Typography Tuesday
This week we present some "Grandre Lettres" from the French specimen book Le Livret Typographique Spécimen de Caractères, published in Paris by the Deberny foundry around 1900. The foundry began in 1826 when the French literary legend Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) founded Imprimerie H. Balzac. A year later, Balzac purchased the typesetting firm of Jean-François Laurent (1818-1823) with funding from his mother and his mistress, Louise-Antoinette-Laure De Berny (1777-1936). It seems likely that his printing/publishing firm would have been successful if Balzac wasn't such a spendthrift.
Deeply in debt, Balzac gave the company over to Mme De Berny in 1828, who in turn passed it on to her son Alexandre De Berny, (1809-1881). De Berny partnered with Jean-François Laurent until 1840 when Laurent sold his share to De Berny, who renamed the company "Deberny." In 1877, De Berny then joined with his illegitimate son Charles Tuleu (1849-1934), who inherited the business when his father died in 1881. Tuleu ran and expanded operations until 1914, when he partnered with an old school chum, Robert Girard, who changed the name of the company to Girard et Cie when Tuleu retired in 1921. It then merged with the Peignot type foundry in 1923, becoming Deberny & Peignot. It was bought by the Haas Type Foundry (Switzerland) in 1972, which in turn was merged into D. Stempel AG in 1985, then into Linotype GmbH in 1989, and is now part of Monotype Corporation.
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