PRINTING
AND TYPOGRAPHY
108
Gerard Meerman
Origines typographicae
The Hague [etc.]: Nicolaus van Daalen [etc.], 1765
Origines typographicae, written by the Dutch jurist and
bibliophile Gerard Meerman (1722 1771), examines the
problem of the earliest forms of movable printing type. Marked
irregularities in the types used in the first printed books led
some later scholars to conclude that movable wooden type was used
prior to cast metal type. While Meerman agreed that the very
earliest printed works could not have been produced using movable
cast metal type, he argued instead that the first movable types
were fashioned from type shanks cast in four-sided molds. After
these shanks had cooled, the "faces" (the letters or characters)
were then carved by hand. As ingenious as Meerman's theory may be,
later scholarship has all but proven that the first known printing
shops such as those of Laurens Coster (fl. 1440) in Haarlem and
Johann Gutenberg (ca. 1400-ca. 1467) in Mainz did
employ movable cast metal type made with letter punch, matrix, and
mold.
109
Pierre Simon Fournier
Les caractères de l'imprimerie
Paris, 1764
Image
Pierre Simon Fournier (1712-1768), a member of the famous family
of French printers, was one of the finest engravers and
type-founders of the eighteenth century. Fournier was a consummate
craftsman and artist who designed many new styles and characters of
type, made important advances in music type, and produced tasteful
emblems and ornamentation. He also developed a point system for
standardizing the sizes of type and published several popular works
which stimulated public interest in printing and typography.
Les caractères de l'imprimerie (1764) is a specimen
book of type similar to a larger collection found in Fournier's
monumental Manuel typographique (1764 1766).
Assembled in the Manuel are types which Fournier designed,
those inherited from his family's business, and some on loan from
noted shops in Germany and France. Fournier's foundry was
celebrated throughout Europe, supplying many printers with a great
variety of exquisite type.
110
Jean-François-Auguste Bastard d'Estang
Peintures et ornements des manuscrits
[Paris, 1835 1848]
Efforts toward the exact reproduction of medieval illuminated manuscripts began in the seventeenth century following the developments made in printing and engraving. With the invention of lithography at the end of the eighteenth century, it soon became possible to reproduce mechanically numerous facsimiles of precious manuscripts, duplicating the colors as well as the design of the original. A skilled and industrious early exponent of this use of chromo-lithography was the Count Bastard d'Estang (1792 1883). His most extensive project, Peintures et ornements des manuscrits, was originally conceived as a series of iso plates treating major schools of illumination from the fourth through sixteenth centuries. The revolution of 1848, however, deprived the Count of essential royal funding, and production of the grand and costly edition largely ceased. Published plates reproduce a variety of manuscripts, including Byzantine, Merovingian, and Gothic examples.
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