Typography Tuesday
BLACKLETTER
Blackletter, also called Gothic, was the first typographic form to be founded in metal type by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-fifteenth century. The first book printed in English was in blackletter, as was the first book printed in England (both by William Caxton; the first printed in Bruges in 1473, which was also the very first book printed in Bruges, and the latter in Westminster in 1476). It is called blackletter because its narrow, condensed forms produce a darker appearance on the page than do Roman fonts. By the late 16th century, most Western national printers had dropped blackletter in favor of the arguably more readable Roman-style fonts, except for some Scandinavian countries which held onto blackletter forms until the late 18th century, and Germany being the last holdout until 1941.
Blackletter fonts are still used today, however, as display faces, for ceremonial use, and for certain kinds of emphases. That’s certainly how Theodore Low De Vinne (1828-1914) would have used it at his De Vinne Press in New York. These examples come from Types of the De Vinne Press, published in New York by the De Vinne Press in 1907. Theodore De Vinne founded his press in 1883. He was also a co-founder of the prestigious Grolier Club and one of the leading commercial printers of his day, whose enterprise had a profound influence on American printing and typography. This book was intended as a promotional specimen book “for the use of compositors, proofreaders, and publishers,” to demonstrate the wide variety of typographic possibilities that could be available to their clients.
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