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Reviewer: Casliber ( talk · contribs) 07:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Wow, an interesting thing to write about! I'll read and make straightforward copyedits as I go (please revert if I inadvertently change the meaning). And jot queries below:
Cas Liber (
talk ·
contribs)
07:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
All in all, a fascinating read. I am not familiar with the subject but am interested - I think it needs some more context to get it to make sense in places. As it comes together I might have some more ideas. Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 10:18, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Brilliant, thanks. That's a lot of helpful feedback and I'm planning how to incorporate those comments into the article now.
Running through some of those comments, I'll just add a few notes. I expect to be thinking myself over the next day or about how to rephrase and thought I should note down (partly for myself!) what's going on.
I'm adding a gallery for pictures. Looking into rights situation for images of historic books and on Wikimedia commons. I really want to add a few more pictures of Garamond's original type (and that of his contemporaries) now without overloading the article.
A subtext running through the article (which I don't quite dare state because it would be opinion) is that there was a lot of reverence for the name of Garamond, one of the most famous creators of metal type in the early days of Parisian printing. So people seem to have been keen to revive the holy work of Garamond - whatever scholarship thought that was that particular week! Garamond seems to have been one of the most respected artisans of his time (not that he ever got very much money out of it!) and memory of his reputation lingered after people forgot what type he actually cut.
So a quick chronology, following Mosley. In 1745, the type of Garamond and his colleagues (or in the style of it) was still very much in use in Paris, almost two hundred years after his career had ended. Mouldering in a box in a back room at the Royal Printing office too was some type by Jean Jannon. Over the next sixty years or so, printers in Paris disposed of all their old metal type, moulds etc. following a transition in taste. Apparently the only original Garamond type saved was in Antwerp at what is now the Plantin-Moretus Museum.
Fast forward again to the late nineteenth century. Interest in Garamond's work (and that of his contemporaries) was increasing. The National Printing Office, knowing Garamond once created Greek type for them, discovers Jannon's matrices in the back office and decides Garamond made it too. All the first 'Garamond' revivals were based on it, not anything Garamond himself did. Once people realised he didn't make it, well, people forgot about Jannon's work again! So actually it's the reverse: the first modern 'Garamond' fonts were actually based on Jannon's work, the 'Garamond' on your computer included. The authentic ones actually came later.
Granjon: it's simple. Garamond doesn't seem to have ever bothered to take too much interest in italics - at the time these were created separately to regular type. A printer would use one in a book or the other for body text, but not so much italics for emphasis inside body text as now. (I'm not clear on why this is, but printers have historically thought his italics weren't as good as his roman type.) So most revivals don't use his italics: they use ones developed by Granjon. Adobe Garamond's upright (roman) is based on Garamond, as are all the revivals listed as such. Jannon worked at a slightly later date where the regular/italic system we know today had been established, and he does seem to have created matching roman and italic type. So the revivals based on Jannon's work use his italic, as Monotype Garamond does. (The Warde article has a specimen of Jannon's type and the italic which I've mentioned, and they look almost identical - though I think with a few edits to fit the limits of printing technology of the time, which wasn't great at dealing with heavily overlapping letters.)
No serif at top right: simple. Open Word on your computer and set the font to Garamond. Look at the capital 'M'. Now imagine that with no spike ( serif) on the top right. It really does look like Manutius's book De Aetna had this glitch by accident and his French imitators decided to copy that for whatever reason. A good place to see that is this scan of it (caution: 10MB file), p. 28, bottom right. You'll see that the 'M' there clearly has a serif at top left but not so much on top right.
Spelling of Garamond's name: not with out reservations, I've decided to standardise on Garamond because that's what people expect in English. But I realise this isn't historically correct. (Mosley has written about this himself.)
Not that it matters just yet, since I'm working on the text, but the main references are: the French Ministry of Culture site and 'Paleotypography' books are by far the most important books on Garamont's work himself; Warde's 1928ish article is an important summary of scholarship and interest in his work up to that point (it was when that was put online that I realised I could really get this article to be good); Professor Mosley's articles (some of them are on his own blog) are also very good historical sources. As you've probably gathered, this is a bit of a pet (amateur) project so my goal was to try to bring all the references I could find together so some others are really just there to back those up or because they explain things a bit better-it's still not an ideal situation as journals on printing history are rare and digitisation of past journal articles is effectively non-existent. It's not a field with the standard of completeness and extensive journal coverage we're used to in science and medicine. I am a bit limited on what I can add on Garamond himself though (I don't speak French) so that section of the article is kept reasonably simple... Thanks for all the feedback once again!
Blythwood ( talk) 14:42, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
1. Well written?:
2. Factually accurate and verifiable?:
3. Broad in coverage?:
4. Reflects a neutral point of view?:
5. Reasonably stable?
6. Illustrated by images, when possible and appropriate?:
Overall:
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Reviewing |
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Reviewer: Casliber ( talk · contribs) 07:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Wow, an interesting thing to write about! I'll read and make straightforward copyedits as I go (please revert if I inadvertently change the meaning). And jot queries below:
Cas Liber (
talk ·
contribs)
07:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
All in all, a fascinating read. I am not familiar with the subject but am interested - I think it needs some more context to get it to make sense in places. As it comes together I might have some more ideas. Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 10:18, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Brilliant, thanks. That's a lot of helpful feedback and I'm planning how to incorporate those comments into the article now.
Running through some of those comments, I'll just add a few notes. I expect to be thinking myself over the next day or about how to rephrase and thought I should note down (partly for myself!) what's going on.
I'm adding a gallery for pictures. Looking into rights situation for images of historic books and on Wikimedia commons. I really want to add a few more pictures of Garamond's original type (and that of his contemporaries) now without overloading the article.
A subtext running through the article (which I don't quite dare state because it would be opinion) is that there was a lot of reverence for the name of Garamond, one of the most famous creators of metal type in the early days of Parisian printing. So people seem to have been keen to revive the holy work of Garamond - whatever scholarship thought that was that particular week! Garamond seems to have been one of the most respected artisans of his time (not that he ever got very much money out of it!) and memory of his reputation lingered after people forgot what type he actually cut.
So a quick chronology, following Mosley. In 1745, the type of Garamond and his colleagues (or in the style of it) was still very much in use in Paris, almost two hundred years after his career had ended. Mouldering in a box in a back room at the Royal Printing office too was some type by Jean Jannon. Over the next sixty years or so, printers in Paris disposed of all their old metal type, moulds etc. following a transition in taste. Apparently the only original Garamond type saved was in Antwerp at what is now the Plantin-Moretus Museum.
Fast forward again to the late nineteenth century. Interest in Garamond's work (and that of his contemporaries) was increasing. The National Printing Office, knowing Garamond once created Greek type for them, discovers Jannon's matrices in the back office and decides Garamond made it too. All the first 'Garamond' revivals were based on it, not anything Garamond himself did. Once people realised he didn't make it, well, people forgot about Jannon's work again! So actually it's the reverse: the first modern 'Garamond' fonts were actually based on Jannon's work, the 'Garamond' on your computer included. The authentic ones actually came later.
Granjon: it's simple. Garamond doesn't seem to have ever bothered to take too much interest in italics - at the time these were created separately to regular type. A printer would use one in a book or the other for body text, but not so much italics for emphasis inside body text as now. (I'm not clear on why this is, but printers have historically thought his italics weren't as good as his roman type.) So most revivals don't use his italics: they use ones developed by Granjon. Adobe Garamond's upright (roman) is based on Garamond, as are all the revivals listed as such. Jannon worked at a slightly later date where the regular/italic system we know today had been established, and he does seem to have created matching roman and italic type. So the revivals based on Jannon's work use his italic, as Monotype Garamond does. (The Warde article has a specimen of Jannon's type and the italic which I've mentioned, and they look almost identical - though I think with a few edits to fit the limits of printing technology of the time, which wasn't great at dealing with heavily overlapping letters.)
No serif at top right: simple. Open Word on your computer and set the font to Garamond. Look at the capital 'M'. Now imagine that with no spike ( serif) on the top right. It really does look like Manutius's book De Aetna had this glitch by accident and his French imitators decided to copy that for whatever reason. A good place to see that is this scan of it (caution: 10MB file), p. 28, bottom right. You'll see that the 'M' there clearly has a serif at top left but not so much on top right.
Spelling of Garamond's name: not with out reservations, I've decided to standardise on Garamond because that's what people expect in English. But I realise this isn't historically correct. (Mosley has written about this himself.)
Not that it matters just yet, since I'm working on the text, but the main references are: the French Ministry of Culture site and 'Paleotypography' books are by far the most important books on Garamont's work himself; Warde's 1928ish article is an important summary of scholarship and interest in his work up to that point (it was when that was put online that I realised I could really get this article to be good); Professor Mosley's articles (some of them are on his own blog) are also very good historical sources. As you've probably gathered, this is a bit of a pet (amateur) project so my goal was to try to bring all the references I could find together so some others are really just there to back those up or because they explain things a bit better-it's still not an ideal situation as journals on printing history are rare and digitisation of past journal articles is effectively non-existent. It's not a field with the standard of completeness and extensive journal coverage we're used to in science and medicine. I am a bit limited on what I can add on Garamond himself though (I don't speak French) so that section of the article is kept reasonably simple... Thanks for all the feedback once again!
Blythwood ( talk) 14:42, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
1. Well written?:
2. Factually accurate and verifiable?:
3. Broad in coverage?:
4. Reflects a neutral point of view?:
5. Reasonably stable?
6. Illustrated by images, when possible and appropriate?:
Overall: