#fere-humanistica

[duardius]

first oxford page

collotype facsimile of the «First Page of the First Book Printed at Oxford on Dec. 17, ‘1468’ (1478?)», plate ii in A Chart of Oxford Printing ‘1468’–1900 by falconer madan [the bibliographical society, 1904; printed by horace hart at the oxford university press]. printing had yet to be introduced into britain in 1468—caxton first printed on english soil in 1477; the bibliographers give good argument for 1478 as the correct year [ibid., p38].  the page illustrated is from Exposicio Sancti Ieronimi in Simbolum Apostolorum. oxford’s first printer was apparently from cologne; his typeface of the variety often termed fere-humanistica; harry carter reliably informs us: «… the first typeface used at Oxford corresponds exactly in all but six of the single lower-case letters and five of its combinations with one used by Ten Raem at Cologne, and yet pages set by the two printers have a different look. I think is [sic] is because Ten Raem used some 25 combinations that the Oxford printer did not, and the Oxford man had about 17 that were peculiar to him, and this affects the intervals between letters and makes them look unlike. But there need have been only one set of matrices for both.» [A View of Early Typography, at the clarendon press, oxford, 1969, pp 20-1].

[duardius]

mano del petrarca

early humanists effected transition from the italian form of gothic script, rotunda, via reversion to carolingian forms, into humanistic script. illustrations from a page of a manuscript copied by francesco petrarca in june, 1335 [paris, bibliothèque nationale, lat. 2201; no. 71 in: s. harrison thomson, Latin Bookhands of the Later Middle Ages, cup, 1969]:  fere humanistica—showing influence of the late carolingian hand.

[duardius]

fere-humanistica revival

illustration is figure 1., «Text page from Die Nachtfeier der Venus. Printed by Officina Serpentis. 1919.», from «Tendencies in Geman Book-Printing since 1914» by dr hanna kiel [The Fleuron, no. iv, at the office of the fleuron, london, 1923, p81]. dr kiehl tells us: «The ‘Officina Serpentis’, established in 1911 by Tieffenbach [eduard wilhelm tieffenbach], is comparable to the Vale Press, being almost entirely a reflection of its founder’s personality. He is his own publisher, type-designer and printer. In contrast to other German book-artists, he has been influenced more by the Kelmscott Press than by the Doves. His own type is based upon that used for Schoeffer’s Bible …» [ibid., p75]. ‘schöffer’s bible’ refers to the first Latin Bible printed by fust & schöffer, mainz, 1462, which was set in types cut by peter schöffer: these types were a further essay of an earlier cut by schöffer and first shown in the fust & schöffer edition of durandus [Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, mainz, 1459]. [cf. harry carter, A View of Early Typography, at the clarendon press, oxford, 1969, p33.]  of the model for the durandus types a.f. johnson says: «The letter shares some Renaissance characteristics and others of the Middle Ages. Hence it has been called Fere-humanistica or Gotico-antiqua. … The hand is gothic but with considerable roman tendencies. It was the formal book-hand of the earlier Italian humanists of the fourteenth century, and in particular of Petrarch.» [a.f. johnson, Type Designs, grafton & co., london, 1959, p11].

for more on petrarch’s script vide ‹mano del petrarca›.

for more on peter schöffer vide ‹not schöffers roman›.