Typography Tuesday
Here are some historiated initials and some initials made from people and animals (there’s probably a name for these kinds of letterforms but we can’t figure out what that is. Our department manager Alice calls them alphabetiforms; we're going with that!).These type forms are from a new acquisition on the historical typefaces of the Enschedé type foundry in the Netherlands: Fonderies de caracteres et leur materiel dans les pays-bas du XVe au XIXe siecle by Charles Enschedé, published in Haarlem by Erven F. Bohn in 1908.
This massive publication is a review of Dutch foundry type in the Netherlands from the 15th to the 19th centuries. The types documented here are from the collections of the Dutch firm Joh. Enschedé en Zonen in Haarlem, Netherlands, which was founded in 1703 as a printing establishment. At the time, the firm bought out a number of other foundries that were struggling and therefore became owners of historical types from the fifteenth century onward. The company began manufacturing its own type in 1743 and the foundry soon became the most important part of the Enschedé business, which continues to this day.
This volume contains nearly 5,000 type specimens including alphabets in a variety of languages, as well as ornaments. The author, Charles Enschede, was a member of the founding family and one of the firm’s directors, and wrote a number of works on the firm and its history. He began this work in 1893 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Enschedé type-foundry, taking 15 years to bring to completion.
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