Culture
Words by Michel Wlassikoff
Fournier’s Manuel typographique
Fournier published his influential Manuel typographique in two volumes (1764–1766), introducing the concept of ’typographic points’ and detailed the manufacture of printing types with comprehensive illustrations. The second volume features a catalog of types, including various sizes, styles, and ornaments, which, despite their rocaille aesthetic fading into oblivion, established principles that influenced future typographic systems.
Fournier published his influential Manuel typographique in two volumes (1764–1766), introducing the concept of ’typographic points’ and detailed the manufacture of printing types with comprehensive illustrations. The second volume features a catalog of types, including various sizes, styles, and ornaments, which, despite their rocaille aesthetic fading into oblivion, established principles that influenced future typographic systems.
Fournier published his famous Manuel typographique in two volumes (1764–1766), which introduced the concept of “typographic points”. He describes the manufacture of printing types illustrated by full-page engravings, presenting the size of the punches up to the fount, giving all the details required on the tools, their use, lead mixtures, fusion, etc.
The second volume includes a catalog of the numerous French and foreign types designed by Fournier. Ordinary romans and their italics are presented in all sizes (from the Parisian to the large nonpareil) and for the same size, a large x-height and a small x-height. Narrow or poetic in the Dutch taste, ordinary or ornate lettre de deux-points, in various sizes; vignettes, music and various alphabets of modern or ancient languages. All of the vignettes make it possible to compose ornamental patterns harmonized with the size of the letters used, their geometric lines and their modular device offering infinite variations. Their rocaille aesthetic makes them fall into oblivion, but their principle enters the collective memory of the world of typography and will serve as a model for many systems since.
Document : Pierre-Simon Fournier dit Le jeune, Manuel typographique utile aux gens de lettres… published in two volumes, respectively in 1764 and 1766.
