Only one of our typographic books is currently in print (We recently discovered a box of unbound copies and had them bound up). But below you can also download the complete "Recollections of a Country Printing Office" by Mark Twain, as printed by us in 1992, with a specimen of some nineteenth-century typefaces from our cases.


Hendrik D. L. Vervliet
Cyrillic & Oriental Typography in Rome at the End of the Sixteenth Century: An Inquiry into the Later Work of Robert Granjon (1578-90)

Illustrations: 31 specimens of types by Robert Granjon
Size: 31 x 21.8 cm
Binding:Letterpress-printed paper covers and cloth over boards; letterpress endsheets using a repeat pattern of a Granjon arabesque ornament
Pages: x + 60
ISBN: No ISBN
Price: $90
Description: This is the only full-length monograph on the life and work of Robert Granjon, pre-eminent French type designer of the sixteenth century. This book focuses on the work he did for the Jesuits in Rome in their quest for world spiritual domination through printing. Former Director of the Plantin-Moretus Museum and head of the Antwerp University Library, H.D.L. Vervliet, the foremost authority on sixteenth-century printing, discusses the impact of Granjon's arabics, the controversy over the cutting of his Cyrillic, and for the first time ascribes Hebrew and other types to the brilliant innovative French typographical artist. From the book: "As a punch-cutter, Granjon was Garamont's equal. While it is true that the Roman faces which he cut follow the unsurpassable model of Garamont, they are freer, richer, more calligraphic. If, in the history of roman typographic characters, Garamont's represent the sober, static, immutable beauty of the Renaissance, Granjon's for their part display the exuberance, ostentation, magnificent assurance and technical perfection of the Baroque. As 'inventor' of new graphic forms, he far surpassed Garamont. From this viewpoint, Granjon is more the 'artist', Garamont more the 'artisan'."




Mark Twain
Recollections of a Country Printing Office