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@dobody #Typography #typographie #imprimerie

Nicolas (greenman)2d ago

Pierre Chambert-Protat 2d ago

@dobody
Poke @crideaukikuchi

@chaprot @crideaukikuchi

Quelle trouvaille vos deux comptes! Merci!

Catherine Rideau-Kikuchi 2d ago

@chaprot @dobody Some fonts were lent or sold. Nicolas Jenson's for exemple were used throughout Europe for a century. I think Amerbach specialised in lending his types or selling characters made with his matrices.
These types were known for their quality, so that's why there was a high demand, but I guess it could also be so for non-latin fonts, which were very expensive to make from scratch.

Dobody 🇺🇦🍉1d ago

@crideaukikuchi
Thank you!! I'm fairly sure a typeface market existed in Russian Emp. during Peter the Great's time, easier to imagine considering his script reform.

Struggling to find sources on Cyrillic Uncials and Slavonic & later Bulgarian type though. Almost seems like the Ustav uncial style letterforms barely varied across generations.

Might you have more insight on where I should dig for info on Cyrillic type & Eastern European printing?

@chaprot

Dominika 2d ago

@dobody I can add an information about the Cyrillic fonts, around 1880, in Poland. I know that there was one man (Samuel Orgelbrand) who was probably buying typeface designs from Germany (eg. from Berthold). The only original designs he had in his printing house were Cyrillic typefaces. DM me if you’d like to know more

QuentinJuhel 2d ago

@dobody maybe @kupfers have an idea. But in France, I remember there was a very little typefaces trade. But I didn’t find my sources

@QuentinJuhel @dobody Hello! The situation changed a lot throughout the centuries. In the beginning (renais.), the printers were also the type founders. Later special companies for foundry type formed that offered type to printers independent from presses/machines. Either fully developing their own designs or just casting designs after trading matrices. Then even later typesetting machine manufacturers (Linotype, Monotype, Intertype etc) joined the scene and sold type as addons to their machines

@QuentinJuhel @dobody That culminated in phototype times where the (proprietary) fonts were used as incentives to buy a certain typesetting machine or model. That’s also where design copying was rampant.

When type was physical, trade was mostly local. It didn’t make sense to ship cast foundry type across the globe. You’d rather trade matrices (or a minimum character-set) and then cast the respective type to be sold locally. Also type-height and alignment was different in different places.

@QuentinJuhel @dobody Trade of matrices for typesetting machines was easier, and definitely analog and digital phototype in the 1960–80s.

Cyrillic foundry type companies probably traded matrices among themselves and with Latin-using partners or mother companies (Berthold for instance had a branch in Russia). Cyrillic was developed from Latin design and localised characters for the different languages using Cyrillic.

Do you have any concrete example/typeface we can help with?

@kupfers
Thanks a big lot for chipping in! Context is this article I wrote (pardon my French) on Bulgarian typography, with the few sources I could get my hands on. Early Cyrillic prints in Church Slavonic by Szweipolt Fiol (1490s?) and printers in Vilnius (in Ukrainian) seem to use an Ustav style (Cyrillic uncial-like) old Cyr script. Peter I's Russian reforms seem not to trickle down to BG, and in 1838 the ¿first? BG press in Thessaloniki still uses Ustav characters. 1/2

@QuentinJuhel

@kupfers
Until mid 19th C. there's Bulgarian books being printed with Transitional Russian type in Ukraine (big BG diaspora region), but they lack essential BG glyphs/graphemes substituted with others. Begs the question of how Ustav-style characters circulated to BG territory in the mid-19th century, from whom, or if they were custom-made etc..

Bulg. press was largely hidden and undocumented sadly bc of Ottoman rule & prevalence of Greek for orthodox texts, facing backlash.
2/2
@QuentinJuhel

@kupfers
P.S. Scans of printed Cyrillic Ustav texts show relative differences in subtle letter shapes across different regions all while keeping the general "skeleton" of the letters consistent, so I'm betting on type being cast in-house rather than sold.

But context on the market of press machinss and metal type in the Cyrillic region could help with getting a general idea of how it evolved.

Forgot to post the article lmao:
https://www.delyo.be/blog/rants/2026-01-31-cyrillique-histoire/

Typographie bulgare, partie 1, une histoire du cyrillique | Delyo's blog

@dobody I see! That’s alas out of my league. Same general design but different details sounds like either legally traded matrices and adapted local casts or (more or less legal) electrotyped copies of – perhaps even worn – type.

Your experts in regional typography and type history:
Bulgarian Cyrillic @krista
Baltic use of Cyrillic @AleksandraSamulenkova
Ukrainian Cyrillic @korolevtseva
Greek @irenevlachou

@kupfers

Thank you so much for this! I know of some of those amazing people, but haven't had the pleasure of meeting/talking with them yet.

@krista @AleksandraSamulenkova @korolevtseva @irenevlachou
Hey Everyone! (I'm so joining typo.social!)