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Text of the page (random words):
ably a reference to the grec du roi by garamont the use of which was jealously protected they made out a receipt for them 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 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 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 the same term was used by a contemporary of fournier s in the avertissement to his essai d une nouvelle typographie 1771 louis luce an independent typefounder who had deen designated graveur du roi punchcutter to the king in succession to his uncle jean alexandre wrote 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 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 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 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 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 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 caractères de l université 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 leur forme est très gracieuse 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 caractères anciens of jeannet in paris were cut in imitation of the old ones i might take the opportunity of ending this post with a passage written by arthur christian 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 imitation de jésus christ premiere volume que l imprimerie royale ait fait paraître en 1640 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 histoire de l imprimerie en france 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 imitatio christi the first volume produced by the royal printing office in 1640 this text from christian s lectures origines de l imprimerie en france 1900 is quoted by linda ritson in her admirable study arthur christian director of the imprimerie nationale 1895 1906 signature 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 romain du roi only the brief avant propos and preface were set in the garamond types the imitatio christi 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 caractères de l université 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 caractères de l université 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 sources 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 bulletin du bibliophile 1 2002 pp 70 99 in which i also did my best to list the various inventories the only formal histories are those of f a duprat histoire de l imprimerie impériale de france 1861 and of auguste bernard histoire de l imprimerie royale du louvre 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 l art du livre à l imprimerie nationale 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 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 inventaire du matériel de l imprimerie royale au 31 décembre 1838 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 caractères de l université 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 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 cabinet des poinçons 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 a further and perhaps final move of the whole establishment to a location in normandy to the site of the publishing archive imec institut mémoires de l édition contemporaine 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 update 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 posted by typefounder at 16 28 10 june 2012 portrait of bodoni 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 galleria nazionale 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 manuale tipografico shown below 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 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 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 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 posted by typefounder at 09 55 03 february 2012 the types of jean jannon at the imprimerie royale 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 caractères de l université 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 the fleuron by beatrice warde her claim was based on their appearance in jannon s type specimen book of 1621 in the bibliothèque mazarine paris 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 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...