECI3TTw5Fz1tDBaQ-fRwVDi9IJwCAEnFrNoDYz02S3h7YAX1rE65aouyMRz1q-Mj8T6CuW96ktMWyAyEzNFl1y3p907FQBMCTbsoo6MXB2BurVd12LrK3W2SnfmVFtSp/s1600-h/MT+1788+-+early+proofs+-+Crema+-+Canoncino.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 250px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312579043933593090" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiktg5-ECI3TTw5Fz1tDBaQ-fRwVDi9IJwCAEnFrNoDYz02S3h7YAX1rE65aouyMRz1q-Mj8T6CuW96ktMWyAyEzNFl1y3p907FQBMCTbsoo6MXB2BurVd12LrK3W2SnfmVFtSp/s400/MT+1788+-+early+proofs+-+Crema+-+Canoncino.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2CLdwwFi-I3ge0LQNjNuUNp9ZAes_gNbF_jbHeypJYOZ_9XapJ22lrat6Xs-QB3PB18YYw5FC-3EhmQBp5advCUyWRgNMyVCAPjyamfax_hi3fMMKUAfVSD0O_YemZRWXs10K/s1600-h/GBB+1788+MT+f+72+-+Crema+3+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 264px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313051673439002866" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2CLdwwFi-I3ge0LQNjNuUNp9ZAes_gNbF_jbHeypJYOZ_9XapJ22lrat6Xs-QB3PB18YYw5FC-3EhmQBp5advCUyWRgNMyVCAPjyamfax_hi3fMMKUAfVSD0O_YemZRWXs10K/s400/GBB+1788+MT+f+72+-+Crema+3+a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The specimen begins with a narrative of the history of Parma, showing the tiny size that Bodoni had called Parigina but renamed at about this date as Parmigianina. It ends with an example of the largest size, Papale, a leaf numbered 100, which has the text for Saluzzo in Piemonte, Bodoni’s birthplace: <em>Saluzzo mia amata patria</em> (Saluzzo, my beloved home). This image is from the second half of the <em>Manuale tipografico </em>on vellum in the St Bride Library.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgjx2qLDfUIS6N2jatkSJ-PTYybpdyHx9M9Kdcq1x-9TYogvEGLe3q_n3iROLMu7QIvb_X2iyke1gUk5AZBcqr-plpnNuqtQqjBHrBlG3iRpOyBACZ5qXXwgxSISK4GRPsJQeh/s1600-h/3+GBB+1788+MT+Saluzzo+1+vellum+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 295px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311190995468475314" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgjx2qLDfUIS6N2jatkSJ-PTYybpdyHx9M9Kdcq1x-9TYogvEGLe3q_n3iROLMu7QIvb_X2iyke1gUk5AZBcqr-plpnNuqtQqjBHrBlG3iRpOyBACZ5qXXwgxSISK4GRPsJQeh/s400/3+GBB+1788+MT+Saluzzo+1+vellum+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Leaf 71, which is shown at the head of this post, is missing from all known copies of the <em>Manuale</em>, but it is present in Mardersteig’s facsimile. So how was it possible for him to include it?<br /><br />As far as we know the leaf that Mardersteig reproduced was first described and illustrated in a work by Giampiero Giani, <em>Catalogo delle autentiche edizioni Bodoniane </em>(Milan, 1948), published under the imprint of Edizioni la Conchiglia. Giani had produced a brief monograph on Bodoni in 1946, <em>Saggio di bibliografia bodoniana</em>, and he published some works on contemporary painting during the same decade. His book of 1948 lists a number of rare items printed by Bodoni, including what he describes as a proof for this leaf.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJgNgg7dXavokJoWZuPJgo8tJIVTRKaEJJVMACaiTM2O5GDAz71noha1zVkVYOCPb8k-zt0ahmL6uKIxL10mblD98_bStDy0CvFIopmXA4ReecTyZjjpKzuKw0HgcqKSoQ_PTO/s1600-h/4+Trieste+leaf+-+Giani+1948.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 277px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311191997035250866" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJgNgg7dXavokJoWZuPJgo8tJIVTRKaEJJVMACaiTM2O5GDAz71noha1zVkVYOCPb8k-zt0ahmL6uKIxL10mblD98_bStDy0CvFIopmXA4ReecTyZjjpKzuKw0HgcqKSoQ_PTO/s400/4+Trieste+leaf+-+Giani+1948.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Giani wrote that he had found it in a copy of the <em>Manuale tipografico </em>of 1788 which was annotated in Bodoni’s own hand. The absence of the leaf from the published specimen, he explains, was accounted for by the wording of its text:<br /><br />‘Trieste, in the age of Augustus, with Venice and Istria, made up the tenth region of the [Roman] Empire. In 1719 Carlo VI declared this beautiful and ancient Italian city of ours a free port.’<br /><br />A porto franco or free port was one that was free of many of the taxes and duties that were commonly levied. ‘Carlo VI’ was Karl VI, the Hapsburg Emperor in Vienna, and the father of Maria-Teresa (died 1780), who followed his initiative in developing the city as Austria’s major mercantile seaport, a role that it would keep, with a brief interlude in the hands of Napoleonic France, until 1920. Although Italians continued to form a large proportion of its population, Trieste had opted for Hapsburg protection in the 13th century in order to escape domination by the Venetian Republic, which did acquire a substantial part of the peninsula of Istria, just to the south. The city was assigned to Italy after the First World War, but at the end of the Second it was claimed by Yugoslavia, and fierce disputes continued for many years. Trieste did not become an internationally recognized part of modern Italy until 1975.<br /><br />Giani suggested that that the term ‘Italian’, implying a unifying identity, was potentially a politically charged one in the separate states that made up the peninsula, in many of which France, Spain and Austria, not to mention the Papal authorities, had an interest. He remarked that Ferdinando, Duke of Parma (whose consort was one of the daughters of Maria Teresa) was especially unlikely to have welcomed the suggestion that Trieste was an Italian city. This term, said Giani, explained the suppression of the leaf. He cited a passage by Bodoni which appears to express love of his Italian identity and his pride in having done something to restore, against ‘foreign’ competition, the almost abandoned honour of Italian typography. (The passage, of which the source was not given, had been quoted in the biography of Bodoni by Piero Trevisani published in 1940.) Giani concluded that the manner in which Bodoni issued the specimen, with its pagination jumping conspicuously from leaf 70 to 72, was intended as his protest against a veto prohibiting the inclusion of the Trieste leaf.<br /><br />When Mardersteig reproduced the Trieste leaf in his facsimile, it was in the possession of the Biblioteca Cantonale in Lugano, in the Italian-speaking region of Ticino in Switzerland. In 1976, when its director Adriana Ramelli described the treasures of the library, which in 1945 had acquired the major Bodoni collection assembled many years earlier by Richard Hadl, this single leaf was the item that she counted among the most notable:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFWOeQ-75MHw1bgcDke61Gp0XzoaxCh4JMAfHg24fQixR2yzEAFn6Xxe0ZO2CC8btJuaalZ-OoXX4ad8wMFMZ0yXxmnImgUdveqqzwG711Tqn-DaEKwNndqeWdmzpIElQg7X8p/s1600-h/5+Lugano+leaf+-+Ramelli+1976+a+tr+det+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 281px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311192416622034706" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFWOeQ-75MHw1bgcDke61Gp0XzoaxCh4JMAfHg24fQixR2yzEAFn6Xxe0ZO2CC8btJuaalZ-OoXX4ad8wMFMZ0yXxmnImgUdveqqzwG711Tqn-DaEKwNndqeWdmzpIElQg7X8p/s400/5+Lugano+leaf+-+Ramelli+1976+a+tr+det+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />‘We are proud to possess this courageous declaration by Bodoni, the servant of princes who was obliged always to be respectful and obedient, of his Italian identity. Our Bodoni collection has many fine folio volumes, but the Trieste Leaf (<em>la Carta di Trieste</em>) is the most precious item we have, not only because of its absolute rarity, but because his voice – silenced for political reasons – is kept alive in this unique document that is jealously preserved in the library of the Italian part of Switzerland.’<br /><br />The pride is sincere and eloquently expressed. But it was misplaced. The leaf was not printed by Bodoni. It is set in a type designed and made in the 20th century, the ‘Bodoni’ of the American Type Founders Company, of 1911, based indeed on late types made by Bodoni but redrawn for making with the pantographic matrix-cutting machine of L. B. Benton and realised as a design by his son Morris Fuller Benton. It is one of the first revivals of a historical model by one of the major ‘type directors’ of the 20th century.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi1MCu2VHG20TXXk_BpJSlZMwJhFAztY7ns2Y_OsoZYI-k3UgdpCdhcay8aXNLfGv3UrLZoC1e52TPxsHxHPa1qED0IGeMd0nvBdvu0eoQTKD5Ir0gI-PjwhEXgmCFsv2rEU09/s1600-h/8+Augusta+Bodoni+-+1+title+bw+900.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 277px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311193217969491858" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi1MCu2VHG20TXXk_BpJSlZMwJhFAztY7ns2Y_OsoZYI-k3UgdpCdhcay8aXNLfGv3UrLZoC1e52TPxsHxHPa1qED0IGeMd0nvBdvu0eoQTKD5Ir0gI-PjwhEXgmCFsv2rEU09/s400/8+Augusta+Bodoni+-+1+title+bw+900.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The version of the 24-point type that was used on the sheet was probably the ‘Giambattista Bodoni’ of the Società Augusta of Turin (a typefoundry soon to become merged with the Società Nebiolo), who first made the type under licence from ATF in 1913. It appears in many of the publications produced in 1913 to mark the centenary of the death of Bodoni, including the monograph <em>L’arte di G. B. Bodoni</em>, by Raffaello Bertieri, and it was used by the trade journal <em>Il Risorgimento grafico </em>throughout the year.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdBqhtHeydUPnSav2bKMD6tR0SQhSpzxK8WBhSSLLe-N6J5NcPewqGVeauuVTNoItA8SmxtBS53pQZ-KtwJzUI6413sj6zVhVQi78Udvi02f9Ilp0c05fUcorKZCHMagdFJC6p/s1600-h/Augusta+Bodoni+2+b.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 207px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312256759462668978" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdBqhtHeydUPnSav2bKMD6tR0SQhSpzxK8WBhSSLLe-N6J5NcPewqGVeauuVTNoItA8SmxtBS53pQZ-KtwJzUI6413sj6zVhVQi78Udvi02f9Ilp0c05fUcorKZCHMagdFJC6p/s400/Augusta+Bodoni+2+b.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Giovanni Mardersteig evidently accepted the ‘Trieste leaf’ as wholly authentic. Having presumably acquired a photograph from Lugano, he prepared it for publication in his facsimile.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlT9yQOz1HmvKsM0hd4xlYuCy6yQcHz05b3Fv2LisgGk2nZuQsQSA4pwMEi3aOeT7dLEhzBjGta__pQcK4L1PaZAiyOPhxYEwa61t_U7uwFCaWjSZXzqsY4F272rV-BFSecHbZ/s1600-h/7+Man+tip+1788+-+Mardersteig+facsim+1964+f+71+-+retouching+-+det+a+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 303px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311192823525848738" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlT9yQOz1HmvKsM0hd4xlYuCy6yQcHz05b3Fv2LisgGk2nZuQsQSA4pwMEi3aOeT7dLEhzBjGta__pQcK4L1PaZAiyOPhxYEwa61t_U7uwFCaWjSZXzqsY4F272rV-BFSecHbZ/s400/7+Man+tip+1788+-+Mardersteig+facsim+1964+f+71+-+retouching+-+det+a+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The quality of the impression in the original being very uneven, Mardersteig produced an image that was suitable for reproduction by retouching a film positive, to an extent that involved redrawing some of the detail of the original. The image above is from an article by Vanni Scheiwiller in the volume published to accompany an exhibition in Verona, <em>Giovanni Mardersteig: stampatore, editore, umanista </em>(Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, 1989). Moreover, since the original leaf lacked a leaf number within the characteristic frame that is on the others (a motif often used by Bodoni, based on the <em>tabula ansata </em>that is the form of many small Roman inscriptions), he made one up for leaf 71 and added it to the page to make it uniform with the others, as he freely admits in his introduction.<br /><br />Thus far, but no further, Mardersteig can be held responsible for some slight complicity in what one can only describe as a 20th-century forgery. Although he ‘improved’ the original image in a manner that later makers of facsimiles might not have followed, he gave its source and stated openly what he had done to it. He clearly accepted the genuineness of the ‘proof’ itself in perfect good faith, as did Adriana Ramelli and the authorities of the Biblioteca Cantonale. But there are more questions to be asked about the role of Giani. He said little about the annotated copy of the <em>Manuale </em>in which he ‘found’ the leaf. He quoted from a confidential letter of 1790 written by one Mazza, which implied that the national sentiment that pervades the whole work (as demonstrated by the use of texts that list only Italian cities) did Bodoni no favours at the court of Ferdinando, whose consort, Maria Amalia, as noted above, was a daughter of Maria Teresa of Austria. The writer of the letter was presumably Andrea Mazza, who was briefly director of the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma during the temporary eclipse of its founder, Paciaudi, as a consequence of the dismissal and disgrace of the prime minister, Guillaume Du Tillot (an act in which Maria Amalia is believed to have had a part), and he was likely to be no friend to other protegés of Du Tillot’s like Bodoni. Giani gave no precise location for the letter, writing only that it was ‘in a private collection in Milan.’<br /><br />Giani’s lack of frankness about his sources did not impress the distinguished scholar Sergio Samek Ludovici when he wrote his own account in 1964 – one of the few that are of lasting value – of the type specimens of Bodoni (‘I Manuali Tipografici di G. B. Bodoni’). But Samek Ludovici voiced no doubts concerning the genuineness of the Trieste leaf. Indeed he endorsed it and, in an article on the connection of the Bodoni family with Saluzzo in the journal <em>Accademie e Biblioteche d’Italia </em>that was published in the same year, he repeats, but without attributing it to him, Giani’s story of the suspicion relating to Bodoni that the printing of the names of so many Italian cities had aroused. (An extract is given among the <strong>Sources </strong>below.) In the introduction to his facsimile, Mardersteig similarly touches on the story of the suppression of the Trieste leaf, and of the consequent slight cloud on Bodoni’s reputation, treating it as common knowledge; but he does so briefly and without mentioning the name of Giani. In fact all the sources that appear to corroborate Giani’s version of the story independently appear to be derived from it.<br /><br />Having failed to locate the original of the first-named essay by Samek Ludovici, which was published in the <em>volume strenna</em> for 1964 of the journal <em>Italia grafica</em>, I found it reprinted in the useful volume of collected essays on Bodoni by several authors that was put together in 1990 under the title <em>Conoscere Bodoni </em>by Luigi Cesare Maletto and Stefano Ajani. Another piece in the same collection is an Italian version of a short note that Mardersteig had written in 1968 about the Bodoni types he had used at the Officina Bodoni, reprinted from the volume of his collected essays published in Milan in 1988. In <em>Conoscere Bodoni </em>(where the title of the essay is for some reason reworded), an editorial hand added a note to the passage where Mardersteig – referring to his decision to have Bodoni’s original types recast in 1926 – observed that ‘the Bodoni types then in commercial use were very different from Bodoni’s own creations.’ The editorial note reads, ‘This probably refers to those drawn in America by Benton in 1910, which were universally accepted as “the” Bodoni.’ And then it adds: ‘Mardersteig also used the Benton types to set page 71, “Trieste,” the page missing from the Manuale of 1788, in his reprint. In our opinion this was a very odd thing to do, since the authentic original was in the Biblioteca Cantonale di Lugano.’ To have spotted the use of the ATF type in Mardersteig’s facsimile was acute (I was unaware of this note when I wrote my own first account of this affair), but the suggestion that Mardersteig had set the leaf himself in the modern type was highly implausible, and was in any case incompatible with the account in his introduction to the facsimile, where he gave the document at Lugano as the source of his image.<br /><br />‘Forgery’ is a strong term to use, but in this case it cannot really be avoided. Someone created the Trieste leaf using 20th century materials, and someone, possibly the same person or someone else who may have been aware that its authenticity was not above suspicion, must have persuaded the Biblioteca Cantonale, which was systematically adding to its already distinguished Bodoni collection, that this was a document worth acquiring.<br /><br />Even if the paper of the Trieste leaf may have seemed right for the date claimed for it by Giani, unprinted leaves of any date are not impossible to get hold of. In any case, that is something that remains to be ascertained, since the original is not currently accessible, nor do there appear to be records showing from whom the leaf was acquired, and when. Type is different. Anyone with a quite basic knowledge of typography should have recognized the ATF Bodoni used for the Trieste leaf, one of the most familiar of modern typefaces. The machine-cut quality of the type design, the lining figures for the date ‘1719’ (compare those in leaf 72, ‘Crema’), and the letter-spacing of the line beginning ‘l’Istria’, all point unmistakeably to type and typesetting practice of the 20th century. Moreover Bodoni never used the flat-topped letter t (a French innovation) that was added to the ATF typeface. Mardersteig’s blindness in this instance is unaccountable, but it is perhaps a useful reminder that we are none of us infallible.<br /><br />Lastly, we need to consider other relevant evidence. Even if Giani did find the leaf, as he claimed, in an unidentified copy of the <em>Manuale</em> bearing notes in Bodoni’s own hand (did it, too, go to Lugano?), the sheet itself bears no leaf number, and his assumption that it was the missing leaf 71 of the <em>Manuale </em>appears to be pure guesswork. There seems to be no evidence at all that a leaf bearing a reference to Trieste was ever set for inclusion in the <em>Manuale</em>. It is possible that all the descriptions of cities used for these specimens are derived from some contemporary published account, and if so, it would of course be very useful if it could be identified, and to discover whether it does indeed include Trieste, and in what terms.<br /><br />As for Trieste as an ‘Italian’ city, the heading for it in the <em>Encyclopédie </em>of Diderot and D’Alembert is indeed <em>Trieste, ville d’Italie</em>, a city that was located in the area that traditionally, to use Metternich’s neutral and widely-misapplied words, had the ‘geographical name’ of Italy. But the text of the article makes it clear that it was politically a part of Austria, as it had been for centuries. A contemporary guide for travellers in Italy, the <em>Guida per il viaggio d’Italia in posta </em>that was published in 1786 by the Fratelli Reycends in Turin, includes the journey from Venice to <em>Trieste, città della Germania, ‘</em>Trieste, a city of Germany’, which was a term that included Austria.<br /><br />With the new status of free port that greatly enhanced its prosperity, Trieste was currently regarded as a major asset of Austria, in which substantial funds were invested by the imperial authorities during the later 18th century, when provision was made for dredging the harbour, removing the old city walls and lighting the streets. The <em>Encyclopédie </em>noted that the Empress (Maria Teresa) had improved the fortifications and established shipyards. For any work printed in Italy in the late 1780s, and especially one issued from a press with the ducal protection that was conferred on Bodoni’s, to call Trieste ‘this ancient and beautiful Italian city of ours’ (thus begging the question of what was meant by ‘Italian’, and who ‘we’ might be in this context) might indeed have seemed provocative. But it should be noted that, while many of the cities that are the subject of the text of each leaf in the <em>Manuale</em> are described as <em>città d’Italia</em>, a city of Italy, or <em>città del Piemonte</em>, or some other region of Italy, the text relating to Trieste is the only one that uses the term <em>città italiana </em>(an Italian city). In writing that is claimed to be of the 1780s, the use of words such as <em>nostra </em>and <em>italiana</em>, with their overtones of the patriotic movements that belong to a much later period, seems oddly anachronistic. The text of leaf 72 shown above, with its description of Crema, is scrupulously precise in giving its status as a part of the Venetian Republic located near Milan.<br /><br />During a lifetime spent during a period of constant political upheaval, from the loss of his patron Du Tillot within three years of his arrival in Parma in 1768 to living with the Napoleonic French administration of the region during the last years of his life (to which one could add the tensions that can be detected in his environment in Rome), Bodoni demonstrated one supreme talent: that of surviving. For him to print the text presented by Giani, even as a proof, would have been an act that seems wholly out of character.<br /><br />The term <em>carta </em>(paper)<em>, </em>used for ‘leaf’ by both Giani and Ramelli, rather than the more ordinary <em>foglio</em>, can also have political associations not unlike those of ‘charter’ in English, and the choice may have been deliberate. As suggested above, the tone of its words is reminiscent of the later irredentist rhetoric that supported the rights of the Italian-speaking citizens of neighbouring states, in France and Switzerland as well as Austria, and which aimed at territorial annexation. But this issue hardly entered wide political consciousness much before the latter part of the 19th century, when a number of different events, but most notably the dissatisfaction felt in Italy with the national settlements resulting from the Congress of Berlin in 1878, fuelled <em>irredentismo </em>as a popular cause. Thus the wording of the leaf is suspect, as well as its physical properties.<br /><br />Resentment of Austria and sympathy for the Italian-speaking citizens of Trieste were feelings that gained greatly in strength just before and during the First World War, when the ATF Bodoni type produced by the Augusta/Nebiolo typefoundry was introduced and quite widely used, almost as a ‘national’ typeface. It is not inconceivable that someone forged both the leaf and its words at that time, and placed it in the copy of the <em>Manuale tipografico </em>of 1788 where Giani said he found it, in order to provide a fictitious early instance of the movement. But awareness of the antagonisms associated with the more recent history of Trieste and fears for its future were also widely and acutely present in Italy during the years just after the Second World War, and they perhaps help to account for the lack of any critical examination of the leaf at this time and the general acceptance of Giani’s account of its discovery. On the whole it seems more likely that the leaf belongs to this later date. The writer of the text and its printer remain to be identified.<br /><br /><strong>Footnote</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMSSvnaK0VRSzy2QF1HIp-GimzsGFZ1xMG_fLRbd2GBmL1AIbMc0UT5tYY8r8OzuqRJwXd8FsQDJMR1xV45L42YE1uM5HDCzk6miIqTJos1JzBHIk1QCKv15uBaDm6IBarQZdi/s1600-h/Synopsis+-+Assisi+50+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 247px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5348920665665423922" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMSSvnaK0VRSzy2QF1HIp-GimzsGFZ1xMG_fLRbd2GBmL1AIbMc0UT5tYY8r8OzuqRJwXd8FsQDJMR1xV45L42YE1uM5HDCzk6miIqTJos1JzBHIk1QCKv15uBaDm6IBarQZdi/s400/Synopsis+-+Assisi+50+-+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />In the Bodoni Collection of the Biblioteca Palatina, Parma, there is a bound set of pairs of identical printed leaves annotated in Bodoni’s own hand (Coll. Bod. 8/ 8 es.) which appears to provide a synopsis of the characters in the founts of roman and italic types that were to be used for the <em>Manuale tipografico </em>of 1788, together with the name and leaf number to be assigned to them and the bodies on which they were to be cast. It lists all the types that appear on the pairs of leaves numbered 51 to 100, with just one exception: there is no type for leaf 71. The first half of this volume, showing synopses of the types for leaves 1 to 50, appears to be the item that that was described by Giani on page 24 of his work of 1948 as a ‘plan’ (<em>stesura</em>) for the <em>Manuale. </em>It is in the Mortara collection of the Biblioteca Braidense, Milan. A leaf from it is shown above, with details of the characters in the roman type under the name of Assisi, for the body of Testo (about 16 points), which appears on leaf 50 of the <em>Manuale</em>. Another volume at Parma, which includes a copy of the <em>Manuale tipografico</em>, 1788, and some other works (Coll. Bod. 9/ 1 es.), contains a note apparently in the hand of Angelo Pezzana, the long-serving librarian of the Palatina (1804 to 1862) under whose direction the punches and matrices were acquired and the holdings of examples of Bodoni's own printing were greatly expanded. Discussing the make-up of the <em>Manuale tipografico </em>of 1788 the writer observes: ‘Il No. 71 Ital[ian]o & Franc[ese] non si trova in alcuno e dicesi che non fosse impresso.’ That is, ‘[Leaf] 71 in Italian and French is not found in any copy, and it is said that it was not printed.’ There is no mention of Trieste.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Sources</strong><br /><br />Texts in Italian that are quoted below without translation are summarized above.<br /><br /><br />James Mosley, ‘Italian type specimens to 1860’, in ‘Sources for Italian typefounding’, <em>La Bibliofilía</em>, anno CII (2000), pp. 56–102. Revised reprint in: <em>Cento anni di Bibliofilía: atti del convegno internazionale, Biblioteca nazionale Firenze, 22–24 aprile 1999 </em>(Firenze: Olschki, 2001), pp. 299–354. The present text is a revised and expanded version of a footnote that appears in the section of this article dealing with the <em>Manuale tipografico </em>of 1788.<br /><br /><em></em><br /><em>Conoscere Bodoni, a cura di Stefano Ajani e Luigi Cesare Maletto nel 250. anniversario della nascita: contributi di G. Spadolini </em>[etc] (Collegno, Torino, 1989).<br /><br /><br />Giampiero Giani, <em>Catalogo delle autentiche edizioni Bodoniani </em>(Milano: Conchiglia, 1948), pp. 18–20, [30].<br /><br />‘L’edizione [<em>Manuale tipografico</em>, 1788] … non ha prefazione e volutamente si diede ad essa un valore del tutto tecnico perchè l’intima ragione di questo lavoro (sfuggita fino ad ora agli esperti) piaque assai poco alla Corte di Ferdinando, come annota il Mazza in una lettera confidenziale (1790) da me vista in una collezione privata milanese: «… da questo capo d’opera, ove si ammirano li più svariati caratteri, traspira una certa aura di romanità al di là d’ogni tolleranza…» È infatti all’ideale di una <em>Unità Italiana </em>che si respira questa sua fatica incisoria! Presenta cento Città italiane che ai suoi tempi erano dominate da Governi stranieri e che solo molti anni dopo diedero i primi segni di una sospirata libertà. Ecco l’elenco: «Parma, Roma, Torino […] Tivoli, Saluzzo.» La forma dello «Stivale rovinatissimo» nasce evidente da questo elenco confermato poi dalle sue stesse parole: «È stato sopratutto l’amore che io porto al nome italiano e all’Italia a cui mi compiaccio e reco ad onore di appartenere e la lusinghiera speranza che dalle mie improbe fatiche qualche gloria di più refulga su questa bella <em>regione d’Europa</em> che per la prima emerse dalle tenebre dell’ignoranza, che per la prima salì al più alto grado di celebrità e di splendore nelle arti, nelle scienze e nelle lettere, che mi ha spinto a rivendicarle per quanto era in me quanto era in me quell’onore tipografico che ella aveva alle straniere sue rivali pressochè totalmente abbandonato». L’ultima carta (la centesima) porta questa scritta: <em>Saluzzo, mia adorata patria</em>. In tutti gli esemplari da me visti (nove in tutto) manca una carta, la settantunesima, e in sua vece, qualche volta, si trova ripetuta la settantesima (Terracina). La carta che manca è stata da me trovata, in bozza, in un esemplare in-4° (postillato da Bodoni stesso) e presenta la città di <em>Trieste</em> (!), con la scritta: «Trieste, ai tempi di Augusto fece parte parte con la Venezia e l’Istria della decima regione dell’Impero. Nel 1719 Carlo VI dichiarò questa nostra bella ed antica città italiana, Porto Franco-». Una frase del genere doveva essere alquanto ardita ai tempi di Maria Teresa e certo fu la ragione del <em>veto di stampa </em>posto a questa carta; veto che Bodoni volle risultasse evidente transcurando di sostituire la scritta e numerando 70/72.’<br /><br />Giani was born in Milan in 1912. He was the author of several monographs on contemporary painting, some of which appeared under his publishing imprint <em>Edizioni della Conchiglia. </em>He was art critic of the journal <em>Avanti! </em>A brief obituary that appears in <em>Corriere della Sera</em> for 14 January 1964 describes him in these terms: ‘uomo dell’arte e della tecnica fra i più vivi, pronti, practici, intelligenti e popolari assieme che mai fosse dato d’incontrare. Era abile, era magari furbo...’ His earlier monograph on Bodoni, <em>Saggio di bibliografia bodoniana </em>(1946), which included some additions and corrections to the lists of Bodoni's printing published by Passerini, De Lama and Brooks, was produced on the occasion of an exhibition of Bodoni’s work at the Libreria Antiquaria Cantoni, the dealers from whom the ‘Carta di Trieste’ was acquired by the Biblioteca Cantonale, Lugano. The passage by Bodoni cited in the passage above, expressing his love of the name of ‘Italian’, is quoted rather inaccurately from the Italian language version of his preface to the volume with the Lord’s Prayer in 155 languages, <em>Oratio Dominica in CLV linguas</em>, printed in 1806.<br /><br /><br />Adriana Ramelli, ‘Raccolte particolari e rarità della Biblioteca Cantonale di Lugano’, in <em>Storia di biblioteconomia e storia del libro in onore di Francesco Barberi </em>(Roma, 1976), p. 454, tav. 41.<br /><br />‘Abbandoniamo ora i letterati di casa per citare una stampa rarissima, una stampa bodoniana, probabilmente un «unicum». Si tratta di un foglio acquistato alcuni anni fa, la cosiddetta <em>Carta di Trieste </em>che Bodoni aveva composto per il suo Manuale tipografico del 1788. Vi si legge: «Trieste … questa nostra bella e antica città italiana …», ecco il motivo per cui il foglio – che avrebbe dovuto recare il N. 71 – non potè essere incluso nel Manuale. Noi siamo fieri di possederlo, questo foglio, che è una coraggiosa dichiarazione d’italianità da parte del Bodoni, il quale, al servizio dei principi, doveva sempre essere pronto a omaggi e a obbedienze. La nostra raccolta bodoniana è ricca di imponenti celebri in-folio, ma la Carta di Trieste è per noi il pezzo più prezioso non solo a motivo della sua assoluta rarità, ma perché è una voce che – ridotta al silenzio per motivi politici – è rimasta viva in questo «unicum» conservato gelosamente proprio nella Biblioteca della Svizzera italiana.’<br /><br /><br />Sergio Samek Ludovici, ‘I Bodoni e Saluzzo’, <em>Accademie e Biblioteche d’Italia, </em>vol. 32 (1964), pp. 333–8 (at p. 335).<br /><br />«SALUZZO — si legge nel Manuale del 1788 — MIA ADORATA PATRIA » ripetuto con varianti in altri manuali e prove. Leggenda che ha il sapore di una dichiarazione di innamorato e nel quale non gioca soltanto il naturale e tradizionale amor di campanile, ma qualche cosa di più, se la dichiarazione va ad aggiungersi alle belle piccole storie delle città italiane. Tra le quali celeberrima quella dedicata a Trieste ed espunta poi dal Manuale. Bozza rarissima, posseduta dalla Biblioteca Cantonale di Lugano che l’acquistò in Milano orsono vent’anni.<br />Questo spirito cavourriano avanti-lettera, com’è noto, lo fece sospetto, anche se egli fu leale servitore della Corte di Parma …<br /><br />Here is a free translation:<br /><br />In the Manuale of 1788 we read, ‘Saluzzo, my beloved home’, a phrase repeated with variations in other specimens, a text that has the flavour of a lover’s declaration, and which goes beyond a natural attachment to one’s birthplace to something more intense, if we add it to the charming brief histories of the cities of Italy. The most celebrated of these is the text relating to Trieste, which was removed from the Manuale, [and which survives in the form of] a very rare proof sheet, owned by the Biblioteca Cantonale of Lugano, which acquired it in Milan some twenty years ago.<br />This premature voicing of the sentiments of Cavour, as is well-known, made Bodoni suspect, even if he was a loyal servant of the Court of Parma …<br /><br />Samek Ludovici is quoting here the version of the phrase concerning Saluzzo (<em>Saluzzo mia amata patria</em>) in the mistaken form of words given by Giani in 1948 (see above). It is not in fact known to appear in this form in any other specimen of Bodoni’s types, although a more sober text, reproduced by Giani in his book of 1946, does appear in one of the early single-leaf specimens of the italic of the Canone size: <em>Saluzzo, Città del Piemonte, feconda di uomini celebri nelle Lettere, nelle Armi, e nelle Arti belle, ed amene</em>. It is worth noting that the names of Trieste, and of many Italian and non-Italian cities, including London (‘Londra’) and Oxford, are attached to specimens of roman and italic types in the two-volume <em>Manuale tipografico</em> of 1818, but the text of each specimen in this part of the work is uniformly <em>Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? </em>from the speech of Cicero <em>In Catilinam </em>that was used by Caslon and some other typefounders of the 18th century.<br /><br /><br />Last edited 7 August 2010Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-60848132317422781882009-01-04T15:50:00.213+00:002011-03-28T07:00:39.417+00:00Recasting Caslon Old Face<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUx7LQZ3B7EyvYofn0PccnKz4IMepW7TsvCMM0kx70lYZNwNAN7lZ5ZIz8NPQhFW-OwjTgdWmjbAY8EGcwchjZ9dmCnjkS9VDHQum2QpE03EmVXm7sOslVykf49CIaeFfBOAHu/s1600-h/Caslon+5P+-+Spec+1894+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 305px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306642582656705378" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUx7LQZ3B7EyvYofn0PccnKz4IMepW7TsvCMM0kx70lYZNwNAN7lZ5ZIz8NPQhFW-OwjTgdWmjbAY8EGcwchjZ9dmCnjkS9VDHQum2QpE03EmVXm7sOslVykf49CIaeFfBOAHu/s400/Caslon+5P+-+Spec+1894+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /><div>The heading to the image above claims authentic historical origins for the type that is shown. Something like it was often used in presenting the Caslon ‘Old Face’ types to the customers of the typefounders H. W. Caslon & Co. The example is from a finely-printed large quarto specimen that the foundry produced in about 1896 in order to promote the type more widely. The title page reads, <em>Specimens of the original Caslon Old Face printing types, engraved in the early part of the 18th century by Caslon I.</em> <br /></div><div>‘Caslon’ is an example of what became known in the commercial world of the 20th century as a ‘brand’: a family name that was not only widely recognised by customers but which stood as a guarantee of long-standing integrity. George Bernard Shaw had the editions of his plays set in the Caslon Old Face types on the recommendation of Emery Walker, the friend and adviser of William Morris. Printing-offices rooted in the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement, like the Dun Emer Press, later the Cuala Press, of Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, the Cranach Press of Harry Graf Kessler and the St Dominic’s Press in Ditchling, used Caslon Old Face. The printed versions of the Declaration of Independence of the United States having mostly been set in Caslon types (probably by necessity rather than choice, since there were more modern alternatives in use in the colonies), there was a comparable revival of interest in the face there towards the end of the 19th century. John E. Powers (1837–1919), who acquired a reputation as ‘the father of honest advertising’, had ‘a partiality, which became a fetish, for dressing up his advertisements in Caslon Old Style type. Rivals who imitated his make-up are said to have found great initial difficulty in telling a lie in Caslon Old Style’ (E. S. Turner, <em>The Shocking History of Advertising</em>. London: Michael Joseph, 1952. p. 134). <br /></div><div>The preface to the new specimen, signed by Thomas W. Smith, the proprietor of the foundry, contains this passage: <br /></div><div>‘The modest specimens issued by the first Caslon were quite inadequate to render justice to his work, and, admiration and demand for these remarkable founts being steadily on the increase, we venture to hope that the following quarto pages, showing in ample form the complete series, from Five-line Pica to Nonpareil, and, at the same time, giving an account of the life and labour of their originator, with the history of the Caslon Foundry to the present day, will be acceptable to the Literary as well as the Printing world.’ <br /></div><div>One must concede that the types, ‘<em>engraved by Caslon I</em>’, look splendid. Perhaps their impression on the highly-calendared paper is a little pallid, but the comfortingly familiar, old-fashioned shapes and the clarity of outline and the quality of their casting do honour both to the punchcutter and to the typefounder. But which punchcutter? That is not a simple question to answer, because this is how the same type had appeared in a specimen just a few years earlier, and then it did not look nearly so smooth, but rougher and less refined. This text will try to resolve the puzzle. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6P5gP9V_6Dnm0jO-EALAubPO1a3AnAFzTLr-DnjXs2vpYVll8iBeGl9ylZzzFIfpvIEO0bsH_muAYdvDggn4WjNYoTf5K5BxY8cJb5eW0yFwL6w_xMpn7YKRr7m8JFG8IJs-S/s1600-h/Caslon+5P+rom+old+c1850+2+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 197px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306643775554102594" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6P5gP9V_6Dnm0jO-EALAubPO1a3AnAFzTLr-DnjXs2vpYVll8iBeGl9ylZzzFIfpvIEO0bsH_muAYdvDggn4WjNYoTf5K5BxY8cJb5eW0yFwL6w_xMpn7YKRr7m8JFG8IJs-S/s400/Caslon+5P+rom+old+c1850+2+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>The story of the revival of the Caslon types at the Chiswick Press in the 1840s, recast by the Caslon foundry from original matrices that were still in their hands, is a familiar one. Advised, it seems, by Henry Cole, a figure who would be active in the organizing of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Longman, one of the major London publishing houses, had published the pseudonymous <em>Diary of Lady Willoughby</em>, printed in 1844 by the Chiswick Press in an elaborately imitated 17th-century style, both literary and typographical, using the Great Primer Caslon type, with its long s, that had been ordered for the printing of an Eton leaving present, a quarto edition of the Juvenal <em>Satires. </em>This, in the event, appeared in 1845. Works using other sizes of the Caslon types were printed by the Chiswick Press in 1844. In 1852, Longman published Thackeray’s <em>Henry Esmond, </em>a novel in the form of a memoir that purports to have been written in the early 18th century. It is set wholly in the Caslon Pica, using the long s. The printer was Bradbury & Evans. Anne Manning’s popular <em>Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterwards Mistress Milton</em>, published by Hall, Virtue and Co. in 1855 and printed by Richard Clay, set in the English size of Caslon type, using long s, was another exercise in pseudonymous historical typographical pastiche. And of course the Chiswick Press continued to use the types for the tasteful editions, notably of the rediscovered works of 17th-century high-church clergy like Herbert and Taylor, that were published by William Pickering. During the 1850s, then, the types achieved a discreet success as a choice for the publishing of nostalgic evocations of historical texts. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxiqJktfguQU-KXMMTIWc5mw__AiurCgNvnYE8ZHARNOnyMCQ2b3Ec2fHx2wgP6_BMmp5RT8m57y4kCvSncqLULJ8KokfgFZSPVJ290-xJinKDAFq_KkduKL26IwTKGWLa50Ug/s1600-h/3+Caslon+-+Ancient+types+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 267px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287468131340328322" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxiqJktfguQU-KXMMTIWc5mw__AiurCgNvnYE8ZHARNOnyMCQ2b3Ec2fHx2wgP6_BMmp5RT8m57y4kCvSncqLULJ8KokfgFZSPVJ290-xJinKDAFq_KkduKL26IwTKGWLa50Ug/s400/3+Caslon+-+Ancient+types+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div><em>Title page of a showing of the Caslon Old Face types that was included as a section on tinted paper in many of the foundry’s specimens during the later 19th century and is sometimes found bound as a separate specimen.</em> <br /></div><div>During the 1850s two related events took place that left their mark on typography. Types that appear to be identical with those cast by the Caslon foundry in London appeared under the name of ‘old style’ in the specimens of three type foundries in the United States: John K. Rogers, Boston (The Boston Type Foundry), 1856, Peter Cortelyou, New York (Cortelyou & Giffing), 1857, and in the <em>Typographic Advertiser </em>in 1859, the promotional journal of L. Johnson, Philadelphia, whose foundry later became MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan. <br /></div><div>The other event was the making of a type with the name of ‘Old Style’ by Miller & Richard, Edinburgh. This is the first page of the earliest known specimen, dated 1860: <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiUivYmFmNbyYu2QB4jJuQG6t-4gsDaYs1eOXa0233GsmvMBGLDdeph_S14ilI5PoD7ayWwcNS-1e1AUin0tKGh3OhF9nph7fGCEtzk1NkHGn92ac5Z5l8wvmRLlLty7xN-vhO/s1600-h/3+M&R+OS+1860+-+800.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 366px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287468842917624370" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiUivYmFmNbyYu2QB4jJuQG6t-4gsDaYs1eOXa0233GsmvMBGLDdeph_S14ilI5PoD7ayWwcNS-1e1AUin0tKGh3OhF9nph7fGCEtzk1NkHGn92ac5Z5l8wvmRLlLty7xN-vhO/s400/3+M%26R+OS+1860+-+800.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>The text, as can be seen, is knocking copy, playing on the unease of some clients with the irregular and unconventional appearance of the original ‘old face’ or ‘old-faced’ types, the term that appears in a specimen from the Caslon foundry that can be dated 1854, the earliest appearance of the type in a specimen that I have yet found: <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_VGnWAbopE7qJp0UE95eWpHtYfsZ5YrBim9_C6FoQ8bqfxKfsNDb4m-rRplsUlvDFO55dzqicLUlpsustcy14Gq-tQiW_xO9bS1m9QdKHZRjx6246kkJzUmPvNzIbOW6vxhDs/s1600-h/Caslon+-Old+faced+letters+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 73px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306691809895108290" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_VGnWAbopE7qJp0UE95eWpHtYfsZ5YrBim9_C6FoQ8bqfxKfsNDb4m-rRplsUlvDFO55dzqicLUlpsustcy14Gq-tQiW_xO9bS1m9QdKHZRjx6246kkJzUmPvNzIbOW6vxhDs/s400/Caslon+-Old+faced+letters+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>Text sizes of the Caslon ‘old face’ type appear in the big new specimen book of the foundry that is dated 1857. The punchcutter of Miller & Richard’s type was Alexander Phemister, who emigrated to the United States in 1861. He was said by T. L. De Vinne, in the second edition of his <em>Plain Printing Types </em>(New York, 1914), to have begun his work on the type in 1852. If this was so, and if Phemister’s old style type became at all widely known at this date or shortly after, perhaps its name was adopted by typefounders in the United States for their versions of a type to which they were perhaps reluctant to give the name of the English artist of the 18th century who had cut it and the foundry which had recently recast it. Or perhaps, conversely, Miller & Richard borrowed the name from them for the improved version of the archaic ‘old face’ type that they had made. There is still uncertainty about the exact chronology of these events, but we know that the design of the bland and regular Old Style type produced by Miller & Richard was quickly copied by other typefounders in Britain and the United States, including H. W. Caslon & Co., and that it would become a generic typeface that was widely used by English-speaking publishers for literary texts (and to some extent, under the name of <em>Mediäval</em>, in Germany), ‘modern face’ types being kept for works of technology and information. <br /></div><div>The middle years of the century were difficult ones for the Caslon foundry. It was put up for sale in 1846, but then withdrawn, one of its advertised attractions to buyers having been that it included ‘the original works of its founder, William Caslon, which have recently been much in request for reprints’. A strike in 1865, followed by a protracted lockout, sapped confidence in the management of Henry William Caslon, the last lineal descendent of William Caslon I. </div><div>Two years before his death in 1874, Caslon invited back a former employee, Thomas White Smith, who had left the firm at its low point in 1865. The effect of Smith’s energy as manager soon became apparent. In 1875, he set up a journal, <em>Caslon’s Circular</em>, to promote its products. A branch of the foundry opened in Paris. By the 1890s, he had become the sole proprietor of the foundry and was modernizing the firm to face competition from other foundries at home and abroad, and from the new Linotype machine. A new and well-equipped typefoundry, shown below, was built at Hackney Wick in 1900. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJv5mP7NjoRhsE7p-KO-gGOnJdHXLzGnzzp09l0XNB4ZC0fQgrLhNhcG4R2W2m9wHvsqwuJe9qa5z9QEwIlq4dj1Ky-ZXJItHEJzb1T6R1lqrBEe7-pIlHLWh-Fr6dC3Rp0Sj/s1600-h/4+Caslon+foundry+1902+850.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 331px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287469511241357234" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJv5mP7NjoRhsE7p-KO-gGOnJdHXLzGnzzp09l0XNB4ZC0fQgrLhNhcG4R2W2m9wHvsqwuJe9qa5z9QEwIlq4dj1Ky-ZXJItHEJzb1T6R1lqrBEe7-pIlHLWh-Fr6dC3Rp0Sj/s400/4+Caslon+foundry+1902+850.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>However the value to sales of the firm’s name and its traditions did not escape T. W. Smith, and his own sons, when they entered the business, were instructed to change their surnames from Smith to Caslon. <br /></div><div>In 1878 <em>Caslon’s Circular </em>published an article with the title, ‘Hand-cast v. machine-cast type’. It opens with this text: <br /></div><div>‘In one department of our venerable foundry may still be seen the old process of type-casting by hand, such as was in use nearly two-hundred years ago: indeed we may say such as was in use, with but little alteration, in the days of Caxton. Four or five old men, whose heads have grown grey in the service of the Caslons, bend over their melting fires, and with tiny spoons pour the fused metal into the quaint old moulds, jerking and swaying about with grotesque monotonous movement. They look very much behind the time in the midst of revolving wheels and clanging machinery turning out type at incredible speed. During recent years hand-casters have learnt machine-casting, only a few having been kept at the old process, for reasons which we shall hereafter explain. The art is not taught to new hands, and the consequence is that in a few years hand-casters and their art will be unknown. Machine-cast type can be easily distinguished from hand-cast. It is bright as silver; moreover it has a small round mark on its side near the face of the letter. On the other hand, type produced by the old hand-process does not look so bright, is not so sharp in its angles, and gutters or air-holes may be seen on its sides and foot. We venture to say, however, that beyond its appearance, which is certainly inferior to that cast by machinery, there is little or no superiority in machine over hand-cast type.’ <br /></div><div>The reason for publishing this explanation then becomes clear: <br /></div><div>‘Most of the original old-face founts, for which a demand has sprung up within recent years, are still cast by hand, and we have been led to make the foregoing remarks on the hand-casting process through having received letters from purchasers of an old-face fount, drawing attention to what they concluded to be inferior workmanship. The face of some of the letters of these old founts is no doubt rough and inferior to the modern type in finish—but in finish only. Notwithstanding that the matrices from which they are cast are more than a century old, the type produced by them is not only excellent but unique. […] We may state that the demand for these original founts, instead of declining, as some have predicted, is steadily on the increase, and we are taking steps to improve them so far as smoothness of face is concerned, and to produce them by the machine-casting process, without altering their shapes in the least degree.’ <br /></div><div>There seems little doubt that the Caslon types that appeared in the United States in the 1850s derived directly from those cast in London, and the most plausible explanation is that they were cast from electrotyped matrices made from the newly-cast Caslon types. There is a persistent story that the matrices for the Johnson type were made with the consent of the Caslon foundry, and indeed possibly by it, a suggestion that is supported by Johnson’s reputation as an honourable man of business. How Rogers and Cortelyou got their copies is unexplained, but a suspicion of piracy is inevitable. (Rogers, like Cortelyou and Johnson and the Caslon foundry in London, included long s in the specimen texts, but mistakenly used it in place of f.) <br /></div><div>In 1858 the Caslon foundry supplied electrotyped matrices for the roman of the English and Small Pica sizes of Caslon Old Face to Charles Whittingham at the Chiswick Press. He passed them on to William Howard, the punchcutter and typefounder who had made its Basle and Caxton types during the earlier 1850s and who was no longer capable of such demanding work. Howard, who appears to have died in 1864, cast type from them by hand for filling the cases at the Press. The matrices survive among the materials of the Chiswick Press at the St Bride Library. Those for the English lower case were adapted for machine casting. Some examples are shown below. Note the different colour of the electrotyped part, inset into the copper of the matrix. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQDF4Aio2C6Mwpjn1ihQjGGOU-QhNwH7GQ-_QG_MUtHqMIeFD4qUxToj9PcNG-cXEOfgneNN_6SPUC5mF2-PCIT_rivJriIJjA_tMKCWe8zjpPKsMAXAqTeYZaKZkzdnYi-nru/s1600-h/CP+English+mats+1+ABCabc+b+-+850+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 350px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291513763374721378" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQDF4Aio2C6Mwpjn1ihQjGGOU-QhNwH7GQ-_QG_MUtHqMIeFD4qUxToj9PcNG-cXEOfgneNN_6SPUC5mF2-PCIT_rivJriIJjA_tMKCWe8zjpPKsMAXAqTeYZaKZkzdnYi-nru/s400/CP+English+mats+1+ABCabc+b+-+850+a.jpg" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMxcKtH5v05f0D2-ZRUNYFiseRMxpws1vJQu1KnH1e6r0WeQdt2E9j2C-YMw4YRu12KwlLVrCILy9m8l9lX9ZaIPSKZDQ5Rc48K429mg8sCaVsz-QEBc8zKNKpZ5koiZbFYMkI/s1600-h/CP+English+mats+2+A+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 157px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304033914223927554" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMxcKtH5v05f0D2-ZRUNYFiseRMxpws1vJQu1KnH1e6r0WeQdt2E9j2C-YMw4YRu12KwlLVrCILy9m8l9lX9ZaIPSKZDQ5Rc48K429mg8sCaVsz-QEBc8zKNKpZ5koiZbFYMkI/s400/CP+English+mats+2+A+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo6H1qtD5nZKk6d3EmJUTviT17buXjT5hMxNU58frA8e3L5tN8TOv-63OX1QeBqdfZGVBNGk0eU_VzGDLkQtgMMUi65C6Tx2811rt-Z1mul8GPYn-nmnP4jAyQQewAjRt8tuWN/s1600-h/CP+English+mats+3+A+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 149px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304034034463003138" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo6H1qtD5nZKk6d3EmJUTviT17buXjT5hMxNU58frA8e3L5tN8TOv-63OX1QeBqdfZGVBNGk0eU_VzGDLkQtgMMUi65C6Tx2811rt-Z1mul8GPYn-nmnP4jAyQQewAjRt8tuWN/s400/CP+English+mats+3+A+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>Electrotyping, that is the growing of a copper shell from an impression of typeset matter, which could be backed up with metal and used to print from as a substitute for cast stereotype plates, was invented in about 1840 and spread rapidly in the printing trade. The use of electrotyping to make matrices from cast type was the subject of US Patent 4130 of 1845, granted to Thomas Starr. By the 1850s, the electrotyping of matrices had entered the normal practice of typefounders. Increasingly, later in the century, punchcutters turned from cutting their designs in steel – especially the more elaborate ones – towards making them in typemetal, from which electrotyped matrices could be grown. The practice and its historical background are well described in detail by <a href="http://bellsouthpwp.net/r/_/r_rice2/mmoup/Text1.htm">Roy Rice</a>. Unlike the original matrices that were designed for use with the hand mould, electrotyped matrices could be shaped to work with any of the new typecasting machines that were developed during the second half of the 19th century, and by preserving sample types, the founder could generate any number of identical replacements for matrices that suffered wear or damage. But the process was the cause of unease among the major founders, since an unscrupulous rival could make an undetectable copy of a type from a small fount that had been bought commercially. The Caslon foundry was a strong and vocal critic of this practice. <br /></div><div>The modernizing of Caslon Old Face was studied in detail by Justin Howes, who was able to spend some time at Stephenson, Blake in Sheffield before all the foundry’s punches, matrices and specimens were acquired for the Type Museum in 1996 and moved to London. He published his report on what he found as ‘Caslon Old Face: an inventory’, which appears as an inset in the article that he wrote for the journal <em>Matrix</em>, no. 20 (2002). It is the result of long and painstaking work, and it throws a great deal of light on the reworking of the smaller sizes of the Old Face types. His conclusion was that a process of remaking the Caslon Old Face punches took place from around 1893. This was the date of the first recutting that he found recorded in the Punch Notes, the documentation kept at the Caslon Foundry. The size was the Great Primer, now cast on 18-point, which was the work of Emile Bertaut. George Hammond, another punchcutter, took over where Bertaut left off, and was responsible for most of the recutting by hand of other sizes that took place between October 1894 and 1908. Later punches for revised characters were mostly machine-cut. <br /></div><div>In the light of what he had put together about the state of the ‘Caslon Old Face’ that was cast during the 20th century, Justin went on to make his own digital version of the type, Founder’s Caslon, taking it back where he could to original forms, and purging it of some of the anachronistic characters that had been introduced when the types had first been recast in the 19th century. (These characters are also, incidentally, to be seen in both the Cortelyou and Johnson ‘Old Style’ types, making it abundantly clear what their direct source had been.) </div><br /><div>Smith – the article of 1878 in <em>Caslon’s Circular </em>must be his – had been quite frank about the reason for reworking the Old Face types. It was simply no longer practicable to continue to cast any substantial part of the output of the foundry by hand. But there is no evidence – and this I find puzzling – that the expedient of making electrotype matrices from existing types was resorted to, at least not on any significant scale. Perhaps the original matrices had deteriorated too far. (Where are they, by the way?) <br /></div><div>In fact a substantial move towards achieving the ‘smoothness of face’ that was promised in 1878 had undoubtedly been made by the date of a specimen book of about 1884, when on a page that shows the four biggest sizes, the ‘Two-Line Double Pica’ (which would later be cast on a 42-point body), a type that first appears in a specimen in 1742 and which is in fact the work of William Caslon II, still shows the irregular lining of type hand-cast from original matrices. But the first three sizes are now ‘smooth’. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1ZCLNDBOnc-TntawFbNzkhuESgE24v5DrRR6FvzoAdCJcXhmKLRUJEFDM6NC7HwodZIG8s5vjW4verkLCbI0yLP9wBKdLeZA5-kzil10HhmRKs-6kk3M1UliT4o3momaakj4r/s1600-h/Caslon+24437+-+2+-+5P+etc.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 278px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289950705348299490" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1ZCLNDBOnc-TntawFbNzkhuESgE24v5DrRR6FvzoAdCJcXhmKLRUJEFDM6NC7HwodZIG8s5vjW4verkLCbI0yLP9wBKdLeZA5-kzil10HhmRKs-6kk3M1UliT4o3momaakj4r/s400/Caslon+24437+-+2+-+5P+etc.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>Moreover the same specimen includes a slip showing swash italic capitals based on a 16th-century model that had been added to the type. The wording is studiedly vague. One could read it as suggesting that the matrices for these sorts had come to light among the many treasures of the foundry. They had in fact been newly and very expertly cut. (An account of them in <em>Caslon’s Circular</em>, intended for printers, is more frank about their origin.) <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Vw3KyMbM1bEAiHzFULOi9XLRVdHQAInRELZLaAleXLPvmSCploHRUzTeC1QqnQhcsq_yaG8IYni7df4hQUJUCICqMd5lREfMAofqEUSZch_WCRWqkDShqzGneYJ3NdJ0vNeX/s1600-h/Caslon+24437+-+4+swash+sh+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 244px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306689887869561842" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Vw3KyMbM1bEAiHzFULOi9XLRVdHQAInRELZLaAleXLPvmSCploHRUzTeC1QqnQhcsq_yaG8IYni7df4hQUJUCICqMd5lREfMAofqEUSZch_WCRWqkDShqzGneYJ3NdJ0vNeX/s400/Caslon+24437+-+4+swash+sh+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>The first full presentation of the newly made-over and presumably machine-cast type to printers was in 1890, when a four-page showing of all sizes of the Caslon Old Face roman types, in which each page was headed, ‘Original Caslon Founts’ was given in <em>Caslon’s Circular</em>. The public relaunch of the new ‘smooth’ Old Face took place with the issue of the specimen of 1896, directed at ‘the Literary as well as the Printing world’, in which all the large sizes, including the Canon (the roman lower case of which was Joseph Moxon’s type of the late 17th century), which had looked so crude in the earlier specimens of the ‘ancient types’, were now irreproachably regular in their appearance. The inescapable conclusion is that they have been recut. Here is the lower case a of the Five-line Pica, in the old and new castings: <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_uf4k9SeKWvJQOWT_hA-0kW9g_nPkJCBUz4C0BmdukaBICyRlzgaxenp2AARED45K3eGgVW32dUF775XOxBXyuDnD_zFDM_OYM4Ne-SmA-7s4hS1eNXYh3_DIcGvLg7j-73t/s1600-h/5+5P+a+orig+and+recut.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 250px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287469765231374898" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_uf4k9SeKWvJQOWT_hA-0kW9g_nPkJCBUz4C0BmdukaBICyRlzgaxenp2AARED45K3eGgVW32dUF775XOxBXyuDnD_zFDM_OYM4Ne-SmA-7s4hS1eNXYh3_DIcGvLg7j-73t/s400/5+5P+a+orig+and+recut.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>The image in the older impression is distorted to some extent by heavy inking, and the defects of hand-casting are evident, but it is clear that in the new type the opportunity has been taken to improve the form of the letter. In fact we have proof of the extent to which the whole type was altered. A album from H. W. Caslon & Co. has survived from the 1890s which gives synopses of newly-cut types. One of these, shown below (it is unfortunately neither dated nor annotated), has what are clearly the old and new versions of the Five-line Pica or 72-point size of Caslon Old Face, with the new version, in which the tidying-up can clearly be seen, above the old one. Serifs are more even and regular, the deviation of long s from the vertical is corrected, and the weight of strokes generally has been made more uniform. The corrections of anomalies are not overdone: the ascender of d still does not line with that of b, and j is far too short, but the overall impression is that of a type just a little too beautifully remade by a highly-skilled punchcutter of the 19th century. (It seems to me that Matthew Carter’s ‘Big Caslon’, 1994, based on these large sizes, especially on the 4-line Pica which was later cast on a 60-point body, manages to preserve more of the energy of the originals.) <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL9slcNiaeNsEgqlfu0EqQzO6FAOilLC5gD5yKQjbzJXGOf1jLiZJholtyKIRsMRft5x1rQ8bUU9L49FLTWwS4VhfcRVawC0diaopfvO-3UeBvDPj89GnlykI9cWzpHX72-WXK/s1600-h/Caslon+5P+in+synopsis+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 334px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306688853127232994" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL9slcNiaeNsEgqlfu0EqQzO6FAOilLC5gD5yKQjbzJXGOf1jLiZJholtyKIRsMRft5x1rQ8bUU9L49FLTWwS4VhfcRVawC0diaopfvO-3UeBvDPj89GnlykI9cWzpHX72-WXK/s400/Caslon+5P+in+synopsis+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>The inventory compiled by Justin Howes was only a start, as he was well aware, and some entries raise questions that only a careful examining of the surviving materials can begin to answer, something that is hardly possible in the present state of the <a href="http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/foi_requests/5529.aspx">Type Museum</a>. There are, for example, 48 surviving punches for the Five-line Pica, but only two of these seem to be original. Justin Howes writes that the ‘hand-cut punches for the remaining authentic sorts presumably date from the nineteenth century’. There are also machine-cut punches for a further 28 characters. Are the hand-cut punches those that were made for the revised type that is first seen about 1890? It seems likely, since although the 149 surviving matrices are largely ‘punch-struck’, he does not suggest that these date from the 18th century. <br /></div><div>As it happens we have a small piece of more accessible evidence that became detached from the Caslon materials, having apparently at some time formed part of a display for exhibition: a set of four original punches, for K O U and m, for the Four-line Pica, later cast on a 60-point body, together with matrices for these letters. They are now in the St Bride Library. <br /></div><div>It can hardly be doubted that these are the original 18th-century punches, in poor condition. Here is the face of m. The width, from one extremity of the foot serifs to the other, is 15.5 mm. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQfA5hyNvVIlEShXbOc7yTg19RKfDfv1Qosb3gE6FkK2qv7SDx50NVB2zPRKJI6CeNdBrknlr0xuIaqWVZcfCRk23pz9w06aV8Ae5RUZYU-FIldOlDnxVJyh4zeOyUwHjfH1yX/s1600-h/7+Caslon+4P+m+punch+850.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 334px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287470472804179202" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQfA5hyNvVIlEShXbOc7yTg19RKfDfv1Qosb3gE6FkK2qv7SDx50NVB2zPRKJI6CeNdBrknlr0xuIaqWVZcfCRk23pz9w06aV8Ae5RUZYU-FIldOlDnxVJyh4zeOyUwHjfH1yX/s400/7+Caslon+4P+m+punch+850.jpg" /></a> Here are impressions of the type, before and after recutting. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivLQ5k6l91qrohi4Zi5WreJpGg7jW5UG953YjJp-zGRkXMTGIydKXBhjrSnV5fV_gX2u1RO1gZgMMUuEfGVdjXUE8zL0Vw-HpVPos_hoxvPnjFt9n-2P_brxHAiUlw05sFn5sO/s1600-h/8+4P+m+orig+and+recut.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 150px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287470777800916290" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivLQ5k6l91qrohi4Zi5WreJpGg7jW5UG953YjJp-zGRkXMTGIydKXBhjrSnV5fV_gX2u1RO1gZgMMUuEfGVdjXUE8zL0Vw-HpVPos_hoxvPnjFt9n-2P_brxHAiUlw05sFn5sO/s400/8+4P+m+orig+and+recut.jpg" /></a> The second counter is slightly narrower than the first, and its upper curve is higher. In the earlier impression, on the left, the initial stroke aligns with the first of the upper curves. In the new type, on the right, these features have been kept, and the oddly-angled ends of the central foot-serif have been preserved, but it seems clear that the drawing of all the parts is more accurate. Moreover the first vertical stroke now rises above the line of both subsequent curves. It is the earlier impression that matches the original punch. <br /></div><div>If there could be any doubt about the suggestion that the type was recut, the struck matrices that accompany the old punches confirm that something of the kind took place. The old punch and the new matrix do not fit together, but rattle uncomfortably when one is placed in the other. Here is the matrix for the Four-line Pica m, made for machine casting, and stamped with the code for its character number (47), the point size (60) and the name of the type, OF for ‘Old Face’. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMBB8drYsGmEABxxbkWE_6z1dH_wNMElRela_5mJhRqZL-soeU2VxsESpvdg4Oi9E9da4Lqda3BUyDlmYSntBJ4LGkyNQ1A5ICuvjAv3ItKDPsEg43kLcXAXtbC8DPu6cY9o4/s1600-h/9+Caslon+60pt+m+mat+2+port+a.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 197px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287471150526862322" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMBB8drYsGmEABxxbkWE_6z1dH_wNMElRela_5mJhRqZL-soeU2VxsESpvdg4Oi9E9da4Lqda3BUyDlmYSntBJ4LGkyNQ1A5ICuvjAv3ItKDPsEg43kLcXAXtbC8DPu6cY9o4/s400/9+Caslon+60pt+m+mat+2+port+a.jpg" /></a> The right-hand letter in the pair of m’s shown above is from the specimen printed in London for H. W. Caslon & Co. Ltd in 1924 by George W. Jones, which is one of the most elaborate and carefully-printed presentations of the Old Face type that the foundry ever produced. This claim, which forms the ‘unique selling proposition’ for the product (to use another piece of 20th-century marketing jargon) is made on the title page: <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju8XyqwEzn1MRJ8DyQ4EjLdyBsG_q80c2asCfMoQX4s0x3hdUZqtFhuvUgj6M2H3WkXjS8d255HUcGM6xmxK2wDwN_RgJxK2Et2FoSVBNbQLufd8wkq89yE5pcwOEvAF9-YUcp/s1600-h/Caslon+spec+1924+-+title+det+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 390px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328881939473542242" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju8XyqwEzn1MRJ8DyQ4EjLdyBsG_q80c2asCfMoQX4s0x3hdUZqtFhuvUgj6M2H3WkXjS8d255HUcGM6xmxK2wDwN_RgJxK2Et2FoSVBNbQLufd8wkq89yE5pcwOEvAF9-YUcp/s400/Caslon+spec+1924+-+title+det+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>These words, an echo of those that had appeared in many specimens of the Caslon foundry, were clearly designed to sustain the faith of their customers, among whom were so many devoted craft printers, in the genuineness of types that bore one of the most respected names in typography. But the suggestion that the matrices of the type had been ‘produced’ directly from the original punches was now wholly misleading. The type was now cast from matrices made with new punches, and the direct link with the originals had been permanently and deliberately broken. <strong>Sources </strong><br /></div><div>The list by Justin Howes, ‘Caslon Old Face: an inventory’, is an eight-page insert in his article, ‘Caslon’s punches and matrices’, <em>Matrix </em>no. 20 (2000), pp. 1–7. <br /></div><div>Here are some other related sources. The Caslon types as they appeared in the 18th century can be seen in the specimen book of the foundry published in 1766, reproduced in facsimile in <em>Journal of the Printing Historical Society, </em>no. 16 (1981/2). <br /></div><div>G. W. Ovink, ‘Nineteenth-century reactions against the didone type model’, <em>Quaerendo</em>, vol. 1 (1971), pp. 18–31, pp. 282–301; vol. 2 (1972), pp. 122–43, is a series of articles, the first of which is the most wide-ranging survey that has been published of the appearance of ‘old face’, ‘old style’ and ‘elzévir’ types, in the 19th century. Similarly, A. F. Johnson’s survey of the English scene, ‘Old-face types in the Victorian age’, which originally appeared in the <em>Monotype Recorder </em>in 1931, and which is incorporated in his <em>Type designs, their history and development,</em> third ed. (London, 1966) and in his <em>Selected essays on books and printing</em>, 1970 (pp. 423–44), though much in need of updating, is the most thorough account yet attempted. <br /></div><div>For details of the revival of Caslon Old Face, the account by Janet Ing (now Janet Ing Freeman), based on work with the surviving accounts of the printer as well as the books and other materials, is the most detailed study: ‘Founders’ type and private founts at the Chiswick Press in the 1850s’, <em>Journal of the Printing Historical Society</em>, 19/20 (1985–7), pp. 63–102. I am most grateful to her for guidance to the sources for the history of the Caslon Old Face matrices used by William Howard that are illustrated above. In her article she makes the suggestion that the early appearance of Caslon Old Face capitals in a set of five title pages that were proofed in 1839, of which an example is shown below, some four years before the setting of <em>Lady Willoughby </em>and other related texts from newly-cast type, may be due to the finding by the younger Charles Whittingham of old Caslon types in his uncle’s cases when he took over responsibility for the shop. This seems highly plausible – and if this is what happened, perhaps it was the discovery of the old types and their use in these few books that set off the whole revival. <br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjietNxBbj4sOMsnX8BwEBud9uJL8ld0qwJhL_NuEk4A1sR-N6Qwp-8RJuR3V8t8fM1HnFDgGajH8EsDYZ1BEQDZn5ZAnLrLOOu8gixCCQPkFLVOv6dopq7v2ayx-X3VRC7Mj7J/s1600-h/10+CP+Taylor+-+Holy+dying+1840+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 300px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287471439210520722" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjietNxBbj4sOMsnX8BwEBud9uJL8ld0qwJhL_NuEk4A1sR-N6Qwp-8RJuR3V8t8fM1HnFDgGajH8EsDYZ1BEQDZn5ZAnLrLOOu8gixCCQPkFLVOv6dopq7v2ayx-X3VRC7Mj7J/s400/10+CP+Taylor+-+Holy+dying+1840+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /></div><div>The image of the new Caslon foundry at Hackney Wick shown further above is from an album made for a member of the Caslon-Smith family. It was bought by the St Bride Library from the book- and print-seller Ben Weinreb, who generously added the Caslon ‘Synopsis book’ from the same source as part of the deal. I published some of the images in 1993: James Mosley, ‘The Caslon foundry in 1902: selections from an album’, <em>Matrix </em>13 (1993), pp. 34–42. <br /></div><div><strong>ATF Caslon</strong> <br /></div><div>Here is the presentation of the series known as Caslon 471 in the <em>Specimen book and catalogue</em> of the American Type Founders Company issued in 1923:</div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJDA-rvyyYyYvcKmzxdOVASy4hQt5u2LRIiOwMLp42KzJ191tgdO4QDakDyTtKycpYd1gGqaDOp__15b61ZcRypaPT6BajQ8AIOJ5_ekHFkDDlelIMHxwJb34ijdiglA_SlUaI/s1600-h/ATF+Caslon+471+-+1923+spec+-+Intro+-+1000.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 346px; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306700433506465442" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJDA-rvyyYyYvcKmzxdOVASy4hQt5u2LRIiOwMLp42KzJ191tgdO4QDakDyTtKycpYd1gGqaDOp__15b61ZcRypaPT6BajQ8AIOJ5_ekHFkDDlelIMHxwJb34ijdiglA_SlUaI/s400/ATF+Caslon+471+-+1923+spec+-+Intro+-+1000.jpg" /></a> <br /><div></div>This curiously opaque statement appears to suggest that the original Caslon matrices were brought to the United States. It fails to mention that in 1859 the type had already been cast in London by the Caslon foundry for over a decade from early matrices, and that it continued for many years to cast the type from the same matrices. The reference to matrices ‘brought to America’ in 1859 seems likely to be to electrotyped matrices imported by Johnson that were possibly made in London and perhaps by the Caslon foundry itself. If these matrices had been derived from the types that were being cast from surviving matrices, it can be argued that by the 20th century the Caslon types cast in the United States had a closer relationship to the 18th-century originals than the recut types that were being produced in England. <br /><div></div>Electrotyped matrices deriving from MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan for the Small Pica size of the Caslon type, later 11 point, survived the break up of ATF in 1993. See the account and images given by Theo Rehak at the web site of the <a href="http://www.daleguild.com/Artifacts.html">Dale Guild Type Foundry</a>. I learn that they have now been bought by Rich Hopkins. <br /><div></div>I should like to express my thanks to Steve Saxe and Alastair Johnston for help with the documenting of the versions of the Caslon types that appear under the name of ‘Old Style’ in the USA. Last edited 4 July 2009Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-2386189526724483032008-08-22T13:28:00.031+00:002011-09-11T07:13:01.357+00:00Tarte au citron<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFcW-sxcsFj4Pwl9amcE7r5ZlPY4NdWNbVt9q4EPcj8igkIQ482saetRZiC5OrtKOThTIuZ8cIA65AYbVxtBxA-UXFrpRt8HZi29lu2ktEoSV_xyZexYioBRtF1DEs1GYLa_vR/s1600-h/Tarte+au+citron+-+Belle+Époque+-+2008-08+2+a+-+850.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5237338036738253250" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFcW-sxcsFj4Pwl9amcE7r5ZlPY4NdWNbVt9q4EPcj8igkIQ482saetRZiC5OrtKOThTIuZ8cIA65AYbVxtBxA-UXFrpRt8HZi29lu2ktEoSV_xyZexYioBRtF1DEs1GYLa_vR/s400/Tarte+au+citron+-+Belle+%C3%89poque+-+2008-08+2+a+-+850.jpg" /></a><br /><div></div>The script shown in this image is an interpretation of the <em>anglaise</em>, more fully the <em>écriture anglaise</em>, the script that was thus named in France after its model, the 18th-century English round hand.<br />The forms of all styles of writing are influenced by the tool with which they are written and the medium that it employs. In the present case the tool is that of the <em>pâtissier </em>and the medium is chocolate.<br /><div></div>There is not a lot more to add, except that the <em>tarte au citron </em>which is the substrate of the script came from Belle Époque, a pâtisserie at Newington Green in London which consistently maintains a level of quality that its equivalents in Paris would be glad to reach, even occasionally.<br /><div></div>Newington Green, and Stoke Newington just to the north, across the fields, were known during the 18th century as centres of Dissent. Their inhabitants were disinclined to accept uncritically any doctrines, whether those of the established church or of any arbitrarily asserted system of political values. It is a tradition that, happily, the district still respects. Daniel Defoe was a notable resident of Stoke Newington. Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of <em>A vindication of the rights of women </em>(1792), set up her school at Newington Green. The young John Stuart Mill, who lived at the Green shortly afterwards, remembered walks before breakfast ‘in the green lanes towards Hornsey’, while he gave his father an account of what he had read the day before. His earliest recollections were ‘of green fields and wild flowers’.<br /><div></div>Hornsey was the name of the civil parish that began just to the north of the Green. The busy road that runs to the north-west is called Green Lanes. Sheep may no longer graze on Newington Green, but a good phrase to apply to one of its chief attractions would be that of Michelin: <em>vaut le voyage</em>.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00MszpBx86cT9dC6RR_we8LIOnXWB-kWsMeHWsMkykT5Uax5nNRgLxhG4RVnQmdkKcnL0ciIzwLGB0QzoYki1ixtFgablwJH0zvZ_XQj59lS_vVCrFDnrpI7gWw-O0c5UnnGj/s1600/Newington+Green+-+T.+H.+Shepherd.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 282px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh00MszpBx86cT9dC6RR_we8LIOnXWB-kWsMeHWsMkykT5Uax5nNRgLxhG4RVnQmdkKcnL0ciIzwLGB0QzoYki1ixtFgablwJH0zvZ_XQj59lS_vVCrFDnrpI7gWw-O0c5UnnGj/s400/Newington+Green+-+T.+H.+Shepherd.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5650723540005196930" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi91Eq96VGA1Qvg8wuhAHaEzp1Vhot3y4zCpk1d6Rtipl9HDhB5DJvLwKzOZhffg6i2SQQAXTyTRz1TtLr0j-mMMqZtVYDBO6ywjAIVkpErXWfoKQruRE7i3KURIrsz5DVNTPz0/s1600/Newington+Green+-+Belle+%25C3%2589poque+2+-+1000.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 246px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi91Eq96VGA1Qvg8wuhAHaEzp1Vhot3y4zCpk1d6Rtipl9HDhB5DJvLwKzOZhffg6i2SQQAXTyTRz1TtLr0j-mMMqZtVYDBO6ywjAIVkpErXWfoKQruRE7i3KURIrsz5DVNTPz0/s400/Newington+Green+-+Belle+%25C3%2589poque+2+-+1000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5650723773537994914" /></a><br /><div></div>The first image above shows Newington Green in the early 19th century, from a drawing by T. H. Shepherd reproduced in Claire Tomalin’s biography of Mary Wollstonecraft (1974). Below is the scene as it appeared in September 2011. The unitarian chapel that she knew, with its new façade of 1860, is on the left. Belle Époque, boulangerie and pâtisserie, is to the right.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-23607043773819269592008-07-26T08:48:00.031+00:002008-07-31T10:28:32.811+00:00Cast brass matrices made for Pierre Didot<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlisucv60NmFJE-WaO4wzdiWfMSLtMq2gDXULN_9bhrdNgBp2mzISj_Sxx1SVJBMOVOJBllXIeZnupxNUvvvkAB5i1ZOgs2y7pRb-zkNhTKjPCP-bKIvSNwW5P44ePrLfw5wy7/s1600-h/1+-+ME-0004+-+600.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227242705020218098" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlisucv60NmFJE-WaO4wzdiWfMSLtMq2gDXULN_9bhrdNgBp2mzISj_Sxx1SVJBMOVOJBllXIeZnupxNUvvvkAB5i1ZOgs2y7pRb-zkNhTKjPCP-bKIvSNwW5P44ePrLfw5wy7/s400/1+-+ME-0004+-+600.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQx58meYU9W-aJJ7Bpk3Xz9D3pzEyeWeY5Kq047WknXadt34TFlCW-DsWQKyRF8qPQ97FGe07bMPI_xdazrBPYFHFSwddg8dZxoBXbFJrB_I0OhIjXvTs5H7I30_ZtdoJF8EOK/s1600-h/ME-0005+-+500.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228362936350374642" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQx58meYU9W-aJJ7Bpk3Xz9D3pzEyeWeY5Kq047WknXadt34TFlCW-DsWQKyRF8qPQ97FGe07bMPI_xdazrBPYFHFSwddg8dZxoBXbFJrB_I0OhIjXvTs5H7I30_ZtdoJF8EOK/s400/ME-0005+-+500.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div>An earlier post (March 2008) described the big 16th-century letters that were acquired in the 18th century by Johannes Enschedé, and which were known to him, because they were supposedly derived from punches cut in brass, by the name <em>Chalcographia</em>. To modern writers it has seemed more likely that punches for the alphabet were cut in steel, and that the surviving brass matrices were castings in sand that were made by using as patterns an intermediate set of strikes in lead from the steel punches.<br /><div></div>The post concluded with a quotation from an account published in 1851 by Ambroise Firmin-Didot of the use that had been made of this technique to make brass matrices for a set of very elaborate and delicate ornamented capitals for the <em>gothique ornée </em>of the Didot typefoundry, for which the punches were cut in steel by a punchcutter called Cornouailles. Brass matrices were made by striking the punches in lead, making casts in brass using the lead strikes as patterns, and finishing off the resulting matrices by driving the steel punches into them.<br /><div></div>The punches and matrices for these capitals appear to be identifiable with sets that are also in the Enschedé collection (type 1489), to which they were added when the materials of the foundry of Pierre Didot and his son Jules were acquired in the early 19th century. They were shown in a <em>Specimen des caractères de la Fonderie Normale à Bruxelles, provenant de la fonderie de Jules Didot et de son père Pierre Didot</em>, printed by Joh. Enschedé en Zonen in 1914, and reprinted in 1931.<br /><div></div>The capitals are about 21 mm square. The images at the head of this post show the punches, which are cut with a degree of precision that makes them look oddly like the product of one of the pantographic engraving machines of the end of the 19th century.<br /><div></div>Here is one of the punches, set in the matrix to which it belongs.<br /><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGIW3hCYxmhg-vJAlP77TyQFs8mM4d9H_1xZVqESdQpavPXa47xomASMppKzY3EiYygtMpBHWNTTeksN1WRgOkH1f8GNE3i62HovdXBC6iOJgSmV-tXkd-vqvxkzqPnGva1VMi/s1600-h/2+-+ME-0024+-+500.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227242832740298354" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGIW3hCYxmhg-vJAlP77TyQFs8mM4d9H_1xZVqESdQpavPXa47xomASMppKzY3EiYygtMpBHWNTTeksN1WRgOkH1f8GNE3i62HovdXBC6iOJgSmV-tXkd-vqvxkzqPnGva1VMi/s400/2+-+ME-0024+-+500.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div></div>And here is one of the brass matrices, which has been fitted in a block of steel, followed by an impression from type cast from it.<br /><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvuI8pmPZhgEeD1cK2nmNCAZx66Xb38Y3TuXW2fZHzH4boHXM16hUdAePIe7sdTbksNpglTsmuJtIKpS5QN5f5ibqQmlW3p8GQlU3no-8PXvKGF_3sHmu8MVpuOp7OttckBhpf/s1600-h/3+-+ME-0018+-+600.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227242949593750898" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvuI8pmPZhgEeD1cK2nmNCAZx66Xb38Y3TuXW2fZHzH4boHXM16hUdAePIe7sdTbksNpglTsmuJtIKpS5QN5f5ibqQmlW3p8GQlU3no-8PXvKGF_3sHmu8MVpuOp7OttckBhpf/s400/3+-+ME-0018+-+600.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8IqS-5APxhXuAYJBP0Ew_YLnTQEL6J3oh9wNUzMGcGkL7Gv6dcz-r6aLDEyeMKg1SwqUVKrXix1s3vkXz3DmoA5REDdaGGM0lAOMt_Z6Xtyt8XgfgfIbQBGYos7P2H4K5hEzy/s1600-h/4+-+Didot+Gothique+ornée+-+cap+L+a+-+500.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227243038621335874" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8IqS-5APxhXuAYJBP0Ew_YLnTQEL6J3oh9wNUzMGcGkL7Gv6dcz-r6aLDEyeMKg1SwqUVKrXix1s3vkXz3DmoA5REDdaGGM0lAOMt_Z6Xtyt8XgfgfIbQBGYos7P2H4K5hEzy/s400/4+-+Didot+Gothique+orn%C3%A9e+-+cap+L+a+-+500.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div>The lead strikes, having served their purpose, appear not to have survived. These images, except for the one just above, were made by Johan de Zoete, curator of the Stichting Museum Enschedé, Haarlem, to whom I am grateful for his interest, and for his permission to reproduce them.</div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-38655764366474748852008-05-30T14:27:00.108+00:002011-05-11T07:18:30.126+00:00Roman tragedy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyPfids1sZrrV9nbCwr2xwReCMmQ8UqWSXHvykUgedAhN2RCne0R-cz51oiIziFnCZ21DM8Dp3S1rDXnvnldT5oyN1A8PH7s6l8f2ngVTHqfN2qeFkE9loUqQDk3rmxnDqq08P/s1600-h/Epaphro+inscr+in+situ,+Dec+1977+-+1000.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216073207456635106" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyPfids1sZrrV9nbCwr2xwReCMmQ8UqWSXHvykUgedAhN2RCne0R-cz51oiIziFnCZ21DM8Dp3S1rDXnvnldT5oyN1A8PH7s6l8f2ngVTHqfN2qeFkE9loUqQDk3rmxnDqq08P/s400/Epaphro+inscr+in+situ,+Dec+1977+-+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div></div><div>A decade ago the great collection of Roman inscriptions at the Museo Nazionale in Rome, not far from the Termini railway station, was expertly reorganized. The inscriptions are now beautifully shown in a context that explains their purpose, and a very full guide is available, the work of Rosanna Friggeri, one of the organizers of the new display.<br /></div><div>To many former visitors one of the most visible treasures of the Museo Nazionale had been the fragmentary inscription dedicated to Epaphroditus, the freedman who served the Emperor Nero, which can on that account be dated to about the end of the 1st century (Hermann Dessau, <em>Inscriptiones Latinae selectae,</em> Berlin 1892–1916, 9506). It had been discovered in the early 20th century and was therefore largely unweathered. It was displayed in the open air, and the natural lighting made every detail appear beautifully crisp. (There is something depressing about the Galleria Lapidaria of the Vatican Museum, where the incised forms of the letters of the inscriptions, many of which have been clumsily and fairly recently daubed with red, can hardly be made out in the diffused lighting.) The image at the head of this post is from a slide that was made in December 1977, in clear, soft winter sunshine. The image (clicking will enlarge it a little) does not do full justice to the quality of the original, but gives some idea of what it looked like then.<br /></div><div>However the location was worrying, since the pollution of the urban atmosphere in Rome, as elsewhere, was becoming increasingly unfriendly to its monuments, and many of those that could be moved, like the bronze equestrian statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol, were brought indoors, and a good facsimile was left in their place.<br /></div><div>The Epaphroditus inscription can now apparently be seen in one of the larger spaces of the museum, mounted on a wall.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQX-ifPN1dcYmgAtsWolqqlgMRY_zNJlAT4VDjOqBxWe_XAB1FH0Sslcqf08bYZBxRPeJF0j_F1GSvxbUIYkjjh4JT20jeo3OS3QPvoL68eOLbYeZcNe7xkRSqBKOVk8ea1A6N/s1600-h/2+Epaphroditus+2005+-+2+cast+-+600.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206178695476491010" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQX-ifPN1dcYmgAtsWolqqlgMRY_zNJlAT4VDjOqBxWe_XAB1FH0Sslcqf08bYZBxRPeJF0j_F1GSvxbUIYkjjh4JT20jeo3OS3QPvoL68eOLbYeZcNe7xkRSqBKOVk8ea1A6N/s400/2+Epaphroditus+2005+-+2+cast+-+600.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>But any visitor who knew it before will be puzzled to see that it looks grey and indistinct, and also half as thick as it was. In fact what you see is not the original stone at all, but a reproduction that has neither the lovely colour of its model nor its sharpness.<br /></div><div>So where is the original? The sheer number of the inscriptions in the possession of the museum is clearly a problem, and to one side of the space in front of the main building, where some gardens have been created, there is a kind of dump, formed from the inscriptions, mostly large ones, for which there was presumably no room in the interior display.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkhzGHPsjPw4Ud0uVKID89WxoMjJ-G6PozM3hXry-uFBErRQWb5LxZGQlwP8RrdSt2KdkjdBHYut6ZLQY4NfFWzMaRFv0e_GmqwBsKLZdcmRl9tintor-F71t9WFsPcNpeoEkI/s1600-h/3+Epaphroditus+2005+-+3+600.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206179331131650834" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkhzGHPsjPw4Ud0uVKID89WxoMjJ-G6PozM3hXry-uFBErRQWb5LxZGQlwP8RrdSt2KdkjdBHYut6ZLQY4NfFWzMaRFv0e_GmqwBsKLZdcmRl9tintor-F71t9WFsPcNpeoEkI/s400/3+Epaphroditus+2005+-+3+600.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>Among them is the original Epaphroditus inscription. It is hemmed in closely by others, so that it is now impossible either to see properly or to photograph clearly.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOniPpImXnzn0BpaAVGmrN3rM4mw4UCHZsZT39noL2d5qRm3kP3zaB97LSpM3egucSMirXiimikSql0DQzamZYHXAAdke3Siy9AtQOsGImaAUFsQXWHNarqwD2JQ9lQqQnloxJ/s1600-h/4+Epaphroditus+2005+-+1+800.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206179679024001826" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOniPpImXnzn0BpaAVGmrN3rM4mw4UCHZsZT39noL2d5qRm3kP3zaB97LSpM3egucSMirXiimikSql0DQzamZYHXAAdke3Siy9AtQOsGImaAUFsQXWHNarqwD2JQ9lQqQnloxJ/s400/4+Epaphroditus+2005+-+1+800.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>However it is all too easy to observe that since the slide was made, the surface of the stone has been badly bruised. (This bruising is in several places, but is most clearly visible over letter O in the second line on the right.) A crack that was hardly visible in 1977 has now advanced across the letter P. And the surface is now heavily stained in streaks by the dirty rain that continues to wash over it. These images were made in 2005.<br /></div><div>The sight is a distressing one, evidence of a public abandonment of all responsibility on the part of the museum for a work of art in its care. In a bizarre inversion of the policy that removed the Marcus Aurelius statue to safety, visitors to the museum are offered an inadequate copy while the original, having been damaged, is allowed to decay still further. One possible explanation – but this is simply guesswork and any information will be welcome – might be that it was indeed intended to display the original inscription and that, having been damaged, it became too embarrassing to show.<br /></div><div>Why is this inscription, among so many, important enough to make so much of? It’s worth trying to explain, even though – judging from the evidence provided by its display and its publications – it may be hard work to get the museum’s authorities to understand.<br /></div><div>At some date in the first century BCE, the appearance of Roman inscriptional lettering changed dramatically and permanently, and the results are still with us. ‘Monoline’ letters, that is letters made up of strokes of uniform thickness, gave way to the thick and thin strokes that we know from the shapes of the capital letters of many of our printing types. Exactly why this happened is still unclear. It is sometimes said that the increasing use in Rome of marble in place of the coarser tufo or travertine made it possible for ever finer letters to be cut. That may be so, but when the Greeks cut their letters on marble four hundred years earlier, they made them small and geometrical – and monoline. What seems to have happened in Rome is that a highly sophisticated calligraphic tradition, the existence of which was hardly suspected and for which very little evidence has survived, had suddenly entered the permanent medium of letters cut in stone.<br /></div><div>The following passage was written by W. R. Lethaby, founder of the Central School of Arts and Crafts, in his editor’s introduction to Edward Johnston’s writing manual of 1906:<br /></div><div>‘The Roman characters which are our letters today, although their earlier forms have only come down to us cut in stone, must have been formed by incessant practice with a flat, stiff brush, or some such tool. This disposition of the thicks and thins, and the exact shape of the curves, must have been settled by an instrument used rapidly; I suppose, indeed, that most of the great monumental inscriptions were designed in situ by a master writer, and only cut in by the mason, the cutting being merely a fixing, as it were, of the writing’.<br /></div><div>Nobody had ever said this before. Now it is accepted without question.<br /></div><div>Not long after Lethaby wrote, in 1914, brush lettering was discovered that had been painted on the walls of Pompeii in 79, when it was covered by the volcanic ash and preserved. Pompeii was a sophisticated and lively little town, and the publicity for the contested local elections was painted, mostly at night, by the light of lanterns or the moon, by brilliant signwriters, working sometimes in teams and sometimes alone, who signed their names. (Aemilius Celer was one of the loners, often working by moonlight: Speedy Aemilius. Banksy under the shadow of Vesuvius.)<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihDkiNKw2g60KZRNLV8c3LBZdEXwX2BO6iqy7MTmiaMs0FyB-ETnVoR54Y8PZ0YMmLFl0DeJfGQR4p4CuL6kRYPz6Vn_a6O1JCFrsnh4MerHfF8C_88Y-dWmhDghi4cNa0b1Ym/s1600-h/6+Pompeii+1916+-+600.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206180039801254706" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihDkiNKw2g60KZRNLV8c3LBZdEXwX2BO6iqy7MTmiaMs0FyB-ETnVoR54Y8PZ0YMmLFl0DeJfGQR4p4CuL6kRYPz6Vn_a6O1JCFrsnh4MerHfF8C_88Y-dWmhDghi4cNa0b1Ym/s400/6+Pompeii+1916+-+600.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>Among a great deal of excellent rapid writing in the style to which later palaeographers gave the name ‘rustic’ there is one piece in Roman capitals that link directly to the new style that was now beginning to be cut in stone:<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimrXojKvByYzzg-CwKVhOG-HvrJQ_-GfxuAkdmsNMpUN69nFZLjxkUWfdBYId07gUwjGEgHJBPNifbqQrxpgrMQ3a0K1bE5Ct4gM8iKhG89f4Q-GnIxUQIb7tRBhMBL9t4kOI7/s1600-h/7+Pompeii+-+SATRI+-+800.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206180417758376770" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimrXojKvByYzzg-CwKVhOG-HvrJQ_-GfxuAkdmsNMpUN69nFZLjxkUWfdBYId07gUwjGEgHJBPNifbqQrxpgrMQ3a0K1bE5Ct4gM8iKhG89f4Q-GnIxUQIb7tRBhMBL9t4kOI7/s400/7+Pompeii+-+SATRI+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>The proportions are not identical with those of the so-called ‘square capitals’, of which the lettering of the inscription at the base of Trajan’s Column has become known as the archetype. But there are other stone-cut inscriptions of which the drawing is no less masterly which are very closely related indeed. And Epaphroditus is one of these.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAgE1vfj91-Nw8siE7HREx_VjaKJdDX9RqAcBQ94Ua43CDt74vdQq7vEsWDcC9QYwcisA_RZ8qjztpZ7qFJJ8C5B3D6Bsp2hkLLf3iMymxPSTqxw7K6FceHwbKImZrJ0bH0yrY/s1600-h/8+Pompeii+&+Epaphroditus+A"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206180937449419602" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAgE1vfj91-Nw8siE7HREx_VjaKJdDX9RqAcBQ94Ua43CDt74vdQq7vEsWDcC9QYwcisA_RZ8qjztpZ7qFJJ8C5B3D6Bsp2hkLLf3iMymxPSTqxw7K6FceHwbKImZrJ0bH0yrY/s400/8+Pompeii+%26+Epaphroditus+A%27s+compared+-+800.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>There is room here to compare only the two letters A, and to note how in the Pompeian example the right-hand stroke shows the angle of the laying-on of the brush, a slight swelling of the line as it descends, and a very slight curve too, and its rapid lifting away at the foot to make a serif – and to observe how closely the Epaphroditus letter catches this dynamic calligraphic movement.<br /></div><div>Much of Roman epigraphy is dull stuff, turned out soundly enough as a matter of civic duty. Happily there are exceptions, inscriptions that are full of life and beautifully drawn and cut. These in turn inspired the <em>antiquarii</em> of the 15th century, like Felice Feliciano, who drew them and passed them on to their contemporaries. Their work is known to us from inscriptions on the buildings of the Italian Renaissance and printing types that were cut by punchcutters like Francesco Griffo who worked for Aldus.<br /></div><div>The Epaphroditus inscription ranks with these inspirational models. It may lack the nervous refinement of the Trajan letter, but that example is increasingly inaccessible, having suffered from nearly two thousand years of weathering, and, as visitors to Rome are all too well aware, our view of it is now almost permanently obstructed by scaffolding and green plastic. (To add to this dismal catalogue, it should be borne in mind that the two letters RI are all that remain at Pompeii of the SATRI inscription shown above, and they are faint and ghostly after nearly a century of exposure to sun and rain: all the rest of the plaster was blown from the wall by bombing in 1943.) The brilliance of the Epaphroditus inscription offered us a direct link to the master writer who was its <em>ordinator </em>(writer and designer) and perhaps its <em>sculptor</em> (cutter) too. It deserves more care from those who are responsible for it, and we have some right to ask them to apply it, however belatedly.<br /><br /><em>Sources</em><br /></div><div>This is the English edition of the guide book referred to above: Rosanna Friggeri, <em>The epigraphic collection of the Museo Nazionale Romano at the Baths of Diocletian</em> (Milan: Electa, 2001). The English translation of the text is an obstacle to readers (to call it inexpert would be too kind), but the illustrations are excellent. However, the Epaphroditus inscription is neither mentioned nor illustrated. There is a section on the making of inscriptions that is headed ‘Epigraphy: workshops and culture’. It sets out some useful basic information, but offers no analysis of the forms of letters.<br /></div><div>Joyce S. and Arthur E. Gordon wrote on page 80 of their <em>Contributions to the palaeography of Latin inscriptions </em>(Ann Arbor, 1957), ‘The origin of shading’ [<em>that is, the use of thick and thin strokes</em>] ‘obviously has to do with several questions, principally How? Where from? and When? To the first two the answer is that we do not know, and to the third the answer is the same, except that the shading appears in Latin lettering in Rome by about the time of the death of Julius Caesar’ [44 BC]. They added, ‘This problem of the origin of shading needs a careful and extensive investigation.’ The assertion of Jean Mallon, in his <em>Paléographie romaine </em>(Madrid, 1952), that, ‘[la capitale est] la fixation calligraphique, à un moment donné, d’une écriture vulgaire déterminée, qui a continué sa carrière en dehors d’elle’ is a remark that has lost none of its resonance; but so far as I am aware, the question of the introduction of ‘thick and thin strokes’ to inscriptions cut in stone still awaits the serious attention of scholars. The modest monograph by Giancarlo Susini, <em>Il lapicida romano</em> (Bologna, 1966) did not attempt to address it, and its English version, <em>The Roman stonecutter </em>(Oxford, 1973), is obscured by the imperfect translation of some technical terms.<br /></div><div>A good account of the painted electoral notices of Pompeii is given in: Romolo A. Staccioli, <em>Le elezioni municipali nell’antichità romana, con particolare riferimento ai ‘manifesti’ elettorali di Pompei </em>(Roma: Edizioni Palatino, 1963). The group of notices of which one was reproduced above are described in the <em>Notizie degli scavi di antichità</em>, xi (1914), pp. 104–6, which include notes on the signatures of the writers, and can be read <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/notiziedegliscav11realrich#page/106/mode/2up">online</a>.</div><div>An earlier note that I wrote about the fate of the Epaphroditus inscription was published under the heading ‘Inscription under threat’ in <em>Forum, </em>the journal of <a href="http://www.letterexchange.org/index.html">Letter Exchange</a>, issue 13 (April 2007). </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-77472950227798775542008-04-30T07:53:00.092+00:002011-01-21T08:37:56.782+00:00Type bodies compared<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTJqbZNo-FPhgbtXNtJ-kXMUH61XnO1-2mRKmKDA3uzAVNAaRYxhzNCDqy3CO3ZXYgv7FE0aeCLGHuPbyAIjAqvxzL-zNYUplaylfaA1Ze3YdxAOVJbTZzbiqz3tyowYdTrC_-/s1600-h/Type+bodies+compared+-+table+2008+-+printed+1100.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218358060125545202" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTJqbZNo-FPhgbtXNtJ-kXMUH61XnO1-2mRKmKDA3uzAVNAaRYxhzNCDqy3CO3ZXYgv7FE0aeCLGHuPbyAIjAqvxzL-zNYUplaylfaA1Ze3YdxAOVJbTZzbiqz3tyowYdTrC_-/s400/Type+bodies+compared+-+table+2008+-+printed+1100.jpg" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><div>Pica has survived as a familiar unit of measurement, although it is not what it was. (In digital terms it is 4.236 mm, or 12 points of 1/72 inch or 0.353 mm.) But what about Nonpareil, or Brevier, or Great Primer? Or Gros Parangon and Petit Romain? What exactly were they?<br /></div><div>Several of the works that deal with the history of type, including those by authorities like H. D. L. Vervliet, Harry Carter and Philip Gaskell, print tables of ‘typical’ or ‘average’ numerical values for these names which are useful for giving a general notion of their size. But, disconcertingly, an average value may not fit any specific example. As Harry Carter once wrote, ‘Nonpareils and Picas varied: there were local traditions about them’.<br /></div><div>What were these traditions? The purpose of the table above (click on it to view it) is to try to begin to discover some of them. It aims to say how big the named sizes were in different places and at different dates. How Caslon’s <em>Pica </em>differed from Moxon’s. And how Fournier’s <em>Cicéro</em> related to Plantin’s <em>Mediane</em>. The measurements were made directly from original type specimens, and the result, however approximate, is at least drawn from real life, and is not a homogenized average quantity. The basic unit is the millimetre. As explained below, the actual measurement of the body from the original printed document is the figure in square brackets; the figure that precedes it is the measurement increased by 1.5 per cent to make up for the notional paper shrinkage.<br /></div><div>The traditional names for type sizes, like <em>Cicéro</em>, began to appear in France during the 16th century, when they were used in the bills submitted by punchcutters to their clients and in lists of printers’ stock. No doubt some names like <em>Cicéro</em> and <em>St Augustin </em>were originally a reference to the type used in specific editions of these writers, though claims that have been made to be able to identify the editions are not very convincing. Other names, like <em>Canon, Brevier, </em>and probably <em>Pica</em>, refer to types used in liturgical works. And there is a whole series of designations for small types, which sometimes have winsome names like <em>Nonpareil </em>(meaning ‘nonesuch’ or ‘incomparable’), <em>Robijn </em>(Ruby), and <em>Diamant </em>(Diamond), or alternatively bear the names of cities where they were made, like <em>Parisienne</em>, which was already in use in the 16th century, <em>Sedanoise </em>(Jannon), <em>Parmigianina </em>(Bodoni), and – in the 19th century – the tiny <em>Milanina </em>(by the Milanese punchcutter Wilmant).<br /></div><div>But how big were they? And did two Nonpareils make a Pica? The answer to that question is, sometimes but not always. The Parisian book trade regulations of 1723 defined the relationships of some of the sizes to each other (two bodies of <em>Nonpareil </em>did indeed make a <em>Cicéro</em>), but did not set a standard on which to base their measurement.<br /></div><div>Named bodies continued in use in different European countries until numerical point systems were generally adopted, but that was not until the later 19th or early 20th centuries. One reason for having information about their actual size is that historical types were made to fit the bodies used in the foundry that originally cast them, and when they were later cast from original matrices on bodies based on one or other of the ‘point systems’, which in the smaller sizes have relatively crude arithmetical increments, they often look different. That is something it is useful to be aware of.<br /></div><div>This table gives some information about the size of the bodies of the types made in some major foundries before the introduction of such standards. There is one fundamental problem in trying to ascertain the exact size of type by measuring from printed matter of the hand press period. When the paper was damped for printing it expanded. The print was made on the expanded paper, which then shrank as it dried. The size of the print must therefore always be slightly smaller than the type that made it.<br /></div><div>In order to counteract this effect, the measured values that are given first in most of the columns are adjusted to show a notional value for the real size of the type by making a rather arbitrary allowance of 1.5 per cent for the shrinkage of the dampened paper when it dried after printing. The measurements that were actually made from the original printed documents are the figures that follow and which appear in square brackets. Thus the body of the Gros Texte shown on the Berner sheet of 1592, which measures 5.9 mm on paper, is reckoned on this basis to have been 5.99 mm. A rigorously scientific observation of the degree of the shrinkage of damped paper after printing during the hand press period seems never to have made. Philip Gaskell added a very cautious note on the subject to his <em>New introduction to bibliography </em>(1972), p. 13, noting shrinkage of between 1 and 2.5 per cent, with a more pronounced shrinkage across the chain-lines than along them. My own experiments with old paper roughly agree with his. But there are all kinds of problems involved. Different kinds of papers and degrees of damping would probably give very different results. Systematic experiments on handmade papers of varying consistencies and made at different periods would be worth conducting and publishing.<br /></div><div>The values given here under the names of Joseph Moxon (which are from his <em>Mechanick exercises</em>, 1683) and John Smith (<em>Printer’s grammar</em>, 1755) are calculated from their lists of names for bodies, in which both authors gave the number of them contained in one foot, how accurately we cannot tell. Since the figures in the two scales do not all correspond, it looks as if Smith did not copy Moxon’s list but gave his own, based on type in current use, perhaps Caslon’s. Moxon’s <em>Pica</em>, for example, is much smaller than Smith’s. Smith’s <em>Pica</em> is not only more or less that of Caslon in London, but as can be seen from this table it is close to the Cicéro of the contemporary typefounder Sanlecque in Paris. Moreover it is also close to the equivalent body of Le Bé in Paris and Berner in Frankfurt am Main, two of the major commercial foundries of the late 16th-century. Moxon’s <em>Pica</em> is similar to Plantin’s <em>Mediane</em> in Antwerp, and may reflect the influence of the Low Countries on British typefounding. </div><div>Since this table was compiled measurements have been made from the copy of Moxon’s type specimen sheet, <em>Proves of several sorts of letters </em>(1669), in the British Library, MS Harl. 5919. (459.) These are the sizes of the 7 bodies that are shown: Great Cannon 16.65 [16.40]. Double Pica 7.23 [7.12]. Great Primmer 6.26 [6.17]. English 4.94 [4.87]. Pica 4.14 [4.08]. Long Primmer 3.35 [3.30]. Brevier 2.71 [2.67].</div><div>In the column headed ‘US points’ the figures in parentheses or round brackets give the number of US points that are equivalent to the millimetre value that precedes them, based on the established value of 1 US point = 0.351 mm. This measurement is included simply in order to give a familiar standard for the purposes of comparison, but (as mentioned above) for use in modern computer software, the point has been made equivalent to one seventy-second of an inch, or 0.353 mm. For the purposes of this exercise the difference is insignificant.<br /></div><div>In the column of the French names for type bodies, the names are followed by the number of ‘typographical points’ assigned to them by Fournier le jeune. Fournier studiously avoided giving an exact measurement for his points in terms of the official units of measurement. He stated that the system of ‘typographical points’ that was set out in the first volume of his <em>Manuel typographique </em>(1764), had first been published in 1737, and it seems likely that it was the table headed <em>Table des proportions des differens caracteres de l’imprimerie, </em>reproduced as his illustration 5 by Updike,<em> </em>that appears in the type specimen entitled <em>Modéles des caracteres</em>, 1742. This was expressed in <em>lignes </em>and <em>points. </em>The <em>ligne </em>was an official measure of one twelfth of the <em>pouce </em>or inch, and the <em>point </em>was an indeterminate small unit of which in this case there were six to the <em>ligne, </em>but the units used by Fournier do not correspond to the official ones<em>. </em>Fournier’s <em>nompareille </em>is given as 1 <em>ligne </em>in the <em>Table des proportions, </em>but the reference to notional <em>lignes </em>was abandoned<em> </em>and the size of the same body is given as 6 points in the <em>Manuel typographique</em>. Fournier’s system was derived from the scale of related type bodies, of which he was well aware since he mentions it in the <em>Manuel</em>, that had been drawn up by Sébastien Truchet, member of the Carmelite order, mathematician, hydraulic engineer, and member of the ‘Commission Bignon’ that in 1693 began to plan a ‘Description des Arts et Métiers’ or description of trades. It was also responsible for the new type for the Imprimerie royale, which was first used to print the <em>Médailles sur les principaux événements du règne de Louis le Grand</em>, 1702.<br /></div><div>In about 1694 Truchet began to plan a series of related type bodies for the new type. His initial unit was a <em>ligne seconde </em>of 0.188 mm, one twelfth of the <em>ligne</em>, which was one twelfth of an inch and thus 1/144 of the official <em>pied de roi </em>of 324.8 mm. One of Truchet’s working documents shows how in measuring different examples of works printed in type called ‘Petit Romain’ or ‘Cicéro’ or ‘St Augustin’, he found two or three or even four different sizes for some of these named bodies. By their side he set out his recommended reformed system, the <em>nouvelle proportion à imiter:</em><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXNDAz1fo9oI5IxzQysdXcrikFCLTz9F1Q3OtCyKaS0rK_3evMoit8-JWkDdPxLvIksaYqg4EAKuTLzNvjsxwVpcbr07ksXyYU-WtPaIo9U490tRAKrC4EZ-RQ9kBYPoncuXhn/s1600-h/Truchet+table+AN+1+for+blog.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194958304248359090" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXNDAz1fo9oI5IxzQysdXcrikFCLTz9F1Q3OtCyKaS0rK_3evMoit8-JWkDdPxLvIksaYqg4EAKuTLzNvjsxwVpcbr07ksXyYU-WtPaIo9U490tRAKrC4EZ-RQ9kBYPoncuXhn/s400/Truchet+table+AN+1+for+blog.jpg" /></a><br /></div><div>Bodies based on Truchet’s system appear to have been used throughout the 18th century by the Imprimerie royale, until a ‘millimetric’ point of 0.4 mm was introduced at the Imprimerie impériale in about 1810 by Firmin Didot. This was effectively the ‘point IN’ of 0.39877 mm that is still used for the metal types of the Imprimerie nationale.<br /></div><div>In about 1781 François-Ambroise Didot followed the example of Truchet and made new types with bodies using a unit based on the <em>pied de roi</em>, one sixth of the <em>ligne</em>, or 0.376 mm. Since the Didot family never used the term ‘point’ (the term originally proposed was <em>mètre</em>, but this word was then adopted for the universal unit of linear measurement), a type on a body of 12 of the Didot units was designated ‘<em>corps 12</em>’. However it eventually became known as the Didot point, which was adopted as the common unit of the French and German typefounders, the basis of what was later known as the Cicéro system.<br /></div><div>One reason for the variety of the bodies among founders must be that each founder worked independently from all the others and there was no movement towards uniformity. It may have suited some of them to know that the printer who bought a fount could only use it conveniently with another from the same source.<br /></div><div>Something to bear in mind in approaching this question is that the setting of standards for the accurate measurement of very small sizes does not appear to have been possible in any technology before the introduction of precise tools, like micrometers, during the 19th century. But this is a subject on which I can find no reliable information, and shall be glad of help. However the lack of such independent standards does not mean that typefounding was not performed to a very level of precision indeed, probably to a greater degree than in any other pre-industrial small-scale technology. It is simply that the dimensions of the body (and also the ‘set’ of the registers of the mould, governing the side bearings of the type) were established by matching samples of the same type that had been kept as a standard and used when a new fount was cast or a mould was refurbished.<br /></div><div>I do not claim absolute reliability for these measurements. I hope, though, that they go a little way towards showing some kind of relative picture in an area where one was almost wholly lacking. The measuring was done from time to time on occasions when I had the opportunity of visiting the libraries where the original documents are kept, and I am grateful to those who made them available. Most of the figures are derived from measurements of several lines at a time, and the size of the single body is calculated from this overall figure, which should reduce error. At the same time, by way of a check, single lines were measured with a magnifying glass that incorporated a scale of tenths of a millimetre. Even so, where measurements are made in millimetres to two places of decimals, the first of these figures, and a fortiori the second, must be approximate. Human error must be allowed for. Rulers vary, and so does the rate of the expansion of paper and its shrinkage. Caveat lector.<br /><br />The table above and its notes were put together as part of a historical study of type bodies that is work in progress. I can think of some improvements to make. It would be worth measuring several copies of the more common specimens (Caslon, Fournier, Enschedé) to see what variations there are. But three of the specimens – Berner, Le Bé and Jannon – are known only from single copies in Frankfurt, Antwerp and Paris, and my measurements are based on these. So it seemed to me that, since the topic seems never to have been tackled systematically, the table in its present form might be worth publishing on its own. </div><div></div><div>For more on Truchet’s type bodies, see my article, ‘French academicians and modern typography: designing new types in the 1690s’, <em>Typography papers</em>, 2 (1997), pp. 5–29. And see also my contribution and that of <a href="http://jacques-andre.fr/faqtypo/truchet/truchet1E.html">Jacques André </a>in the catalogue of the exhibition at the Musée de l’Imprimerie, Lyon, <em>Le romain du roi: la typographie au service de l’État 1702–2002 </em>(Lyon, 2002), the stock of which is now also available from <a href="http://www.fritsknuf.com/">Frits Knuf </a>Antiquarian Books (26 rue des Beguines, 41100 Vendôme, France).<br /></div><div>There is quite a large bibliography relating to type bodies, although very little of it addresses the questions that interest me. Perhaps the nearest (and a very useful piece of work it is) is David Shaw, ‘Standardization of type sizes in France in the early sixteenth century’, <em>The Library</em>, 6th ser., vol. 3, no. 4 (December 1981), pp. 330–6. Philip Gaskell’s note on ‘Type sizes in the eighteenth century’ (<em>Studies in bibliography</em>, 5 (1952–3), pp. 147–51), another useful piece based, like Shaw’s, on an extensive knowledge of the books of its period, illustrates the problem with which I began this post: the table he gives ‘is based on measurements taken from ten eighteenth-century specimens by Caslon, Wilson and Fry. The average of these measurements is given, so that the table is unlikely to be completely accurate with regard to the products of any one foundry.’ John Richardson, ‘Correlated type sizes and names for the fifteenth through twentieth century’ (<em>Studies in bibliography</em>, 43 (1990), pp. 251–272), brings together indiscriminately a mass of data – 400 measurements – from sources that are unevenly reliable. It is a useful reminder of the problems involved.<br /></div><div>These were the original specimens measured for the table:<br /></div><div><strong>Plantin c. 1585 </strong><br />Folio specimen.<br />Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp. Arch. Varia II.<br />Facsimile in: <em>Type specimen facsimiles [16–18]: reproductions of Christopher Plantin’s Index sive specimen characterum, 1567, and Folio specimen of c. 1585, together with the Le Bé-Moretus specimen c.1599; with annotations by H. D. L. Vervliet and Harry Carter. </em>London, 1972.<br /></div><div><strong>Berner 1592 </strong><br />Conrad Berner, <em>Specimen characterum seu typorum probatissimorum… </em>Frankfurt am Main, 1592.<br />Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main. Gustav Mori, Schriftprobensammlung, Mappe 1, 19. (Other press marks: Mf 7024a, HM6: Em 6)<br />Facsimiles in: Gustav Mori, <em>Eine Frankfurter Schriftprobe vom Jahre 1592: Studie zur Geschichte des Frankfurter Schriftgießer-Gewerbes. </em>Frankfurt am Main, 1920. <em>Type specimen facsimiles [1–15]: reproductions of fifteen type specimen sheets issued between the 16th and 18th centuries, accompanied by notes mainly derived from the researches of A. F. Johnson [and others]; general editor, John Dreyfus. </em>London, 1963.<br /></div><div><strong>Le Bé c. 1599<br /></strong>Fragmentary annotated specimens sent by Guillaume II Le Bé, Paris, to the Moretus printing office, Antwerp, c. 1599.<br />Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp. Arch. 153.<br />Facsimile in: <em>Type specimen facsimiles [16–18]: reproductions of Christopher Plantin’s Index sive specimen characterum, 1567, and Folio specimen of c. 1585, together with the Le Bé-Moretus specimen c. 1599; with annotations by H. D. L. Vervliet and Harry Carter. </em>London, 1972.<br /></div><div><strong>Jannon 1621 </strong><br /><em>Espreuue des lettres nouuellement taillez. </em>Sedan, 1621.<br />Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris. A.15226 (2).<br />Facsimile in: <em>The 1621 specimen of Jean Jannon, Paris and Sedan : designer and engraver of the caractères de l’Université: edited in facsimile with an introduction by Paul Beaujon. </em>Paris: Honoré Champion, 1927.<br /></div><div><strong>Lamesle 1742 </strong><br /><em>Épreuves générales des caracteres qui se trouvent chez Claude Lamesle</em>. Paris, 1742.<br />St Bride Library, London. 20228.<br />Facsimile in: <em>The type specimens of Claude Lamesle; a facsimile of the first edition printed at Paris in 1742, with an introduction by A. F. Johnson. </em>Amsterdam, 1965.<br /></div><div><strong>Fournier 1764 </strong><br /><em>Les caracteres de l’imprimerie. Par Fournier le jeune. </em>Paris, 1764.<br />St Bride Library, London. 20666.<br />The same settings of type were used in vol. 2 of the <em>Manuel typographique, </em>Paris, 1766. Facsimile: Darmstadt, Technische Hochschule, 1995.<br /></div><div><strong>Sanlecque 1757 </strong><br /><em>Épreuves des caracteres du fond des Sanlecques. </em>Paris, 1757.<br />Houghton Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts. TypTS 715.57.767.<br /></div><div><strong>Caslon 1766 </strong><br /><em>A specimen of printing type by William Caslon. </em>London, 1766.<br />St Bride Library, London. 7518.<br />Facsimile in: <em>Journal of the Printing Historical Society</em>, 16 (1981/2).<br /></div><div><strong>Enschedé 1768 </strong><br /><em>Proef van letteren welke gegooten worden in de nieuwe Haarlemsche lettergietery van J. Enschedé. </em>Haarlem, 1768.<br />St Bride Library, London. 20248.<br />Facsimile in: <em>The Enschedé type specimens of 1768 and 1773: a facsimile with an introduction and notes by John A. Lane. </em>Haarlem: Stichting Museum Enschedé, 1993. </div><div></div><div>Last edited 13 August 2008</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20610846.post-4677180123774051752008-03-21T07:26:00.016+00:002011-02-10T07:54:32.013+00:00Big brass matrices again: the Enschedé ‘Chalcographia’ type<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZERu8U56CgKuga6DlRj4eYhyphenhyphenn_mHusB3kc7tVwuWv1PCzD-vcKSZ0qFNChhwb5F-379L2EvblvcNU4vx9h2ioe1wMVVS2nSl_CpbzTUUwh1_xdS41UVz4RS2tc86LAsngjUmg/s1600-h/Enschede+Chalcographia+0+-+all+mats+2a+tr+1500.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5180094221837553746" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZERu8U56CgKuga6DlRj4eYhyphenhyphenn_mHusB3kc7tVwuWv1PCzD-vcKSZ0qFNChhwb5F-379L2EvblvcNU4vx9h2ioe1wMVVS2nSl_CpbzTUUwh1_xdS41UVz4RS2tc86LAsngjUmg/s400/Enschede+Chalcographia+0+-+all+mats+2a+tr+1500.jpg" /></a><br /><br />In the post of 19 March 2007 it was suggested that existing brass matrices for big types could not have been struck with steel punches in so hard a hard metal as brass, but were probably reproductions cast in brass of strikes that had been made in lead with steel punches. Examples that were cited were the ‘large capitals’ of Garamond at the Museum Plantin-Moretus, titling capitals among the ‘Fell types’ at the University Press, Oxford, a titling from the French foundry of Claude Mozet that was acquired by Benjamin Franklin, and the series of two-line capitals of the <em>romain du roi </em>at the Imprimerie nationale in France. The brass matrices for the Garamond titling are accompanied by strikes in lead. In the case of the titling letters of the <em>romain du roi </em>there is a claim from the punchcutter that strikes were made with the steel punches in lead, and that these were used as patterns to cast replicas in brass.<br /><br />A passing reference was made to a titling type in the museum of Joh. Enschedé en Zonen in Haarlem of which the height of the face measures 16 mm and for which there are ‘matrices’ in brass and lead, and relief ‘punches’, also of brass. Johannes Enschedé acquired them with other materials from the foundry of Jan Roman in 1767, and showed some characters under the heading ‘Chalcographia’ in his specimen of 1768, of which a facsimile was published in 1993. In a note below them Enschedé says, ‘The punches of these types are cut in brass, and struck and cast in leaden matrices, following the practice of the first typefounders.’ He does not refer to the matrices in brass, but there are reasons, given below, for thinking that the types that he shows were not cast from the strikes in lead.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6kZeuM_NI47lpFxlft0KlKiBFl9RcBcPdlwLQ4st3CzP23vH-UxDnFIbjanYzssk7LQhifjGtlWRJvi06YvmFnEpUU0KyPfhnpMCId1hdXgYjjLXgkkdvOZKjakVDhfViFW3g/s1600-h/Chalcographia+-+J+Enschedé+-+Proeven+1768+1000.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5180094449470820450" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6kZeuM_NI47lpFxlft0KlKiBFl9RcBcPdlwLQ4st3CzP23vH-UxDnFIbjanYzssk7LQhifjGtlWRJvi06YvmFnEpUU0KyPfhnpMCId1hdXgYjjLXgkkdvOZKjakVDhfViFW3g/s400/Chalcographia+-+J+Ensched%C3%A9+-+Proeven+1768+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The type can be dated to the middle of the 16th century, when its use in Lyon is documented. It was later used in Frankfurt am Main, and it is shown (with some altered and additional characters) in a specimen of titling capitals from the typefoundry of Johann Erasmus Luther dated 1665. For further details see the introduction and notes by John Lane that accompany the facsimile of 1993. The conclusion of Harry Carter, endorsed by Lane, was that the alphabet can be attributed to Jacques Sabon, originally of Lyon, the former owner of the Luther foundry, who had a German privilege for his method of casting large letters.<br /><br />In his history of typefounding in the Low Countries published in 1908, Charles Enschedé printed an alphabet cast from the brass matrices. The face of these types was defective, like that of the types shown in 1768, which, despite the note by Johannes Enschedé, were pretty certainly also cast from the same brass matrices. Charles Enschedé added that he had not dared to try to cast from the thin strikes in lead. These were in excellent condition, as they still are, with an unblemished face. He had them copied by electrotyping, which produced good matrices, and he also showed an alphabet cast from these.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6JswHmvJyn3zobRMqWKSJaPcIIrhGFfIfyMAUZMwABwmG2pjVUM4Xk_q2mM7qPlAw7TDFiVr1CP6Rxaxbls1ZvMdnfHUVB6uyJo_y9oBL8jxXO_3QfCHTC_lkKfIsQ1neqKi7/s1600-h/Enschede+Chalcographia+2+R+1000.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5180094595499708530" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6JswHmvJyn3zobRMqWKSJaPcIIrhGFfIfyMAUZMwABwmG2pjVUM4Xk_q2mM7qPlAw7TDFiVr1CP6Rxaxbls1ZvMdnfHUVB6uyJo_y9oBL8jxXO_3QfCHTC_lkKfIsQ1neqKi7/s400/Enschede+Chalcographia+2+R+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The strikes in lead are only 4 mm thick, and the depth of strike of 2 to 3 mm reduces the thickness of the metal still further at the face of the letter: if an attempt had been made to use them as matrices to cast type they would have suffered damage, since the overall thickness of the lead matrix is not much greater than that of the pattern. In the words of a note written by Stan Nelson, ‘the bottom of the lead matrix is very, very thin and impossible to use for casting type. There isn’t enough metal to absorb the heat of molten alloy being poured into the matrix.’ Given the good condition of the lead ‘matrices’, one must conclude that an attempt to cast type in them has never been made.<br /><br />What then is the purpose of the little brass letters that accompany the matrices. They fit the lead strikes snugly. Are they – as Johannes and Charles Enschedé believed – the original ‘punches’ that were used to drive the impressions in the lead plates? Their thinness and flimsy construction, with completely open counters, makes them seem less than ideally suited to the purpose. Harry Carter thought that they were ‘castings reproducing punches of steel’ (<em>A View of Early Typography</em>, p. 15) . The lead plates were almost certainly made with some kind of punch, for there are impressions showing at the back of some of them.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Y0ASO26-oLOiiZ_lDkfsOEAto7QFDVCpiMtA8s4ipsFsyTH8KPbWH0zMKrmipyq6Ii4MBcPnG_eSHWLw9pHoIDYJk8f-xWsVqa6lUphb02FN-FkfsBwz3gmFGAY3gqa3QbrZ/s1600-h/Enschede+Chalcographia+3+-+Q+lead+rev+1000.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5180094715758792834" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Y0ASO26-oLOiiZ_lDkfsOEAto7QFDVCpiMtA8s4ipsFsyTH8KPbWH0zMKrmipyq6Ii4MBcPnG_eSHWLw9pHoIDYJk8f-xWsVqa6lUphb02FN-FkfsBwz3gmFGAY3gqa3QbrZ/s400/Enschede+Chalcographia+3+-+Q+lead+rev+1000.jpg" /></a><br /><br />This is what Charles Enschedé wrote in 1908 (as translated by Harry Carter for his English edition of 1978):<br /><br />‘We have always shrunk from using the [lead] matrices. … I doubt whether any casts were made from them before their acquisition by Johannes Enschedé; the more so because we found brass reproductions with the originals. It may be that Enschedé or an earlier owner had found means to avoid the risk of damaging these precious relics by casting in them. The brass matrices appear to be castings from clay moulds. The moulding, however, is unskilful; [the illustration] is set in letters cast in the brass facsimiles, and it shows that these matrices are too poor to produce clean casts …’<br /><br />If brass punches – the present letters or others related to them – were used to make the impressions in lead, the limitations of this method become clear. They could not be used afterwards to ‘clean up’ the cast replicas in brass, as was probably done with the steel punches that accompany the brass matrices at Antwerp, Oxford and Paris. So despite the fact that (notwithstanding the criticism of Charles Enschedé) the casting seems to have been done skilfully enough, it was inherently impossible to achieve a perfect reproduction of the face by this method alone, and the type cast from them suffered accordingly.<br /><br />The notion that the original steel punches were used to clean up the face of matrices cast in brass has hitherto been guesswork – although in the last post I cited an 18th-century account which indicated that this was the practice when medals with a high relief were struck. Now a source has been found which confirms that this practice was also used by typefounders. In his extensive and well-informed discussion of early typefounding, all of which is well worth reading (<em>Essai sur la typographie</em>, Paris, 1851, col. 607, note 3), Ambroise Firmin-Didot has this passage (the English translation is mine):<br /><br />‘Fournier le jeune is mistaken when he asserts in his work on the origin and progress of printing, page 20, that ‘matrices have never been cast: they are struck with a steel punch’. In order to assist the striking of very delicate punches, like the capitals of the large ‘ornamented gothic’ cut for our own typefoundry with such remarkable skill by Monsieur de Cornouailles, I had matrices cast in brass after matrices in lead that had been struck with the steel punches. After cleaning them out with care, to accommodate the effect of shrinkage in cooling, I drove the steel punches again into the cast brass matrices obtained in this way.’<br /><br />If no steel punches were available to clean up the cast brass matrices in the Enschedé collection at Haarlem, this may explain the roughness of their face, and the signs they appear to show of a rather crude attempt to smooth it out. Their visible graininess suggests that, as in the case of the big matrices at the Imprimerie nationale, sand, rather than clay, was used for the moulding.<br /><br />I am much indebted to the Stichting Museum Enschedé, Haarlem, for permission to make the images shown in this post, and to its curator Johan de Zoete and to Stan Nelson for their advice and help.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com