Gotico-Antiqua, proto-romain, hybride – Caractères du XVe siècle entre gothique et romain

The book brings together scholars in the field of typography, palaeography and book history, with a focus on typefaces and letterforms. The relatively unexplored period – after Gutenberg and before the stabilisation of the Jenson model – ranges from the first traces of humanistic tendencies to the ‘pure’ Romans, via numerous cases of uncertain designs, deliberate hybridisations and proto- or archaic forms of the Roman. In 1459 in Mainz, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer printed William Durand’s Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, using a typeface (known today as ‘Durandus’) that was unlike any previous one. From here we can follow a wide variety of developments, in part relating to the travels of the early printers from the Rhine region to Italy and France. By extension, the private press movement initiated by William Morris and Emery Walker in late 19th century England revived some of these typefaces before they were forgotten.