#bodoni type

Typography Tuesday

Cinque stili di piombo per una misura di bellezza (Five Lead Types for a Measure of Beauty), letterpress printed in Verona, Italy by Alessandro Zanella (1955-2012) in a limited edition at his Edizioni Ampersand in 1988, presents five classic typefaces presented in typographic arrangements and representative quotes. The typefaces from top to bottom are:

Monotype Greek 90

Baskerville

Dante

Bembo

Bodoni

Spectrum

Born in Vicenza and raised in the Valdonega neighborhood of Verona, Alessandro Zanella became a student of American expatriate printer Richard Gabriel Rummonds (b. 1931) in 1976 and founded his own press, Edizioni Ampersand, in 1982, producing almost 200 titles until his unexpected death in 2012. Our copy of Cinque stili di piombo is another donation from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).

View other type specimen books.

Fine Press Friday! 

Our Limited Editions Club Shakespeare series keeps giving us more artists to look for in our collection! This week we found Carmen, by Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870) illustrated by French-born American painter and illustrator, Jean Charlot (1898-1979), published by the Limited Editions Club, New York, in 1941 in an unstated limited edition of 1500 copies signed by the artist. We learned about this edition because of the post we did a couple of weeks ago on Charlot’s illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 3.

Mérimée’s 1846 novel about the eponymous Romani beauty, is most popularly well known from Georges Bizet’s famous opera of the same name, which is based on Part III of Mérimée’s story. The action is set in 1830s Andalusia, but Jean Charlot’s illustrations gives the story a Mexican flavor. Charlot worked mainly in Mexico and was a member of the Mexican Muralist Movement, sharing a studio with Fernando Leal who is considered to be one of the first Mexican Muralists. It was after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) that the new government sought to use murals to educate the public on social justice issues. From a young age, Charlot was fascinated by Mexican art and pre-Columbian artefacts and his mature work reflects this fascination, including in these illustrations.

The thirty-seven multi-layered color lithographs, which Charlot drew directly on the printing matrix, feel like miniature frescoes. Charlot laid down quick marks to color large areas of the image, which layer in overlapping color to give the image a lively energy. One could easily imagine one of the illustrations used as a page header as a mural above a doorway, signaling a transition. Or, one of the larger full-page illustrations as a mural on a large wall. I am taken by how these illustrations function well in both architectural and book spaces. The book is architecture.  

The lithographs were printed by Charlot’s friend Albert Carman in New York and the type is 18-point Linotype Bodoni printed by Aldus Printers in New York. . The paper was made by the Worthy Paper Company, was watermarked with the name of the book and the covers are wrapped in a vibrant hand-blocked color silk.

View more Limited Edition Club posts.

View more Fine Press Friday posts.

It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week’s fine-press examples are from former British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes’s collection of poems Earth Dances, with original linocuts by British artist R. J. Lloyd and printed in 1994 in an edition of 250 copies signed by the poet and artist in 18 point Bembo and Bodoni on Rivoli paper by Nicolas McDowall at The Old Stile Press in Llandogo, Monmouthshire, Wales. The main images were printed on papers handmade by Frances McDowall (as are the papers for the cover) which incorporate iris, nettle, onion, Japanese knotweed, pampas grass, and alkanet fibers. The binding was designed at The Old Stile Press and executed at The Fine Bindery in Wellingborough, England.

Hughes and Lloyd became friends late in their lives, and Lloyd had the opportunity to illustrate four of Hughes’s books. This edition was completed four years before Hughes’s death. The Old Stile Press was started by Frances and Nicolas McDowall in 1979. Although Nicolas died last month and Frances passed in 2019, the work of the press continues under the direction of their daughter Cressida Maher. Our copy of Earth Dances is a gift from our friend Jerry Buff.

Typography Tuesday: Bodoni

Among the most prominent of 18th-century type designers was the great typographer, compositor, printer, and publisher Giambattista Bodoni in Parma, Italy. Bodoni was especially influenced by the type designs of French type founder Pierre Simon Fournier and the English type designer and printer John Baskerville. Bodoni, along with the French type founder Firmin Didot, established a style of type design that became referred to as “modern,” and in the 20th century is called “Didone,” a term that combines the names of Didot and Bodoni. Bodoni’s typefaces are not revived classical forms, but new, rational designs characterized by a strong contrast between the thick and thin parts of the type body.

After a nearly 20-year period of training, Bodoni became the type designer and printer for the new ducal press at Parma in 1768, where he would spend the rest of his career until his death in 1813. Shown here are examples from Bodoni’s early and later work:

Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi.  De hebraicae typographiae origine ac primitiis seu antiquis ac rarissimis hebraicorum librorum editionibus seculi xv.  Parmae: ex Regio typographeo, 1776.

Torquato Tasso. Aminta, Favola boschereccia di Torquato Tasso; ora alla sua vera lezione ridotta. Crisopoli (i.e. Parma): Impresso co' tipi Bodoniani, 1796.

The first displays examples of his many fonts for different languages, including Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Syraic, and Arabic. The second displays his classic font (in Italian) in both Roman and Italic. When Bodoni began working for the Duke of Parma, his imprint would usually appear as ex Regio typographeo, without Bodoni’s name (as in the 1776 example above), but one knows this is by Bodoni because he was the only royal typographer from 1768-1813. In 1791, however, as a way to convince Bodoni to remain in Parma, the Duke allowed Bodoni to establish his own private press, and after this period we begin to find Bodoni’s name in the imprint, as we see in the 1796 printing above.

The 20th and 21st centuries have seen an extended revival of Bodoni typefaces in both cold type and digital versions. The 20th-century German-Italian typographer and fine-press publisher Giovanni Mardersteig, was so taken by Bodoni’s type designs, that when he founded his own private press in 1922, he obtained from Italian authorities the exclusive right to utilize a selection of Bodoni’s original matrices, naming his well-known press Officina Bodoni, which continued to produce quality hand-press work to the end of the 20th century under the direction of Mardersteig’s son Martino, the proprietor of Stamperia Valdonega, which was also founded by Martino’s father in 1948.