#Fleurons

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

Fleurons or Printers' Flowers have been a prominent element of typographic tradition at least since the early 16th century, especially those of designer-punchcutter Robert Granjon. They became less used over the 17th century, but were revived in the mid-18th century when Pierre Simon Fournier introduced an entirely new style of printers' flowers. Soon after, their use enhanced as a fashion for classical typography changed the concept of type decoration at the end of the 18th century. The revival of fine typographic design in the late 19th century spurred a proliferation of new fleuron designs in the 20th century that has not abated to this day.

Fleurons may be combined in innumerable ways to create ornate and intricate typographic patterns. Today we show a few of those patterns from Fleurons, Their Place in History & in Print, written, designed, printed, and bound in 1988 by English type and printing enthusiast Mark Arman at his Workshop Press in Thaxted, Essex, in an edition of 170 copies signed by the author/printer. This book is another from the recent of from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick. Of printing fleurons, Arman writes:

. . . they can be grouped in a variety of combinations: elaborate arrangements are possible, and great enjoyment may be had exploring their possibilities. When I realised all this I began a collection of type decorations which, in the past seven years, has grown considerably. Part of the enjoyment has been finding specific designs. . . . All my 19th century decorations have come from old printing houses which have ceased to operate, or have gone over to litho, so they make a very mixed assortment. . . . [These] are illustrated in the following pages and the text gives a brief account of the craftsmen who created the design.

View other posts on decorative type patterns by Mark Arman.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

View more Typography Tuesday posts.

[muspeccoll]

#WordyWednesday

Printer’s ornament: A decorative piece of type, often showing a fancy flower, used by printers to make their pages a little more interesting. The first printer to use them was Giovanni Alberto Alvise in the year 1478. They are also sometimes called “dingbats” or, more prettily, “fleurons.”

Image: Typographica: An occasional pamphlet treating of printing, letter-design, and allied arts. New York: The Village Press and Letter Foundery, 1935. Z250 .T9 no.6

(via Page — Pulpboard · Rare Books: A Glossary · Special Collections and Archives)

[justiceb68]

unel

[artlipsis]

misc. art relating to my cave story mod, evergreen

play the demo now!!!

[postcard-from-the-past]

Lise Fleuron on a vintage postcard

[snakegirllovehandles]

I drove for meals on wheels again today, after a long stretch when I couldn't because my car had a severe oil leak.

It's nice to be doing that again.

🙞-------------------------------------------🙜

I went to an estate sale on the way back from the meals on wheels office.

I'm feeling kind of strange, thinking about all the things I learned about the person who's estate it was just by seeing the stuff that was for sale.

She was a musician. Played jazz saxophone. She had lots of costume jewelry. She had a dog. In her last years she was bed bound or nearly so. She was born in the 30s, judging by the photograph I saw. And she had either grandchildren or nieces & nephews.

And, I think, she lived alone.

There's a strange feeling that I have, thinking about these things. The passage of time. Death, the end of connection between people. It's like sadness, but it's also like, reflection. Wistfulness, the barest hint of what it's like to watch a tragic play.

Finality, nostalgia, and a smidge of melancholy.

The old world blues.

[maudeboggins]

Lise Fleuron

[medicalunprofessional]

the fact that some unicode symbols were converted 2 emoji make me mad. Give me my little atom unicode symbol back. girl what even is ⚛️

[duardius]

forme to ‹humanist eye strain 2.1›.

[kommabortsig]

A_general_history_of_quadrupeds._The_figures_engraved_on_wood_by_T._Bewick._Fleuron_T061241-40.png

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

Richard J. Hoffman (1912-1989) was a long-standing letterpress printer and collector of type in the Los Angeles area from 1925 until his death in 1989. One of his final projects was this publication, When a Printer Plays, printed in 1987 at his shop in Van Nuys, California in an edition of 200 copies. The book is an historical presentation of fleurons and printers' ornaments with over 200 designs of his own invention made from individual pieces of foundry and monotype units that he collected over more than 50 years. California rare book dealer John Howell called When a Printer Plays Hoffman's magnum opus, noting that "Hoffman lavished the utmost care upon every detail of typesetting, arrangement, margins, proportions, multi-colored patterns, and illustrations."

Hoffman begins with Garamond and Granjon ornaments first designed in the 16th century and moves toward more contemporary ornaments by designers such as Bruce Rogers, Will Bradley, Thomas Maitland Cleland, David Bethel (Glint Ornaments), and Rudolph Ruzicka (Fairfield Ornaments). All the letterpress printers we know delight in creating borders and designs from typographic ornaments, and Hoffman quotes Bruce Rogers:

When my own time comes to be marooned on a desert island . . . instead of taking along the favorite volumes that most amateur castaways vote for, I think I shall arrange to be shipwrecked in company with a Monotype caster and a select assortment of ornamental matrices. The fascination and amusement . . . that can be got out of the almost numberless combinations of a few simple units would enable me to cast away for an indefinite period with great contentment.

Linotype Electra was used for the text in this book, with Deepdene for display. Our copy of When a Printer Plays is yet another donation from the estate of Dennis Bayuzick.

View more posts of type ornaments.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

View more Typography Tuesday posts.

[observatoiredumensonge]

Science po, le désastre absolu

Voici donc un ancien fleuron de l’université française qui bascule en officine idéologique anti-Israël. Par Maxime Tandonnet Nous publions régulièrement des livres pour réinformer face à la caste politico-médiatique hors de nos réalités quotidiennes.Cliquez sur l’image. Science po, le désastre absolu La direction de Science po Paris a conclu un accord avec les manifestants anti-Israël qui…

[prokopetz]

It's a bit misleading to say that it's "more specifically" a fleuron. A typographic element can be both a dinkus and a fleuron, but a fleuron is not a kind of dinkus; there are also fleurons which are not dinkuses (and vice versa).

Today I learned that there's a specific name for those floral-looking typographic widgets which are used to indicate a break or omission in a body of text, and you may be surprised to learn what that name is.

[artlipsis]

misc. comics, pt 2

[moandotwav]

Detail of a printed arabesque border in a 1616 book.

[projectthesinner]