Assuming by "Bringhurst" you mean Elements of Typographic Style, there is no specimen, just a listing for Giovanni Mardersteig in the reference to type designers. There are a few references to him on the web as "Hans Mardersteig", with some pointers to tiny, poor-quality GIF specimens of Zeno, but I'm sure you've already found those. Isn't Officina Bodoni notorious about making it hard to get your hands on their private-press typefaces?

Raph,

Anatomy of a Typeface has some Zeno on pp. 102--105, including a page from The Four Gospels.

You should try to find a copy of this book: The Officina Bodoni An Accont of the Work of a Hand Press 1923-1977. It contains very good samples of all the Mardersteig faces, near the end of the volume. The book typically sells for between $150 - $250, but you can probably find it in any university library with a decent printing history section.

Raph, UCLA has the book John mentions. I'll be going there soon, and I'll pick it up, so let me know if you'd like scans.

hhp

Here are the scans, 600dpi gs, no processing, saved as JPEG level-9:

(2.19Mb) http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/Zeno1.jpg

(4.78Mb) http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/Zeno2.jpg

hhp

hrant: thanks very much!

I've ordered my very own copy of the book, and will more likely than not trace a digital version of the font. It will be interesting to see how much other interest there is in the release of such a beast.

> I’ve ordered my very own copy of the book

Good move - it's very impressive.

hhp

Interesting scans of Zeno - one gets a sense of the different directions in which chirographic revival type could have gone. Raph, do you think you might be able to scan a page or two of Mardersteig's Griffo type? I'd love to see it.

I’ve ordered my very own copy of the book, and will more likely than not trace a digital version of the font. It will be interesting to see how much other interest there is in the release of such a beast.

There is almost certainly already a digital version of Zeno, but this is a private typeface of the Stamperia Valdonega, just as the original Zeno was a private typeface. Martino Mardersteig continues his father's work, printing and publishing both handset and machine (and now computer) typeset works under the imprints of the Officina Bodoni and Stamperia Valdonega. If you want a book typeset in one of Mardersteig's private typefaces, then you go to the Mardersteigs. The digital versions of their types are reportedly extremely good: much better than e.g. Monotype Dante. I believe they are also size-specific.

I'm pretty sure that the Mardersteigs would not take kindly to someone making an unlicensed copy of any of their private typefaces for general release.

John: ah, I did not know there were still Mardersteigs carrying on the tradition. Thanks for enlightening me.

I am going to err on the side of caution, as I definitely don't want to become known as the guy who rips off work belonging to others, but to me this still brings up some ethical questions. According to Jaspert, Zeno was made in 1937. So the design would be 70 years old, and the original creator would have been dead for 30 years. How long does a family get to claim exclusive use of a typeface?

George: I'll be happy to send you a scan of the Griffo sample. Mardersteig was a true master, and his distinctive work is well worth studying completely aside from the question of doing literal digitizations.

Thanks!

> I believe they are also size-specific.

But they only have four masters, something that doesn't impress Raph for one. Don't get me wrong though, I think those are some great fonts*, and it's quite novel and clever to NOT distribute them retail (if you have a stellar reputation for printing for example).

* Although their Garamond is [still] a Jannon.

Anyway, out of curiosity I'm checking my "Val" specimen sheets...
Well, I could only find one of the two, but in the list of fonts on
that sheet Zeno is NOT present... So maybe a window is open.

BTW, the list is composed of mostly (entirely?) Monotype fonts*.
I wonder how the permissioning worked out for them.

* Including... Centaur!

> I’m pretty sure that the Mardersteigs would not take kindly
> to someone making an unlicensed copy of any of their private
> typefaces for general release.

Unless they got something out of it of course. Especially if the designer in question does a[n even] better job than them. As we're seeing in Raph's Centaur thread*, there's something to be said for a spontaneous, aggressive and self-motivated approach.

* http://typophile.com/node/17628

> How long does a family get to claim exclusive use of a typeface?

Good question. It's not like it's one continuous organism.
Especially if they happen to be "squatting" on Zeno.
Devise a strategem covering mutually beneficial usage
or distribution, and make them an offer they can't refuse.

George, I'd scan Griffo for you myself, but Raph's scanner has much higher dpi.

hhp

I could not resist the temptation to digitize enough of the font to make a test page. Here's the partial alphabet, and here's a PDF of the page: the sample of Sanctum Evangelium posted by hrant above as Zeno2.

I did not use a single kern pair. It's amazing how well the font spaces in spite of that. I did not copy Malin's side bearings slavishly. For example, I slightly reduced the left side bearing of the 'b', a technique I gleaned from Paolo Giovio's 1550 Historarium, as reproduced in Updike v. 1, p. 160, in my opinion one of the finest examples of well-spaced metal text.

John: thanks for the information about Martino Mardersteig. I did not know he was carrying on his father's tradition. I'd love to get in touch with him to see if there's interest in releasing (or maybe just using) my digitization. I tried asking Nigel Roche at the St Bride Library, but haven't gotten any response. Does anyone else have contact info for Stamperia Valdonega?

George: your scans are here and here. These are 2400 dpi high-quality scans, so they're 30 megabytes between the two of them.

hrant: what impresses me about optical scaling isn't the sheer number of masters, it's how well it's done. The ATF Bodonis used one master and I consider those to be very fine examples. In any case, the optical scaling of metal Zeno is spectacular, as is clearly evidenced by the initial "E" in the page above.

Cool.

> It’s amazing how well the font spaces in spite of that.

Yes, but lest there's a temptation to take this as far as "with good enough base spacing you don't really need kerning" (a not uncommon romanticism - shades of Dan Carr) just look at the "ra" on line 4.

> Does anyone else have contact info for Stamperia Valdonega?

valdoneg_thatsymbol_valdonega_dot_it

> The ATF Bodonis used one master

Hold on, here you're using "master" in a... deeper way than is the norm; if I didn't already know what you really meant I'd think you didn't know what you're saying. Normally "master" means a fixed instance of a typeface design, as a rule uniformly scaled to yield nearby sizes; you're using it to mean something like a "meta-instance", something used as a basis for some non-uniform if still mechanical scaling, thickening, etc. We need another term. "Pattern master"?

hhp

Thanks for the scans, they're great. It's not an entirely successful typeface, but there are some interesting interpretative choices in it.

Also:
> I slightly reduced the left side bearing of the ‘b’

Reduced relative to what? The original, the "n", the "h", or?

hhp

hrant: Ok, I get what you're saying now, but your definition of "master" doesn't quite fit either. In Adobe's Multiple Master technology, there are a small number of (often four) master outlines present in the font, and then you can derive a vast number of instances from them by interpolation.

In ATF lingo, your "pattern master" would be called a "pattern plate," largely because it was actually a 4" plate made of brass or tin. I'm inclined to keep using the term, because in the virtual world you need lots of metaphors.
Reduced relative to what? The original, the “n”, the “h”, or?

I meant the original, but the b is also about 10 units less than the h, or six less than the n, by the numbers.

And yeah, there are at least a few kerning pairs that would add to the spacing evenness of the font (although your "ra" example doesn't need much - that top terminal of the "a" needs air to breathe). I am just sticking to my usual methodology of trying to get all the side bearings right before starting in with the fine-tuning of the kern pairs.

George: you're quite welcome. I am usually happy to scan pages like this - I have a kick-ass type library and a pretty decent scanner.

> your definition of “master” doesn’t quite fit either.

True. So maybe both our definitions could be OK if we loosened things up and said that a master is a "meta-instance" or something and then there are different ways of applying it.

So like even in a font that doesn't have optical scaling, you could say that for example taking the demi weight and tracking it looser when setting small text is basically treating it like a master design.

hhp

Raph, I wish I could easily get my 1499 roman leaf to you for kick---- scanning; I bought some British Library scans from the same book, Scriptores Astronomici Veteres, but only one is good, and it is really too low-res for comfort.

The four copies of SAV that I've seen vary greatly. James Mosley tells me that the same is true even of De Aetna, where this lowercase first appeared in what ought to have been pristine condition. His scans from an excellent copy show how light and precise the original was. But with the gradual darkening that came with repeated strikes from the same punches - which were nonetheless probably touched up to maintain the thinness of thins - and with sixty percent of the punches being replaced with a view to narrowness, the type ended up looking like this:

> the gradual darkening that came with repeated strikes from the same punches

Could you elaborate? That doesn't sound right.

hhp

Whenever a punch is reused, the impact with the matrix will tend to slightly thicken up the face, won't it? I'm pretty hazy on this, so I'd be very happy for you to put me straight. And I don't know for sure that there was any reuse of punches.

>slightly reduced the left side bearing of the ‘b’

This is normal practice, I believe, because of the absence of the serif compared to the h.

I'm no punchcutter or typecaster, but I do know that:
1) The punch is way harder than the matrix it's struck into.
2) You only strike a punch once in a blue moon; once you have a matrix, that's what you re-use to cast sorts.

In fact AFAIK the only real wear is at the sort level (although discrete
damage to the punches and especially matrices is not uncommon).

hhp

> This is normal practice, I believe, because of the absence of the serif compared to the h.

Which is why I asked relative to what (and note that Raph wasn't working from the "h"). BTW, there's another reason besides the typically weaker bottom-left to space it tighter: the body is more closed, so it benefits from more tightness (sort of like a bold).

hhp

>2) You only strike a punch once in a blue moon; once you have a matrix, that’s what you re-use to cast sorts.

If I remember correctly, Harry Carter says that part of the business of type designers was selling matrices, which would have called for repeated striking on the copper strips.

Some designers sold matrices, some even sold punches (like in the case of some Armenian type made in Holland) but usually you bought the end-result type, cast by the foundry from a single set of matrices. Plus this stuff was expensive and rarified: it's not like a designer would ever sell dozens of a set of matrices.

hhp

OK, so rather than the punches, the sorts became worn.

Yes, but that actually tends towards a gradual lightening,
although more in the extremities, not so much the stems.

hhp

So increasing weight must all be from new punches and ink?

One thing is certain, it's way easier to end up with too much ink than too little; besides the latter being more obviously faulty to most people*, when you end up with too much ink fixing it is a pain: you have to start over. And then there's Pascal's old paradox: "Things are at their best in their beginning." So I would venture that the more time passes, the more users lose respect for the quality of something, and the more ink will hit the pulp.

* Except to type designers, who -hopefully- care more about the outlines
than the bodies. Like when I print, my inking borders on the translucent.

hhp

Thanks for the info. Certainly the rot, if it was a rot, had set in by 1497, and it seems not to get any more marked afterwards. The only thing that doesn't fit is that I often see rare ligs - rarely used sorts - that are sharper and lighter than the characters around them, in Aldus' rather than Soncino's printing.

> rare ligs - rarely used sorts - that are sharper and lighter

Interesting - the former makes sense, but not the latter.
Hi-res sample?

hhp

Aldus, 1501 italic:

I think we need a expert to help out...

I can only take guesses, based on the fact that later hands often added new sorts to a font, and not always very capably. In the top one, it seems under-inked, and not sharper, so it's possible that the sort was cast (or filed down) slightly too short. In the second one, it seems like a combination of a "valid" long-s and a hacked "p"; maybe the matrix for this ligature was struck inexpertly, with the "p" not hard/deep enough; or maybe they used a "p" punch from another font? What do the other "p"s look like? In any case, wear can't explain the second one, since half of it is "fine".

hhp

>the sort was cast

I believe that in traditional printer's terminology, only the non-alphabetic letters--of which there are fewer in the case, and some may be mixed in a single box in the case--are called 'sorts', or, in England, 'peculiars'.

I've always heard "sort" used to mean pretty much any piece of metal type (except rules
and such, and most probably spacing). And really, if you use anything else, like "letter"
or "character", the potential for confusion is high.

hhp

The usage of 'sorts' and 'peculiars' I heard from my Uncle Ben Lieberman--see his book 'Types of Typefaces'. But what I read in contemporary references says you are right. Perhaps some hot metal people can enlighten us on this--whether Lieberman had it wrong, or the usage has changed.

I actually use "peculiars" myself! See here:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/manademo/ _
It's a term both useful and classy.

BTW, speaking of terminology, I think it's better (although not pervasively practiced) to limit "hot metal" to mean Monotype, Linotype, etc. I've even encountered "cold metal" used to mean the stuff before hot metal, although the most common term seems to be "foundry" (which however can cause confusion).

hhp

Metal rather than 'hot metal' is better, you're right.

BTW, concerning your uncle's book: is there a big
difference between the '67 versus the '78 editions?

hhp

I don't know if there's a difference; I only have the earlier edition. I still think it's a lovely book. I don't know of anything that introduces the whole (pre-digital) story of type as well. And it has a wonderful selection of type samples, including in full paragraphs. He also printed the first edition of Mac McGrew's 'American Metal Typefaces' on his own press--one of the last projects he did.

Hrant, the other 'p's are similar but heavier. What I really need to do, of course, is get hold of an incunable or Aldine specialist.

In case anybody is still interested -- i'm new to this forum -- Richard Beatty digitized Zeno a few years ago, quite successfully I think. He got an angry letter from Martino Mardersteig, claiming copyright infringment. As U.S. copyrights for types cover only the name of the type, not the design itself, Richard re-named the type "Martino." I'm sure Mardersteig Jr. was not amused. You can get the font from him, quite inexpensively, if you email him.

beattytype@yahoo.com

He has also, within the last month, released a digial version of the Doves types.