Anatomy of a Typeface

BEMBOb y

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During the 1920’s the English Mono-type company — Lanston Monotype Corporation — under the direction of Stanley Morison, embarked upon a program that was the most ambi-tious of any composing-machine manufacturer to date: the recutting of numerous historic typefaces. From this enlightened undertaking came such revivals as Bodoni, Garamond, Poliphilus, Baskerville, Fournier, and Bembo. All of these types have since become part of the repertoire of book printers throughout the world.

The last design of this group, Bembo, appeared in 1929 and has proved to be one of the most popular types of our time for the composition of books. In Europe, where Monotype composi-tion has been the principal method of book typesetting, Bembo quickly became a dominant letter form. In the important Exhibition of British Book Production it continues to be seen in a remarkably high percentage of the books chosen each year. Since well over a hundred titles are selected for the show, it is evident that Bembo receives prime consideration from British designers.

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In the United States in a similar exhibition — the Fifty

Books of the Year, established in 1923 and sponsored by the

American Institute of Graphic Arts — some eighty books com-

posed in Bembo have been chosen since 1938, when the type first ap-

peared in this country. And this despite the great majority of books exhibited having been set on slug-casting ma-chines (Linotype, Intertype), as opposed to the Monotype (single-type) method of composition, from which Bembo is set.

Of the two Italian renaissance types selected for his typographic reviv-als, Morison favored Poliphilus (cut in 1923) over Bembo. But he later acknowledged that this opinion was due principally to the then relative obscurity of the types of Aldus Ma-nutius, the Venetian publisher-printer, and the absence of ‘critical approval of Aldus’s typographic merits.’

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Aldus Manutius (1450–1515) was a scholar of Greek and Latin who had taught at the University of Ferrara before becoming tutor to the Pio family at Capri. (He had changed his name from Teobaldo Manucci to Aldo Manuzio, later Latinized to Aldus Manutius, a common practice among classical scholars of the time.) His great love for Greek literature inspired him to print the impor-tant Greek texts, which he planned to salvage, edit, publish in Greek, translate into Latin, and make available to the growing audience for the classics. The wealthy Pio family agreed to finance the project, which proved to be most costly, since it was necessary to assemble a staff of editors and translators, in addition to commissioning the cutting of Greek types.

The great historic typography resur-gence engendered by William Morris and the private-press movement early in the twentieth century had placed such emphasis on the types of the mid-fifteenth-century Venetian Nicolas Jenson that the contributions of other type punch cutters were being ignored. It was not until the quickening interest in printing schol-arship during the 1920’s — prompted in part by the publication of such books as Daniel Berkeley Updike’s superb Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use (1922) and the seven volumes of the periodi-cal The Fleuron (1923–30) — that ty-pographers became more aware of the later Venetian types and especially those of Aldus.

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Aldus chose Venice as the location of this ma-jor venture in Italian publishing, to be called

the Aldine Press. The city, the great center of trade between Europe and the East, provided

a cosmopolitan market for the books. Another essential factor in this choice was the availability

of craftsmen with the skills required to establish a complete printing office in a period when ev-

ery item required for production had to exist on the premises (as opposed to today’s diversi-

fied printing operations). Of vital importance, too, was the large Greek colony in Venice

from which editors and proofreaders were obtained.

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Aldus arrived in Venice in 1490 and began his labors, first assembling a staff that eventually included some of the great scholars of the age, one of them being Erasmus of Rotterdam. It took five years before the first book, a Latin and Greek grammar, issued from the press. But though de-voted to the classics , Aldus had no intention of neglecting current literature, and in the same year, 1495, he published De Ætna, an account of a visit to Mount Etna written by Pietro Bembo, then but twenty–five years of age. Bembo was destined to become one of the most popular of the Renaissance writers (he later took holy orders and be-came a cardinal).

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Indeed he did not rest. He neglected everything but his work, resulting in a decline into poor health that hastened his death in 1515 — he was worn out and not at all en-riched by his endeavors, owing primarily to the pirating of his texts by competitors. But his contribution to litera-ture was magnificent. It resulted in the early dissemination of knowledge through the study of the classics. It made available the Aldine innovation of the inexpensive small-format book (so successful that it was widely plagiarized in Italy and France). The pirated editions not only stole the carefully edited texts but imitated the types used by Aldus and even affixed his press mark, the famous dolphin and anchor — the dolphin signifying speed and the anchor sta-bility. The pirate editions even frequently included Aldus’s motto, Festina lente, ‘make haste slowly.’

Those who cultivate letters must be supplied with the books necessary for

their purpose; and until this supply is secured, I shall not rest.

Aldus expressed his philosophy as a publisher in an intro-duction to his edition of Aristotle’s Organon:

””

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The roman type in which De Ætna was composed (called simply the De Ætna type), on which Bembo is based, was cut by Francesco Griffo, sometimes styled Francesco da Bologna. Aldus was most fortunate in obtaining the ser-vices of such an inventive punch cutter, who produced all of the types for the Aldine Press, including the famous italic of 1500 –1. A former goldsmith, like many of the ear-ly punch cutters, Griffo had already cut types for several other Venetian printers — the brothers di Gregorii in par-ticular — since arriving in the city from Padua about 1480.

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Griffo also cut the roman type that was used for Hypne-rotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna, printed by Aldus in 1499. This remarkable work, believed by many bibliophiles to be the finest printed book of the entire Renaissance, was, ironically, far removed in content from the scholarly texts normally published by Aldus. It was evi-dently a job he had taken on, in the manner of countless printers who followed him, merely to keep his shop busy. The type of Poliphili was long considered superior to that of the Bembo book, but during the last half century typo-graphic taste has favored the latter design.

Most venetian types from the time of Jen-son had been rather closely adapted from

the humanist manuscript hand, and therefore tended to be somewhat heavy in stroke and serif. (It

was of course this feature that so much attracted William Morris when he sought a replacement for the anemic book types of the nineteenth century.) Francesco Griffo must re-

ceive much of the credit for the departure of the punch cutter from slavish dependence on the pen-drawn

characters. The engraving of a steel punch, utiliz-ing files and gravers, requires precision skills and

allows refinements beyond the scope of the reed or the pen. It is evident that Griffo

realized the potential of his tools in the creation of letter forms at once

livelier and more precise than those of the scribes.

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Another significant departure from the Jenson type is notice-able in Griffo’s capitals, which he shortened in relation to the lowercase ascenders. Serving as his model, however, were the same majuscules cut in stone by the Romans that Jenson had followed.

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Griffo’s concepts apparently took several years to develop. The great twentieth-century printer-scholar Giovanni Mardersteig noted of the Griffo types that they were first a modification of the Jenson letters but then they showed a ‘gradual evolution from the earliest Venetian types, and they constantly improve until they reach their finest shape in the Bembo type which he cut for Aldus.’

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The monotype cutting of the De Ætna type, although an excellent rendering, could not be other than an approxi-mation of the original. There are always both aesthetic and economic problems in the adaptation of the early types. For example, there is the difficulty of determining the al-lowance to be made for ink squeeze in the original (owing to the weight of the impression), or the exact shape of the characters that were badly printed or poorly cast in metal. In the redesign of Griffo’s type there was also the problem of which variant of certain characters to select. For it must be remembered that during the incunabula period print-ers were still in competition with scribes in the production of books, and they frequently followed the scribe’s inclina-tion to provide several variations of a particular character.

Discussing these variations in his essay on the De Ætna types, Dr. Mardersteig listed eight lowercase characters for which Griffo provided alternates. For example, there were five variants of “e” and three of a. These alter-nates have proven useful in determining origin of some of the French types, modeled on those of Griffo by Claude Garamond and Antoine Angereau some thirty–five years after Griffo had designed them.

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In addition, the modern panto-graph machine necessarily mecha-

nized a design, particularly in its inability to vary a face from size to size, a factor that to

the eye of the typographic purist removes much of the individual charm of the historic fonts.

The first, cut by the noted English calligrapher Alfred Fair-bank, was judged too independent of the roman, a deci-sion deplored by its designer. It has since been marketed as a separate type, a true example of the chancery style. Originally named Narrow Bembo Italic, now called Bem-bo Condensed Italic, it is an exceedingly fine type in its own right and justly popular as such. Upon the rejection of the Fairbank italic the drawing room of the company prepared a more conventional italic, based on the designs of the Venetian printing master Giovantonio Tagliente.

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Finally, a major predicament in the production of Mono-type Bembo was the selection and cutting of an italic to complement the roman, a quandary previously discussed in the chapter on Cloister Old Style. A partial solution in this case was to supply two italic forms for Bembo.

But with the recent increase in phototypesetting for book composition such types as Bembo will undoubtedly

see wider use. Several of the manufacturers of film-setting devices have already made the type available, which assures its continuing success

almost five centuries after its appearance.

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This book was designed by

JARRETT MICHAEL ALAN COURTNEY

under the instruction of

RACHELE RILEY

as partial credit for the Fall 2010 course of

Typographic Systems in the Graphic Design Department at

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS

in Philadelphia