-I°4- Irascimini, et nolite peccare: quae

Some designers and ,. . . . ,.• • • i i-

their types dicitis in cordi bus vestns, in cu bill-

bus vestris compungimini. Sacrifi¬
cate sacrificium iustitiae, et sperate
in Domino. Multi dicunt: Quis
ostendit nobis bona? Signatum est
super nos lumen vultus tui Domi¬
ne: dedisti laetitiam in corde meo.
A fructu frumenti, vini, et olei sui
multiplicad sunt. In pace in idip-
sum dormiam,et requiescam; Quo-
niam tu Domine singulariter in spe
constituisti me.

CC ЕЕ FF GG LL QQ

ее hh li |j mm nn ss 88
?? !! .. „ ;, :: о 0 - " " G []

Lutetia roman: the revised characters.

A study of the revisions is instructive. The e with the level bar is
more appropriate for this type, which owes nothing to Jenson. (It
was the only one of the changes to be adopted by Enschedé for
their own use of the type.) The wider h, m and n are in better
balance with о and other round letters. The new s, though, is too
narrow. In the i and j the dot, which was too small and isolated in
the original (even more so than in Bruce Rogers' Centaur), is in
better relationship with the stroke. The stronger punctuation
marks are more effective. Instead of revising the figure 8 it would
have been better to increase the width of the 2, 3, 4 and 5, which
are oddly cramped. The short-tailed Q was less likely to suffer
breakage than the elegant original. The shorter vertical in G was
evidently to Van Krimpen's taste; it appears in all his later de¬
signs. The revised С seems hardly different from the first version.
The changes in E and F are particularly interesting. The excessive
width which Morison had noticed, and the high middle bar, had
not been a feature of Van Krimpen's drawn lettering; but they
were characteristic of De Roos's types, which Van Krimpen
knew well (for that matter, they appear in several of Goudy's
early faces). The Garnett versions are certainly better.

Most of the revisions are distinct improvements, elevating a
good roman into a positively distinguished one. It is a pity that it

was not found possible to incorporate them into the standard -105-
Lutetia fonts, especially when Monotype, by arrangement with The types
Enschedé, began to produce the face in 1928. When the complet- of Jan van Krimpen
ing of the printing of the Frick catalogue was taken on by the
Thistle Press of New York about 1945 the proprietors offered to
release the revised sorts for general use. Van Krimpen declined
the offer, believing that by that time it would have caused confu¬
sion to introduce alternative characters.

In any case, the italic remains a problem. It was not a good
working companion for the roman: too narrow, too dazzling
and too dark. Van Krimpen said he took a long time to decide
whether to design the face as a conventional italic or as a chan¬
cery letter. This suggests that he was thinking of it as a separate
entity, and that he had not grasped the fact that an italic intended
for use as a secondary letter can be successfully designed only by
first trying out groups of tentative letters within a sample passage
of the roman, with harmony of style, proportion and weight as
the object to be achieved. But the empirical attitude and the
practical method were not, it seems, Van Krimpen's way - either
then, when he was without experience in type designing, or later,
when the lesson should have been learnt.

To the growing number of people who were taking an interest
in typography at that time, Lutetia was clearly unlike the recently
revived Garamonds, the ubiquitous Caslon, and the familiar old
styles and moderns. It was original, yet it was refined and unas¬
sertive. It made Van Krimpen's reputation as a type designer, and
the types he created during the following twenty years were re¬
ceived with the greatest respect.

Mention should be made here of the attractive decorative
alphabet produced by P.H.Raedisch, the punch-cutter in the
Enschedé type foundry (one of the last of that ancient craft), by
engraving a white line in the 36 and 48 point sizes of Lutetia

ABCDEFGHIJK
LMNOPQURS

TVWXYZ

Lutetia Open.

capitals, under Van Krimpen's direction. And there was also the
Greek type, called Antigone, which Van Krimpen designed in
1927 as the first part of a scheme to create a complete set of