Porchez Typofonderie
http://www.typofonderie.com
Jean-François Porchez examines the history of typeface design from a French perspective. This story is normally told from an Anglo-Saxon perspective, something that Porchez wished to remedy. What follows is Part One of the story
Author’s note: After each subtitle we indicate, according to the Vox-ATypI classification, the category of the referenced typefaces.
Origins (manuaires and scriptes)
The majority of Mediterranean script has a common
source, namely the Phoenician (1300 BC), which itself is derived from protosemitic
forms (1500 BC). The cuneiform shapes share a base with the Greek capitals (1100
BC), that evolved into Etruscan capitals (700 BC), themselves evolving into
Roman capitals (400 BC). Engraved inscriptions at the column dedicated to the
Trajan emperor (AD 200) became the prototype for Latin script. Little by little,
the capitals became more cursive, as quadrata and uncial styles were quicker
to execute by hand.
The Carolingian minuscule was imposed throughout Europe by
Charlemagne. The reform was organized by Alcuin, a monk of Anglo-Saxon descent
(700). As the Carolingian style became straightened and more structured, the
gothic emerged (1000), a Norman “invention”. The humanist typographers
of the Renaissance referred to the Carolingian miniscule for the first roman
typographic characters.
The origins of printing (humanes)
It is not quite fair to attribute the discovery
of printing to Gutenberg (1440), since in Europe there was already xylographic
printing using engraved wood boards, and movable type in the Far East. Gutenberg
specifically devised a technique that permit-ted the founding of characters
in relief in matrices, obtained by striking dies cut in steel by the punchcutter.
This text-composition technique would remain the fastest and most eco-nomical
for almost the next 500 years. To be accepted in his time, Gutenberg took the
Textura (4) script as his model, including numerous ligatures that
brought it closer to real hand-lettering, in printing his 42-line Bible, competing
with the scribes.
Humanism developed in Italy: Sweynheym and Pannartz (1464)
cut the first roman characters that would be “improved” by Nicolas
Jenson (q.v. the excellent Adobe Jenson, 1994) to compose De praeparatione
evangelica (1470). This book still remains a prototype for quality typography
today. In France, it was over to Gering to cut the roman for the Sorbonne that
was used for its first printed book (1470). The model became typographic and
less exclusively calligraphic. Francesco Griffo improved the roman for Bembo’s
work, De Aetna (1490), published by Aldus Manutius. Aldus used the aldine (the
italic) for the first time, for a collection of small books called the “pocket
editions”, among which was an edition by Virgile (1501). This italic is
a typo-graphic transposition of the writing style of the time.
This movement swept across Europe, and the characters used
in humanistic works were imitated extensively: one finds copies of the Aldine
in Basel (1519), then in Lyons. The founding of characters becomes a fully-fledged
activity. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Pierre Sch�ffer le Jeune
published one of the first specimens regrouping roman, italic, Greek, Hebrew
and musical characters.
The Garamond adventure (garaldes)
In France, Henri Estienne and Jose Bade composed their
works in B�lois characters. Toward 1520, Simon de Colines cut his characters
based on an Italian model for his printing. Robert Estienne used characters
ordered by Claude Garamond for the first time (1530). These were French adaptations
of Italian models. The Garamond became the European prototype, with the italic
used jointly. In Lyons, Robert Granjon sur-passed Claude Garamond with the notion
of the italic and cut, between 1543 and 1590, close to 100 founts including
roman, italic, Hebrew, arabesque and fleuron characters.
At Claude Garamond’s death (1561), his types and matrices
were broken up, many of which were acquired, notably, by Christophe Plantin,
an Antwerp printer. Today, his printing preserves many considerable examples
of the original Garamond, used as a reference for some contemporary versions
of this typeface, including Adobe Garamond, Stempel Garamond, the Augereau (George
Abrahms, 1996) and Galliard (Matthew Carter, 1978). These typefaces follow the
original reference, at least in some measure, or along that cut by Garamond’s
contemporary, Robert Granjon. A part of the Garamond foundry was purchased by
the printer Egenolff of Geneva: Sabon (Jan Tschichold, 1964) was inspired by
a specimen from this printer (Jacques Sabon was the head of the studio). Unfortunately,
the 1960s technical context in which Jan Tschichold conceived his different
versions of Sabon has led to a version that is, unfortunately, not the best
for modern computers (with mediocre drawings and loathsome proportions). It
was Guillaume Le B� who purchased the biggest part of Garamond’s founts,
which one could find until the Revolution, having passed from one hand to another
to the foundry of Pierre-Simon Fournier le jeune (1760).
The Elsevier dynasty (garaldes and r�ales)
The following century is dominated by the famous ‘go�t
Hollandois’ (a term used by Pierre-Simon Fournier to define typefaces that
have a large, rather condensed letter), even though in France (1621), Jean
Jannon cut typefaces used nowadays by the Imprimerie Nationale under the name
of Garamont (Franck Jalleau), for some time incorrectly attributed to Garamond:
typified by the examples of Monotype Garamond (Frederic Goudy, 1921), Amsterdam
Garamond and Garamond 3, ITC Garamond (Tony Stan, 1975). The Elsevier dynasty
employed the typefaces of Nicolas Kis and Christophe van Dijck (1681), which
were more effective than the regular versions, with an larger letter but were
more compact and economical.
The century of luminaries (r�ales)
In France in the eighteenth century, the Imprimerie Royale
orders an ideal typeface, the Romain du Roi, to be conceived by an eminent specialist
committee. The characters would be developed on a geometric grid (recalling
some aspects of our computers’ bitmap grid). But fortunately, punchcutter
Philippe Grandjean transformed them into genuine typographic characters. Fournier
le jeune rationalized the use of typography and cut many typefaces, brought
together in his Manuel typographique (1764). For the first time, his typefaces
formed the modern idea of a family, uniting condensed, large, text and titling
founts of the same style. Encyclop�dias were set using these typefaces, including
the volume by Diderot and d’Alembert.
In England, in 1725, William
Caslon (9) is
inspired by the ‘go�t Hollandois’ typefaces for his own creations.
He catered to the printers’ demand for complete families. John Baskerville
developed typography quickly, with pure typefaces, simple layouts (without embellishments),
large margins, and a technique he developed to smooth the paper and improve
the print quality. The form of his italics pays homage to hand-lettering using
a quill. In Switzerland, Beaumarchais printed Voltaire’s volumes in Baskerville.
Out of historical interest, the original matrices remained in France until the
end of the twentieth century, the property of the large Deberny & Peignot
foundry. Charles Peignot, the then-director, eventually offered them to the
Cambridge University Press in their home country, prior to the end of the closure
of his company.
The typographic revolution (didones)
The typographic point is invented by Fran�ois
Ambroise Didot
(1780). His son Firmin (11) creates an absolutely
pure geometric typeface (1784–6). The Italian printer, Giambattista Bodoni
(12), a printer of exception—‘the king of printers
and the printer of kings’—then cut numerous variants, united in his
Manuale tipografico, published in Parma posthumously by his widow (1818).
This type style sweeps into Europe, used in the composition of publications
ranging from valuable books to daily newspapers, despite its hairline strokes
and its threadlike serifs: e.g. Walbaum, Unger in Germany; Thorne in England
…
Industralization (m�canes and lin�ales)
In the nineteenth century, didones adapted to the constraints
of a nascent industrialization. The hairlines grew thicker, their more straightforward
shapes supporting the faster rates of printing. They no longer had much style.
It is more in titling designs where novelties see the light of day. After having
designed the bold types, copying the body text style, the engravers drew genuine
titling typefaces, heavier and narrower, to catch the eye, e.g. the m�canes–egyptiennes,
that were neither slender nor fine, by Vincent Figgins (1815). One of the first
lin�ales, conceived on a didone structure, makes its appearance at the foundry
of William Caslon IV (1816, see also in similar style, Knockout
designed by Jonathan Hoefler).
This was also the time of decorative typefaces, such as those
seen in the specimen of the Laurent de Berny et Balzac foundry (a forerunner
of Deberny & Peignot). Following artistic fashion, these typefaces included
Grasset (Eugene Grasset, 1898) and Auriol (Georges Auriol, 1904), which mixed
history with orientalism.
The private presses (incises and
n�o-garaldes)
Since 1840, printers used “new” garalde typefaces
in reissues of old texts. In Lyons, Louis Perrin designed esigned an incised
garalde with capitals inspired by roman inscriptions in that city; Pierre Jannet
ask the punchcutter Gouet to cut his own font for his Biblioth�que Elzevirienne
(1856). These n�o-garaldes became French clas-sics. During this time, in England,
Caslon came into fashion again, and Alexander Phemister (1860) cut his Old Style
for Miller & Richard, who exported it to the United States. For his private
press, William Morris designed a typeface inspired by those of Nicolas Jenson.
European private presses became interested in both “revival” and
original type-faces. L�on Pichon composed his works in Doric (Deberny &
Peignot, 1917–27) and Astr�e was released by Deberny (1924).
In France, the Imprimerie Nationale revived its pseudo-Garamont.
Later, another Garamont emerged from Peignot, more or less inspired by the first
(1910), with following years seeing many revivals of false Garamonds, until
Beatrice Warde published an article re-establishing the truth of the typeface’s
origins in The Fleuron.
To be continued
The French edition of this article can be found at Porchez Typofonderie.