Bembo Book

A N ATO M Y O F A T Y P E FAC E A L E X A N D E R L AW S O N BEMBO

Griffo

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A N ATO M Y O F A T Y P E FAC E

Bembo 3

During the 1920s the English Monotype company – Lanston Monotype Corporation – under the direction of Stanley Morison, embarked upon a program that was the most ambitious 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 type 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 com-position of books. In Europe, where Monotype composition 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 each show, it is evident that Bembo receives prime consideration from British designers.

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 composed in Bembo have been chosen since 1938, when the type first appeared in the country. and on slug-casting machines (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 revivals, 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 Manutius, the Venetian publisher-printer, and the absence of ‘critical approval of Aldus’s typographic merits.’

The great historic typography resurgence 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 Italian punch-cutters were being ignored. It was not until the quickening interest in printing scholarship during the 1920s — 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 periodical The Fleuron (1923 – 30) — that typographers became more aware of the later Venetian types and especially those of Aldus.

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 Carpi. (He had changed his name from Teobaldo Manucci to Aldo Manuzio, later Latinized to Aldus Manutius, 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 important Greek text, which he planned to salvage, edit, publish in Greek, tranlate 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 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 every item required for production had to exist on the premises (as opposed to today’s diversified printing operations). Of vital importance, too, was the large Greek colony inVenice from which editors and proofreaders were obtained.

Bembo

A N ATO M Y O F A T Y P E FAC E

Festina Bembo 5

Lente

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 devoted to the classics, Aldus had no intention of neglecting current literature, and in the same year, 1495, he published De Aetna, 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 became a cardinal).

Aldus expressed his philosophy as a publisher in an introduction to his edition of Aristotle’s Organon: ‘Those who cultivate letters must be supplied with the books necessary for their purpose; and until this supply is secured I shall not rest.’ Indeed he did not res. 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 enriched by his endeavors, owing primarily to the pirating of his texts by competitors. But his contribution to literature 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 pressmark, the famous dolphin and anchor — the dolphin signifying speed and the anchor stability. The pirate editions even frequently included Aldus’s motto, Festina lente, ‘make haste slowly.’

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Aldine Press logo

The roman type in which De Aetna was composed (called simply the De Aetna type), on which Bembo is based, was cut by Francesco Griffo, sometimes styled Francesco de Bologna. Aldus was the most fortunate in obtaining the services of which in inventive punchcutter, who produced all of the types for the Aldine Press, including the famous italic of 1500—the brothers di Gregorii in particular—since arriving in the city from Padua about 1480.

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

Most Venetian types from the time of Jenson 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 receive much of the credit for the departure of the punchcutter from slavish dependence on the pen-drawn characters. The engraving of a steel punch, utilizing files and gravers, requires precision skills and allows refinements beyond the scopes 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.

A N ATO M Y O F A T Y P E FAC E

Bembo 7

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

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.’

The Monotype cutting of the De AEtna type, although an excellent rendering, could not be other than an approximation 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 allowance to be made for ink squeeze in the original (owing to the weight of the impression). or the exact shape of 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 printers were still in competition with scribes in the production of books, and they frequently followed the scribe’s inclination to provide several variations of the particular character.

‘Those who cultivate letters must be supplied with the books necessary for their purpose; and until this supply is secured I shall not rest.’

Discussing these variations in his essay on the De Aetna 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 alternatives have proven useful in determining the 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 design them.

In addition, the modern pantograph machine necessarily mechanizes 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.

Finally, a major predicament in the production of Monotype Bembo was the selection and cutting of the 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.

The first, cut by the noted English calligrapher Alfred Fairbank, was judged too independent of the roman, a decision delpored 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 calle Bembo 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.

Bembo was a slow starter in the United States, even though the Lanston Monotype Machine Company of Philadelphia made it available in the 1930. (The American and English Monotype firms, as noted earlier, were separate but maintained a working arrangement until the demise of the American branch several years ago.)

The problem was the strong competition in the United States from the slug-casting machines, Linotype and Intertype, which obtained much the larger share of the market for composing machines.

Thus, the single-type-casting Monotype system was not nearly so well represented in American books as it was in English and European.

But with the recent increase in phototypsetting 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.