Jenson’s Roman Type.
From Cicero: Rhetorica, Venice, 1470 (Exact size)
Emery Walker’s Doves Type.
From Paradise Regained, London, 1905 (Exact size)
From this I came to realize that it is no more necessary for a type designer to express his individuality by adding or subtracting from his model than for a portrait painter to change the features of his subject because some other artist has previously painted it. Wordsworth once said that the true portrait of a man shows him, not as he looks at any one moment of his life, but as he really looks all the time. This is equally true of a hand letter, and explains the vast differences in the cut of the same type face by various foundries and for the typesetting machines. All this convinced me that, if I were to make the humanistic letters the model for my new type, I must follow the example of Emery Walker rather than that of William Morris.
During the days spent in the small, cell-like alcove which had been turned over for my use in the Laurenziana Library, I came so wholly under the influence of the peculiar atmosphere of antiquity that I felt myself under an obsession of which I have not been conscious before or since. My enthusiasm was abnormal, my efforts tireless. The world outside seemed very far away, the past seemed very near, and I was indifferent to everything except the task before me. This curious experience was perhaps an explanation of how the monks had been able to apply themselves so unceasingly to their prodigious labors, which seem beyond the bounds of human endurance.
My work at first was confined to a study of the humanistic volumes in the Laurenziana Library, and the selection of the best examples to be taken as final models for the various letters. From photographed reproductions of selected manuscript pages, I took out fifty examples of each letter. Of these fifty, perhaps a half-dozen would be almost identical, and from these I learned the exact design the scribe endeavored to repeat. I also decided to introduce the innovation of having several characters for certain letters that repeated most frequently, in order to preserve the individuality of the hand lettering, and still keep my design within the rigid limitations of type. Of the letter e, for instance, eight different designs were finally selected; there were five a’s, two m’s, and so on (see illustration at [page 32]).
After becoming familiar with the individual letters as shown in the Laurenziana humanistic volumes, I went on to Milan and the Ambrosiana Library, with a letter from Doctor Biagi addressed to the librarian, Monsignor Ceriani, explaining the work upon which I was engaged, and seeking his co-operation. It would be impossible to estimate Ceriani’s age at that time, but he was very old. He was above middle height, his frame was slight, his eyes penetrating and burning with a fire that showed at a glance how affected he was by the influence to which I have already referred. His skin resembled in color and texture the very parchment of the volumes he handled with such affection, and in his religious habit he seemed the embodiment of ancient learning.