#humanist type

Typography Tuesday

Last week while picking up a sizable donation of books about books, one of the donors asked if I would like to have these three loose pages from music books: a 15th-century (probably) manuscript on vellum from a gradual, and two pages from the Office of the Dead to be sung during Vespers, purportedly published in Venice in 1776. As they seemed to have been broken from their books quite some time ago, I accepted.

The Gothic hand of the manuscript in black and red is rather worn, but the initial letter, while also a little warn, still retains its brilliance. Within the initial, it’s hard to tell if I’m looking at a flower or a stylized fish! The humanist typeface of the Officium, printed in black and red, has an 18th-century quality, so I would agree with its purported date. Both examples are large, circa 40 cm., to be read by several choir members at a time, and both use square neumes, or musical notation, on a four-line staff used for plainchant. Both also offer a pleasant presentation for this Typography Tuesday!

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Typography Tuesday

JOHANN AMERBACH (ca. 1440-1513)

Noted Basel printer Johann Amerbach was born in Amerbach, Germany, learned his trade in Venice, and worked for a time in the Nuremberg printing house of Anton Koberger before settling in Basel in the 1470s and printing books independently there from 1477-1511. In his extensive correspondence with his old boss Koberger, he expressed his love of craftsmanship and his devotion as a printer, and spoke of “printers’ types so crisp and clear, so much more beautiful than handwriting, that they might even persuade unstudious men to read.” 

During Amerbach’s career, he used about 20 different Gothic types, half a dozen Roman letters (which he was the first to introduce to Basel printing), and five or six Greek fonts. Shown in the first four images is a leaf from Amerbach’s 1487/88 printing of Lectura super V libris Decretalium cum Repertorio Alphonsi de Montalbo by Nicolaus Panormitanus de Tudeschis. This original leaf is included in the 1956 printing of Johann Amerbach by Donald Jackson, designed and hand-printed by Carroll Coleman at his Prairie Press in Iowa City. We hold three copies of this edition, all donations from our good friend Jerry Buff. The medium Gothic on this leaf was first used in the year of this printing and represents the trend at that time of moving away from the larger and more angular blackletter fonts and towards smaller and more rounded Gothics.

The next set of images is from our copy of Amerbach’s 1493 printing of St. Augustine’s Liber Epistolarum, showing the use of one of his several Roman fonts, with a large Gothic face used in this early version of a title page. The type is very even, upright, and well-spaced, and one can see the blank spaces with guide letters meant for a rubricator to complete with their red, calligraphic flourish. Our copy is also replete with marginalia and manicules in a 16th-century hand.

View more posts on type from the 15th century.