This week we present a variety of Gothic letter forms from American architect Frank Chouteau Brownâs manual Letters & Lettering; A Treatise with 200 Examples, originally published in Boston by Bates & Guild in 1902, Our copy is a later printing published in 1914. The very first metal types were Gothic forms developed in Germany in the 15th century, and the Gothic remained the principal form to encode the German language until the early 1940s. Today, it is almost entirely used as a display face.
Shown here are designs devised by the German artist Albrecht Dßrer (1471-1528), the Italian calligrapher and writing master Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (1468-1527), Italian calligrapher Giovanni Battista Palatino (c.1515 - c.1575), German calligrapher Paul Franck (fl.1600-1655), and one by Frank Chouteau Brown himself. Of the Gothic form, Brown writes:
Unlike Roman letters, which attained a complete and final development, Gothic letters never reached authoritative and definitive forms, any more than did Gothic architecture. Every individual Gothic letter has several quasi-authoritative shapes⌠. yet this very variability and variety constitute at once the peculiar beauty of Gothic and the great difficulty of so drawing it as to preserve its distinctive character.
Our copy of Letters & Lettering belonged to the English-American artist, graphic designer, and silk-screen printing pioneer Max Arthur Cohn, and was donated to us by his daughter Jane Waldbaum, professor emerita of Art History here at UWM.
View another post from Frank Chouteau Brownâs Letters & Lettering.
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