Culture
Words by Dan Reynolds
Essai d’une nouvelle typographie by Louis-René Luce
A comprehensive collection of Luce’s typographic creations, this copy with a famous provenance.
A comprehensive collection of Luce’s typographic creations, this copy with a famous provenance.
Yet another bibliophilic fetish in Production Type’s collection
Font: Tesseract Display Bold Italic
Essai d’une nouvelle typographie by Louis-René Luce is yet another bibliophilic fetish in Production Type’s collection. This specimen, which presents the complete program of Luce’s creations, was printed in 1771.
Essai d’une nouvelle typographie by Louis-René Luce begins with Perle, already mentioned in our previous posts. The book was also the material for what became afterwards one of the exclusive typefaces of the French national printing works, Luce: the typeface was not created by Luce himself, but was a general idea of what a synthesis of his work would be. A digital version of Luce was designed by Franck Jalleau 250 years after.
In this copy of Essai d’une nouvelle typographie, we can see on the front page Pierre Bergé’s ex-libris, the famous partner of the fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, and passionate ancient book collector. The interest of this copy also lies in this second temporality given to the book and its history.
