Culture2024-05-26

Words by Michel Wlassikoff

Fournier’s “Printing types” article in the Diderot et d’Alembert’s 1751 “Encyclopédie”

The Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1772, reached a broad audience beyond the elite. Pierre-Simon Fournier authored the extensive ‘Printing Types’ article, showcasing his typographic expertise and advocating for the unification of typefounding and printing practices.

The encyclopedia is comprised of seventeen volumes of text, eleven volumes of plates, six volumes of supplements and tables, 25,000 large folio pages, more than 60,000 items.

The prints launched successively from 1751 to 1763, then until 1772, were increasingly accessible to a public that went well beyond the wealthy elites of Paris and the great capitals. In thirty years, approximately 25,000 copies are put into circulation, more than half of which are in France. Evading censorship, the work was printed for a time in Neuchâtel before receiving royal authorization and returning to France.

Diderot, in his “prospectus” presenting the Encyclopédie, explains at length the interest of the volumes of plates:

“We could show by a thousand examples that a pure and simple dictionary of definitions, however well it is made, cannot do without figures, without falling into obscure or vague descriptions […]. A glance at the object or its representation says more than a page of speech.”

However, intaglio and letterpress are printed on different presses. Two distinct discourses are juxtaposed by necessity in the heavy volumes separated by texts and plates. Besides the fact that the text of the plates corresponds poorly to them, they must be sufficient in themselves: general views precede the details of the work and the tools to locate them.

The printing works benefits from a large series of plates, among which the type foundry is highlighted and illustrated. In the volumes of text, we find a long article by Pierre Simon Fournier the younger devoted to “printing types” which presents a specimen of his own creations. Many occurrences relate to writing, Roman as well as other cultures, and the arts of engraving.

Fournier’s ”Printing Types” article

During the Age of Enlightenment , Pierre-Simon Fournier, printer, engraver and typecaster in Paris, contributed to the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, ensuring a large part of its formatting and writing the copious article ”Printing Types”, where he testifies to his knowledge of the history of typography, its techniques, and the importance of typefounding, whose importance he praises, not failing to highlight its own types. He also expresses the desire to see an end to the separation between foundry and printing, and to see recognition of the merit of the foundries who make the founts for which the printers receive praise.

At the end of the article , he provides the "Examples of all the Roman and italic types in use in printing" in three pages, including a beautiful spread which includes the largest sizes and presents itself as a summary proof of his productions. Like his counterpart essayists, scholars and philosophers, Fournier defies in his field the royal authority which would like it not to be his typographic model which serves as an example, but the Romain du Roi, for which the Imprimerie royale, at the same time, printed a finally complete specimen.

“The project of Pierre-Simon Fournier the Younger is to create “a complete foundry” and an homogeneous one. He began to lay the foundations with his Table des proportions des différents corps de caractères, 1736, which he republished in 1764 in his Manual with comments. Then Fournier set out to disseminate the principle of his typographic measurement system or “Fournier point”. It was he who wrote the article “Typefounding” in L’Encyclopédie. He is one of the few who dares to break the usual silence on manufacturing secrets.”

Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer, La Lettre et le texte, Paris, 1987.

Documents:

Encyclopedia or Reasoned Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Trades.
Pierre-Simon Fournier, article “ Printing Characters ” in Diderot and d’ Alembert , Encyclopédie ( II ), 1751 . Library of the Estienne school.