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A title from The Old School Press Zapf and Stauffacher The story of a
collaboration between type designer and typographer, by Ferdinand Ulrich | ||
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About the book When the Hunt Roman type was first made available to the Hunt Botanical Library in Pittsburgh (now the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation), the event was marked by the publication of a slim volume entitled Hunt Roman: the birth of a type. It noted that the new type came about as 'the fruition of a combination of ideals, concepts, and convictions of three personalities', those personalities being Mrs Hunt, after whom the Institute is named, type designer Hermann Zapf, and typographic designer and printer Jack Stauffacher. The type was first used in 1963, by Stauffacher, for a symposium programme. While a visiting student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 2010, German typographer and type historian Ferdinand Ulrich came across the legendary type in the hot-metal setting workshop of the university. His subsequent intensive research in archives and collections, a stay with Stauffacher in San Francisco, and correspondence and meetings with Hermann Zapf have led to lectures and journal articles on this historic type, and in this essay he reveals how the collaboration between Zapf and Stauffacher developed in the 1960s. About the edition Hunt Roman was not designed to serve as a text type, being intended as a display face to accompany Spectrum, and it was originally cut in 14pt, 18pt, and 24pt, though a 12pt was later prepared. We hold the three larger sizes. Hunt is noteworthy for its short ascenders and descenders, making it appear much larger than its body size would suggest - the 14pt could easily be guessed as 18pt and so on. Nevertheless with careful choice of line length and leading it looks very fine on the page and we are of course hand-setting Ferdinand's text in Hunt Roman cast by Stempel. The essay runs to 3,400 words and it has been printed on hand-made paper from the Czech Velké Losiny mill and presented in a format similar to the recent Venice Approached: a single section sewn between boards. There is a photograph frontispiece of Zapf and Stauffacher in conversation. The edition consists of 125 copies of which 100 are for sale. Copies are Ł75 each. | ||
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What others have said about the book |
'a very fine book', 'lovely', 'beautiful work', 'very nicely done' |
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