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Tag Archives: typographer

Book of the Week — Opuscula mathematica

14 Monday May 2018

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Charles II, Duke of Parma, engraver, fonts, geometry, Giambattista Bodoni, Greek, hydraulics, Isaac Newton, Italy, mathemathics, matrices, musical notation, ornamental devices, Parma, Piedmont, Pietro Giannini, printer, printshop, publisher, punchcutter, punches, Roman, Russian, Saluzzo, Seville, Spain, type designer, type foundry, typographer, Vincenzo Riccati


“…the function of our Art is to put before our eyes…representation of anything which the human mind can split up and divide into a definite number of different parts, not infinitesimally small, which frequently recur in exactly the same form to play a part in that representation.” — Giambattista Bodoni, Manuale tipographica (1818)

Opuscula mathematica
Pietro Giannini (1740-1810)
Parma: Ex Typographia Regia, 1773
First edition
QA3 G43 1773

This scarce mathematical work on hydraulics and geometry was printed by Giambattista Bodoni. Bodoni was born in Saluzzo, Piedmont, Italy in 1740. He died in Parma, Italy in 1813. An engraver, type designer, printer and publisher, Bodoni was invited by the Duke of Parma to set up and run a printshop. In 1779, Bodoni opened his own type foundry. In 1782 Charles II of Spain named Bodoni his court typographer.

Bodoni is still recognized for his roman, Greek, Gothic, Asian and Russian fonts, and lines, borders, symbols, numbers and musical notation. He was the most prolific punchcutter in the history of printing: an inventory of his shop, compiled by his widow, revealed 25,491 punches and 50,283 matrices, each cut by hand. He was friend to kings, ministers and others in power, dubbed by them as “Re dei tipografi, tipografo dei re” (king of typographers, typographer of kings). He basked in popularity, receiving numerous high honors.

This plain edition, with simple yet gracious chapter-heading ornamental devices, is a great example of the beginnings of Bodoni’s signature style: wide margins; clear, solid type; and exquisitely designed and printed mathematical figures all point to Bodoni’s typographical genius.

Oh, yeah. And then there’s the math. Pietro Giannini was a student of Vincenzo Riccati (1707-1775) who urged Giannini to publish Opuscula Mathematica (1773). Opuscula is divided into three parts. In the first part, Giannini studied water falling through a hole. Isaac Newton had addressed this in his Principia, but Giannini’s work is less experimental, more mathematical. Giannini was appointed a professor of mathematics in Seville, Spain.

This edition contains ten engraved folding copper-engraved plates, each with multiple diagrams. It is illustrated with a woodcut device on title-page. Our copy is bound in original wrappers with an old manuscript spine label.

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Book of the Week — Prelude to Eden

03 Monday Jul 2017

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"graphic designer", acetate, advertising, aluminum, American, binding, book designer, Caledonia, calligrapher, Chiswick Bookshop, Dorothy Vernard Abbe, Electra, Fabriano, Frederic Goudy, Herman Cohen, Hingham, marionettes, Mergenthaler Linotype Company, photography, puppet, Püterschein Academy, silk-screen, theater, typeface, typographer, United States, William Addison Dwiggins, woodcarving, World War II

PN1980-D85-1956-Bow
“But I know, I know that they’ve got me in the wrong place! I know it! I know it! I know it!”

PRELUDE TO EDEN: A DRAMA FOR MARIONETTES
William Addison Dwiggins (1880-1956)
Hingham, MA: Püterschein-Hingham Press, 1956

William Addison Dwiggins is one of the best known American book designers and typographers of the twentieth century. He studied under Frederic Goudy. He is credited with coining the term “graphic designer,” a term he used in reference to himself in 1922. His best known typefaces, still in use today, are Electra and Caledonia, created for the Mergentahler Linotype Company, for whom Addison worked from 1929 until after World War II. He was also a calligrapher and was legendary for his work in advertising. Dwiggins loved woodcarving, a passion that led to the creation of his marionette theater. He began a puppet group he called the Püterschein Academy, through which he produced several shows, including Prelude to Eden.

This “drama” is set in “A Wilderness Northwest of Eden” and features four marionette characters: Drace, the District Warden (who became The Serpent); Dijul, a kindly Antediluvian; Lillith, a young woman; and Azrael, an Archangel and Bailiff of Eden.

PN1980-D85-1956-PreludePN1980-D58-1956-Draco

Illustrated throughout using what is referred to in the colophon as a “tone-line” process, which involved photographing and then silk-screening images of Dwiggins’ marionettes. Typography, composition, printing, silkscreens by Dorothy Vernard Abbe. Dorothy Venard Abbe is the author of The Dwiggins Marionettes, 1970. She worked as a book designer at several university presses. Bound in aluminum sheet boards, attached with green Fabriano paper at the spine, also by Abbe. This is the first time that metal covers were used as a binding design in the United States.

PN1980-D85-1956-cover

Rare Books copy in original acetate dust jacket. It is a presentation copy, inscribed by Abbe to Herman Cohen, owner of the Chiswick Bookshop, and his wife, Viv. The original mailing box survives, split at the seams, and addressed to Cohen. Laid in are two letters from Dorothy Abbe written in black ink, one with the original mailing envelope. Edition of one hundred and seventy-five copies.

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Book of the Week — Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ kamā kataba Mār Mattay waḥid min ithnay ‘ashar min talāmīdhihi

19 Monday Jun 2017

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Accademia del Disgno, Aleppo, Alessio dra Saggeto, Antonio Tempesta, Antonius Sionita, arabesque, Arabic, Armenian, Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ, bi-lingual, Book of Hours, borders, Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, Christian, College of Sapienza, colophon, Eastern Orthodox Church, Europe, European, Flemish, Florence, font, French, frescoes, gilt, Giorgio Vasari, Giovanni Battista Raimondi, Gospels, Hebrew, Hungarian, Ibrahim Muteferrika, illustrations, Islam, Islamic, Istanbul, Joannes Stradanus, Latin, Leonardo Parasole, mathematics, Matthew, Medici, military, Mohamedan, morocco, movable type, Muslim, Near East, Orientalist, Ottomon Empire, Palazzo Vecchio, peace, Persian, political, Pope Gregory XIII, printing, religious, Robert Granjon, Romae, Roman Catholic Church, Roman type, Rome, Santi di Tito, science, scripture, sprinkled calf, stamps, Sultan Ahmed III, sword, Syrian, translation, typographer, Typographia Medicea, Vatican, Villa Farnese, Waqf, woodcuts

BS315-A66-1591-title
“Ne arbitremini quod ego uenetim ut mitterem super terram pacem; non ueni ut mitterem pacem, sed gladium (“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.)” — Matthew 10:34

Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ kamā kataba Mār Mattay waḥid min ithnay ‘ashar min talāmīdhihi
Romae: in Typographia Medicea, MDXCI
Edicio princeps
BS315 A66 1591

Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ, the first printed edition of the Gospels in Arabic, is the first production by the Typographia Medicea press, a printing house established by Pope Gregory XIII and Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici in order to promote and distribute Christian scripture to the Near East. Two issues of this work were printed, apparently simultaneously. One had Arabic-only text and was printed in an edition of 4,000 copies. The other, here, was printed in Arabic with interlinear Latin, in an edition of 3,000 copies. The Arabic-only edition has the date 1590 on the title-page, but 1591 in the colophon. Allegedly, a few of the bi-lingual copies were published with a preliminary leaf stating, “Sanctum Dei evangelium arab.-lat.” No known copies of this half-title are known to exist and this leaf may never have existed.

With a Latin translation ascribed to one Antonius Sionita, the book was edited by Giovanni Battista Raimondi (1540-ca. 1614), an esteemed Orientalist and professor of mathematics at the College of Sapienza in Rome. Raimondi travelled extensively in the Near East and was knowledgeable, if not fluent, in Arabic, Armenian, Syrian and Hebrew. His fame rests with the editorship of the Typographica Medicea. He and French typographer Robert Granjon, who created the Arabic font used in this work, were both recognized then and now for the earliest and best attempts to print Arabic in Europe.

Illustrated with 149 woodcuts, printed from 68 blocks, engraved by Leonardo Parasole (ca. 1587-ca. 1630). The artist, Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630), studied under Santi di Tito and Flemish artist Joannes Stradanus at the Accademia del Disgno. Tempesta later worked with Stradanus and Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) on the interior decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Tempesta then travelled to Rome, where he fulfilled several commissions, including frescoes for Pope Gregory XIII in the Vatican and panel paintings for the Villa Farnese. Many of the woodcuts are signed with the initials “AT” (Antonio Tempesta) and “LP” (Leonardo Parasole). The illustrations in Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ are excellent examples of Tempesta’s work, noteworthy for their clear composition and narrative of the episodes depicted.

Be that as it may, the illustrations may have played a part in the failure of this book to reach, let alone convince, its intended Islamic audience. Islam forbade religious illustration and these may have made the Gospels appear less than sacred, if not sacrilegious, to Arab Muslim readers.

To be fair, the Christian church had a long tradition of presenting their message with religious illustrations. As far back as the sixth century, Pope Gregory defended the value of such imagery, arguing that pictures were useful for teaching the faith to the unconverted and for conveying sacred stories to the illiterate. According to Bede, St. Augustine introduced Christianity to the heathen King Ethelbert of Kent, upon landing on the British Isles, by presenting a picture of Christ painted on a wooden panel. He then began to preach.

The Pope seems also to have denied the fact that more Christians lived in the Ottoman Empire than in any other European state. The first printed book in Arabic was a Book of Hours, probably intended for export to Syrian Christians. But these Christians were adherents to the Eastern Orthodox Church, not the Pope’s Roman Catholic Church. Christianity was hardly unknown in the predominantly Muslim Ottoman and Persian Empires. The Ottomans were, however, Christian Europe’s major military and political concern.

In addition to printing the Gospels in Arabic, Ferdinando de’ Medici charged Raimondi with printing “all available Arabic books on permissable human science which had no religious content in order to introduce the art of printing to the Mohamedan community.” Despite the superb quality — textually, typographically, and artistically — of its work, the Medici press was an economic failure and went bankrupt in 1610. The fact is that Raimondi displayed little understanding of Islamic culture. Although Raimondi’s selection of publications was not aimed at European scholars, his choices stimulated a study of the Near East in Europe.

It would be more than a century after the Medici Press closed that Ibrahim Muteferrika, a Hungarian convert to Islam, was given permission by Sultan Ahmed III (1673-1736) to open his printing house in Istanbul, in 1729. This was not the first printing press established in the Near East, but it was the first Eastern press to print in Arabic using movable type.

Arabic and small roman type text within double-ruled borders. Colophon and printer’s note to reader in Latin. Colophon decorated with large woodcut arabesque.

Rare Books copy bound in full, eighteenth century, sprinkled calf, with a gilt spine containing two burgundy morocco labels, and decorative gilt borders on the covers. The first leaf is shaved and reinserted on contemporary paper. This leaf contains four Waqf stamps, indicating the authentication of the Arabic translation. As in most copies, our copy lacks a title page. A former owner’s penciled inscription, “Alessio Dra Saggeto/en Aleppo 1871,” is on the free front end paper. Another signature, in ink, is at the top of the back free end paper.

For more on the woodcuts, see Field, Richard S. Antonio Tempesta’s Blocks and Woodcuts for the Medicean 1591 Arabic Gospels, NE662 T45 F54 2001, in the rare book collections.

BS315-A66-1591-colophon

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Book of the Week – A Leaf from the Gutenberg Bible

31 Monday Dec 2012

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Bible, Bruce Rogers, Centaur, fine press, font, Grolier Club, Gutenberg Bible, Johann Gutenberg, medieval manuscript, moveable metal type, Niclas Jenson, printed, printer, Riverside Press, textura, type, typeface, typographer, William Edwin Rudge

Gutenberg Bible, 1450-1455
Gutenberg Bible, 1450-1455

A Noble Fragment, Being a Leaf of the Gutenberg Bible 1450-1455; With a Bibliographical Essay by A. Edward Newton
New York: Gabriel Wells, 1921
Z241 B581 1921, oversize

A leaf from the Old Testament, Samuel, 2nd, xxii-xxiii, from a Latin translation dating to about 380. The first book printed from moveable metal type, the Biblia Latina or 42-line Bible (in reference to the number of lines in a column) was based on medieval manuscript design. The typeface was developed after a book-hand used in western Germany during the fifteenth century for liturgical works. Known as “textura,” this formal upright and angular hand features letters that have pointed feet and almost no curvature. The first font of type, made by goldsmith Johann Gutenberg, consisted of nearly three hundred characters, including variant forms of letters, ligatures, and abbreviations to simulate as much as possible manuscript conventions. Gutenberg’s choice of the Bible as his first printed publication was a good business decision. All copies (approximately one hundred and eighty) had sold before they were off the press. Forty-eight full copies are known to exist today, thirty-six on paper and twelve on vellum. A. Edward Newton’s bibliographical essay for this leaf book was printed under the direction of Bruce Rogers at the shop of William Edwin Rudge. Bruce Rogers (1870-1957), the distinguished American printer and typographer, is widely recognized as one of the most talented book designers of all time. He spent his earliest years as a designer with Riverside Press, then as a freelance artist during which time he worked with the printing house of W.E. Rudge of Mt. Vernon, New York, the Grolier Club, and the Limited Editions Club of New York. Rogers established American fine press standards, insisting that the design of a book – its type, illustrations, and format should reflect and enhance the author’s text. He designed more than seven hundred books. Rogers also designed Centaur type for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1914. Released by Monotype in 1929, Centaur is modeled on letters cut by the fifteenth-century French printer Nicolas Jenson. Centaur has a beauty of line and a proportion that has been widely acclaimed since its release. An attractive typeface for books in particular, it is effective for shorter texts. Bound in black morocco, lettered in gold on front cover.

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