Page:Historic printing types, a lecture read before the Grolier club of New York, January 25, 1885, with additions and new illustrations; by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914; Grolier Club.djvu/80

 X Types of Bodoni, Fournier, Didot, and of later French Founders. Born 1740. Died 1813. Formality of the types of Bodoni. IAMBATTISTA BODONI of Parma was the first Italian after Aldus who won the highest honors of typography. Unlike Aldus, his taste was for large types and great books. The ordinary folio page was not big enough to show his broad plans. For his master-pieces he insisted on leaves so wide that the largest press then in use could print only one page at an impression. These large leaves gave ample space for noble printing, but they entailed an objectionable method of binding, for the flat, unfolded leaves could be bound only by "whipstitching" them on the raw edge. He made the pecu- liar types of many languages, some of great merit ; but he did not show the highest skill in his Roman and Italic. His Koman has very long ascenders and descenders, thick body-marks, sharp hair lines, and flat serifs. It betrays a servile obedience to mechanical rules and to geometrical notions of propriety of form. His Italic has more freedom, but the inflexible parallelism of his long body-marks, and his excessive nicety in even lining, at the top as well as at the foot of lines, making round letters tend to squareness,