Culture
Words by Michel Wlassikoff
Deberny Peignot’s “Spécimen Général”, ca 1953
The Spécimen Général maintained many historical typefaces, while anticipating the groundbreaking release of Adrian Frutiger’s Univers in 1957. The Specimen showcases a renewed selection of types, retaining a diverse array of “foreign types” and presenting post-war innovations like Touraine, Jacno, and Contact alongside traditional Didot and early 20th-century antiques.
The Spécimen Général maintained many historical typefaces, while anticipating the groundbreaking release of Adrian Frutiger’s Univers in 1957. The Specimen showcases a renewed selection of types, retaining a diverse array of “foreign types” and presenting post-war innovations like Touraine, Jacno, and Contact alongside traditional Didot and early 20th-century antiques.
The Spécimen Général, published by the Deberny et Peignot foundry at the beginning of the 1950s, is based on an observation: one must maintain on the market some prestigious types from the past, while waiting for the emergence of a typeface capable of outclassing many existing creations and on which Adrian Frutiger has started to work, a type which will soon appear (1957), and that Frutiger and Charles Peignot will decide to call Univers.
The Specimen, less extensive than the catalogs published between the wars, is based on a renewed selection of characters – a little similar to that which took place in the 1920s to purge the letter directories of the founding foundries of D & P, and get rid of Art Nouveau types in particular.
It should be noted that the company continues to be proud of its heritage of “ foreign characters ” whose diversity it highlights and which includes : Polish, Czech, Slavonic, Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Greek, Arabic, Samaritan, Estranghelo, Hebrew, Syriac, Persian, Coptic, Rabbinic, Cambodian, Sanskrit, Vietnamese, Siamese, Tamil, Laotian, Manchu, Hieroglyphs, Marath.
The “ Characteristics of style ” category presents the series of Cochins, the Moderns, the Cyclopéen and the Polyphemus, i.e. creations almost fifty years old, as well as proven garaldes es, themselves well dated _ : Garamont, Astr é e, Ancien, Montaigne. Moreover, it is in this category that the only post - war innovations are found. : Touraine (lean and semi-fat), Jacno and Contact, as well as a slightly incongruous Roman and italic Bodoni. For the rest, we list traditional Didot, the antiques at the beginning of the century and Europe in three weights still in place.
It is perhaps in the " Latins " and the " Scriptures " that we could discover some characters never shown before, among which, the Orientals, the Monastics, the Americans, as well as the Medici, the Renaissance or the Jensonians.
Document: École Estienne library.
