Chapter XI

A Word on Type Specimens

In describing fifteenth century types it has been necessary to consider their manuscript sources; and in order to find out what types were used, to examine fifteenth century books; so that up to this point, the printer and his book have been much in evidence rather than his specimen-sheet or specimen-book, although as we know, Radolt issued a specimen-sheet at Augsburg in 1486.¹ Up to 1480 or thereabouts the early printer was his own type-founder, and not only cast the fonts for his own work, but designed them. The exchange or sale of types between different printer type-founders was not very common. Their collections were usually augmented by the work of their own hands. A printer’s foundry was merely an appanage to his printing-office, and the workman it was socially of a lower class than the printer. But in the last two decades of the fifteenth century we begin to find type-cutters—and perhaps sometimes type-founders—whose abilities were at the service of any one who wished to pay for them. These men, however, probably worked—at first, in any case—to order, and if they had types for sale, put out no “specimens” for them. It was at this period, too, that the division between printer and publisher first appears.

For knowledge of type in use in the sixteenth century one is still chiefly occupied with the printer and the books he made, although a few “type specimens” were issued by founders, and some by printers; such as the sheet of 1525 showing the types used by Joh. Petri of Basle² and the Nuremberg specimen-sheet of 1561 put forth by Valentine Geyssler that Burger alludes to as existing in the Borenverein library at Leipsic. Plantin issued in 1567 an Index, sive Specimen Characterum Christophori Plantini, containing in all forty-one varieties of letter—seven Hebrew, six Greek, twelve roman and ten italic, three scripts and three gothic. Later one of larger format, but without a title or date, appeared. J. Van Hout of Leyden also published a specimen in 1593. The Typographia Medicea (founded by Cardinal Ferdinand de’ Medici to print the Gospels for Oriental peoples) published in 1592 an Arabic alphabet and instructions for the use of Arabic type, though this could hardly be considered a “specimen.”³ Raphelengius, who was in charge of the Plantin office at Leyden, issued a somewhat similar Specimen Characterum Arabicorum in 1595. In the sixteenth century there were also men who cut types to the order of printers ~~but I do not know of “specimens” issued by them~~.

As to seventeenth century specimens, that of the printer Fuhrmann⁴ was brought out at Nuremberg in 1616, and the interesting specimen-book issued by the Vatican printing-office in 1628,⁵ portions of which, containing the supposed alphabets of Adam and an inscription in unknown characters found at the foot of Mt. Horeb (suppressed in the Specimen of 1628), may have been published by the Propaganda Fide a little earlier. The Propaganda Fide issued, however, throughout the seventeenth century, grammar specimens of its various alphabets for use in the missionary work, the Alphabetum Ibericum appearing in 1629, and other alphabets in 1631, 1634, 1636, 1637, and 1673. These were continued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.⁶ Elzevir at Leyden brought out a specimen in 1658, and Luther of Frankfort, another in 1670. The widow of Daniel Elzevir published a specimen-sheet in 1681, and Joseph Athias, who bought the Elzevir foundry, issued his about 1686. The first English specimen was the tiny sheet of Nicholas Nicholls, produced in 1665. Joseph Moxon’s specimen of 1669⁷ (the first English specimen that is dated) and the University of Oxford’s specimens of 1693⁸ and 1695 are among the most notable English seventeenth century examples.

In the eighteenth century, we begin to find men who merely furnished types in stock or cut them to order—not artisans so much as business men who employed artisans—just as later we find publishers who merely employed printers. When the trades of printer and founder became distinct, and their interests separate, specimen-sheets of types became more common. In a few instances the types in a given printing-house were shown in specimen-books—which exhibited its equipment for customers to choose from. But almost all type-founders put forth specimen-books and specimen-sheets showing what types they had to sell to their customers, who were the printers. During the eighteenth century, therefore, these were very often met with—especially in its later years. But although common then, these early books and sheets are now rare. Blades in his interesting little tractate on specimen-books laments their scarcity.

Books such as soon become obsolete, have to pass through what, with literal truth, may be called a fiery ordeal. That is when they become too antiquated to be of any value to the current generation and yet require a century to pass over their heads before they have any merit in the eyes of the antiquarian. Perhaps no class of books is more subject to this unkind destiny than the specimens issued by Type-founders, which soon become so worthless in the very eyes of their own parents, that large editions entirely disappear and “leave no track behind” even in the very foundries which gave birth to them. I imagine it to be as true of the Continental as it is of the old English foundries, that none of them can show a copy of their first specimen books.⁹

These specimens are among the important “sources” which must be consulted in studying the types of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.

Supplemental note

Since William Blades issued in 1875 his little annotated catalogue, Some Early Type Specimen Books of England, Holland, France, Italy, and Germany, great progress has been made in investigations about type specimens, and after 1922 far more. The few sixteenth century specimens mentioned in this chapter can now be considerably supplemented, and one of great importance, unknown to me, was that of the Egenolff-Sabon-Berner foundry issued at Frankfort in 1592, the significance of which is explained on a later page. Other sixteenth century specimen-sheets not mentioned in my text are those of H. Baur, c. 1509 and L. Thurneysser zum Thurn, 1583. Further discoveries about seventeenth century types have revealed that Anton Janson’s types, hitherto classed as Dutch, were the product of a foundry which he owned at Leipsic between 1660 and 1687. In his first specimen-sheet of 1675 some of these types were dated 1672, 1673, and 1674, and Edling, Janson’s successor, issued in 1689 a specimen showing Janson’s types. Their further history is given in a [27th note to chapter XIII].

The seventeenth century specimen-book of most interest is that of Jean Jannon of Sedan, issued 1621, and this, too, is also fully described in Chapter XIV, “French Types: 1500–1800.” Other seventeenth century specimens can now be recorded: those of G. Baumann, 1604, J. Berner, 1622, A. Vitray, 1636, G. Ritzch, 1641, G. Hanchen, 1655, P. J. Morsing, 1658, J. P. Fievet, 1664, 1682, J. E. Luther, 1664, 1665, 1666, 1674, 1678, K. Baumann, 1669, R. Voskens and B. Voskens (additional specimen), c. 1670, A. Janson, ~~1670~~ 1671 (2), 1673–74, 1674, 1678 (2), 1683, 1687 (2), C. Pistor, 1673, J. A. Schmidt, 1674, 1675, 1677, P. Lobinger, 1678, Nisisch, 1688, A. Chrétien, 1689, J. J. Edling, 1689, J. G. Baumann, 1690, 1699, K. Hartwig, 1690, J. P. Bockenhoffer, 1691, J. Ernst, 1698, and J. Stenglin, 1699. These appear under the caption “Type Specimens” in R. A. Peddie’s Subject Index of Books Published before 1880. First Series, London, 1933, p. 657 et seq., and Second Series, London, 1935, p. 766 et seq.—a remarkable feat of compilation. Messrs. Birrell & Garnett’s annotated Catalogue of Typefounders’ Specimens, Books printed in Founts of Historic Importance, etc., London, 1928, is not merely a sale catalogue but a really important contribution to this subject. Of this list of English and foreign specimens, in Part I, the earliest is 1592, the latest, 1905—103 entries in all. Part II lists books under the types in which they are printed, with a chronological table giving names of cutter or foundry, printer, and place of issue, with comments. For the work of British type-founders consult W. Turner Berry and A. F. Johnson’s excellent and comprehensive Catalogue of Specimens of Printing Types by English and Scottish Printers and founders, 1665–1830. With an Introduction by Stanley Morison, London, 1935. For the study of French specimen-books and the foundries issuing them, an indispensable book is Les Livrets Typographiques des Founderies Françaises créées avant 1800, by Marius Audin, Paris, 1933. A carefully compiled and useful hand-list of German type-specimens is Herr Gustav Mori’s Schriftproben Deutscher Schriftgiessereien und Buchdruckereien aus den Jahren 1479 bis 1840. Herr Mori’s account (alluded to later) of the important Egenolff specimen entitled Eine Frankfürter Schriftprobe vom Jahre 1592, published 1920, his paper Die Schriftgiesser Bartholomäus Voskens in Hamburg und Reinhard Voskens in Frankfurt a. M., illustrated with two broadside specimens dated about 1670, and his illustrated volume, Die Egenolff-Luthersche Schriftgeisserei in Frankfurt am Main, published in 1926, were all privately printed, butu should be consulted when possible. Herr Mori is also the author of Das Schriftgeissereien in Süddeutschland und den angrenzenden Ländern, Stuttgart, 1924, which is interesting because of its reproductions of specimen-sheets, in broadside, etc. of Senglin (Augburg) 1708, Postorius (Basle) 1704, Genath (Basle) 1720, Hartwig, 1690, Baumann, 1699, Köhler, 1710 (all of Nuremburg). The same writer also had a hand in the production of L. W. von Biedermann’s Die Deutsche Schriftgiesserei. Ein Gewerbliche Bibliographie edited by Dr. Oscar Jolles, Berlin, 1923, of which Part IV, p. 177–267, is allotted to “Schriftproben.” Somewhat more complete in relation to the history of German type-founders is Friedrich Bauer’s Chronik der Schriftgiessereien in Deutchland und den deutschsprachigen Nachbarländern, published in Offenbach in 1928—a second enlarged edition of the book originally appearing in 1914.

An enormous number of eighteenth and nineteenth century specimen-sheets of all countries, up to and including 1880, are listed in Peddie’s Subject Index. First and Second Series, already mentioned. Under the entry “Type Specimens,” hundreds of examples are given in chronological order, though entries are restricted to date, printer, title, and place. Both volumes must be consulted. Finally, Johnson’s Type Designs contains a short chapter on type specimens. Since 1880 specimen-books, pamphlets, and sheets have been issued by thousands, but apart from a few showing good modern types, their interest ceased about 1835.

After the middle of the sixteenth century there seems to be a general and sudden decline in all European countries not alone in the excellence of the types themselves, but also in the way they are used—both suddenly falling away from the high standards of earlier printing. This is because it took, perhaps, a century for the printed book to outgrow the influence of the manuscript; and this hundred years was over. As a century covers, roughly speaking, the lives of three generations, it is clear that a father, a son, and a grandson might very well be influenced by the tradition of the manuscript, while to the fourth generation manuscripts would be simply out-of-date affairs with little direct influence on printing. Furthermore, the class of men who had by this time become interested in printing did not include so many people of education as in the first century of typography. The early printers—more or less educated men—endeavoured to copy manuscripts (and generally fine manuscripts) not alone in letter-form, but in arrangement, in order to make the printed book as nearly identical with the manuscript as they could. Soon the spread of literature, through the medium of the press, led to a demand for more and smaller and cheaper books, and printers were obliged, also, to deal with entirely fresh typographical problems, for which the early manuscript was no guide. Then too (as Pollard very truly says),

The enthusiasm with which the new art had at first been received had died out. Printers were no longer lodged in palaces, monasteries, and colleges; Church and State, which had at first fostered and protected them, were now jealous and suspicious, and even actively hostile. Thriving members of other occupations and professions had at one time taken to the craft. A little later great scholars had been willing to give their help and advice, and at least a few printers had themselves been men of learning. All this had passed, or was passing. Printing had sunk to the level of a mere craft, and a craft in which the hours appear to have been cruelly long and work uncertain and badly paid.

Thus more books, cheaper books, less cultivated men, new problems which they were not always capable of solving, and forgetfulness of the standards for which three generations had influenced printing, were some of the elements causing this change in typography. It became, indeed, as important for the printer of the latter part of the sixteenth century to realize what the great models in types and printing are, as it is for us; and if his printing then became worse, it is for precisely the same reason that our own is to-day no better.

See Burger’s Monumenta Germaniæ et Italiæ Typographica, pl. 5, or Redgrave’s Erhardt Ratdolt, and his work at Venice (Bibliographical Society’s Monographs, No. I, London, 1894), pl. 9. This specimen was discovered about 1884 at Munich, in the binding of an old book.
See Burger’s Ein Schriftprobe vom Jahre mdxxv. Leipsic, 1895.
Alphabetum Arabicum. In Typographia Medicea [Rome], 1592.
Typorum et Characterum officinæ Chalcographiæ Georgii Leopoldi Fuhrmanni…designatio. Nuremberg, 1616.
Indice de Caratteri, con l’Inventori, & nomi di essi, essistenti nella Stampa Vaticana & Camerale. Rome, 1628.
See Catalogus Librorum qui ex Typographio Sacræ Congreg. de Propaganda Fide variis linguis prodierunt, etc. Rome, 1773.
Proves of Several Sorts of Letters Cast by Joseph Moxon. Westminster. Printed by Joseph Moxon in Russel Street at the signe of the Atlas. 1669.
A specimen of the Several Sorts of Letter Given to the University by Dr. John Fell, late Lord Bishop of Oxford. To which is Added the Letter Given by Mr. F. Junius. Oxford. Printed at the Theater A.D. 1693.
Some Early Type Specimen Books of England, Holland, France, Italy and Germany. Catalogued by William blades, with explanatory remarks. London, 1875.