De Gulden Passer. Jaargang 1

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Tijdschriften. - revues.

The fleuron, a journal of typography edited by Oliver Simon (London, At the Office of The Fleuron. 1923). - In dit typographisch schitterend verzorgde tijdschrift, dat ook door zijn degelijken inhoud uitmunt, komen een paar studiën voor van wezenlijk belang voor de geschiedenis van het oude Antwerpsche boek.

Wij bedoelen in de eerste plaats Printer's Flowers and Arabesques van Francis Meynell en Stanley Morison. Er wordt gewezen op de Moorsche afkomst van deze versieringen, die van 1529 af in allerlei modelboeken voor naai- en borduurwerk werden uitgegeven (o.a. bij Hieronymus Cock, tusschen 1543 en 1550, en Balth. Silvius, in 1554, beide te Antwerpen). Daarna volgen wij de arabeske in haar ontwikkeling als boekversiering en weer vinden wij daarbij interessante beschouwingen over de bedrijvigheid van Antwerpen en in het bijzonder van Plantin op dat gebied: ‘The Index Characterum which Plantin published at Antwerp is a very interesting document. In addition to his series of type faces it shows a variety of flowers obviously related to the arabesque. The specimen was issued to Plantin's scholarly customers in the year 1567, and represents the earliest known printer's specimen devoted to other than Venetian or German types. For some years previously the eminent Antwerp printer had been gathering material. A Frenchman himself, from the first he showed a partiality for French faces and for French craftsmen. He bought a number of punches from Garamond before the latter's death in 1561. His inventory made in 1563 discloses that Plantin possessed a large number of matrices, roman and italic, by Garamond and Grandjon. By 1565 Plantin possessed his own foundry and, says Max Rooses, “un homme du métier, un certain Jacques Sabon y travailla. Il ne paraît pas qu'on y ait rien fait d'important; on y executa specialement des fleurons”, etc. This Jacques (or Jacob) Sabon was a Frenchman. Herr Gustave Mori, whose access to the Frankfort archives has enabled him to make a thorough investigation into the history of the Egenolffs, has discovered that Sabon was born in Lyons. It is conceivable that Jacques was a kinsfolk of Sulpice Sabon (or Sulpitius Sapidus), who printed in Lyons from 1535 to 1549. Baudrier was unable to trace a single document relating to this printer “un des meilleurs de Lyon, et nous ne savons rien sur sa vie.” His unrecorded disappearance from Lyons probably means that he, like Tournes II and others, an adherent of the reformation, fled to avoid persecution. A number of such French protestants arrived in Frankfort, and among them Jacques Sabon. He joined the Egenolffs, but later went to Antwerp, where, as we have seen, he entered Plantin's office as a foundry-hand. Plantin's correspondence reveals that he received in 1566 “des poinçons de fleurons” from Granjon. The latter's prolonged absence in Rome and elsewhere forced Plantin to have recourse to local talent for maintenance of his supplies of types and flowers. Accordingly we find Plantin in 1570 receiving fleurons from Henri van den Keere alias du Tour. At his death (circa 1574) the widow du Tour returned the punches which has been used by her husband, but which has been cut by Garamond, Granjon, and Le Bé, into the hands of Plantin. It seems clear, therefore, that flowers shown in Plantin's Index are from the hands of Jacques Sabon and Robert Granjon. Robert was the younger brother of the

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Paris bookseller, Jean Granjon, who kept shop, 1504-1551, in Clauso Brunelli: prope scholas decretorum in intersignio sacratissimae Dei genetricis Mariae, and later, sub signo magni iunci appendente. Robert Granjon was a member of the Paris gild of imprimeurs-libraires from 1523, but removed in 1557 to Lyons and married Antoinette. daughter of Bernard Salomon. He made a two-year stay at Paris (1563-1565), and in 1566 visited his perhaps most important customer at that time, Chr. Plantin, at Antwerp. From 1578 to 1588 he gave himself, at the invitation of Gregory XIII, tho the establisment of a type-foundry at Rome’.

Aan de studie van Percy Smith over Initial Letters in the Printed Book ontleenen wij de volgende passage over de kunstwaarde van sommige hoofdletters door Plantin gebruikt:

‘The earlier printers of the Low Countries did not produce initials sufficiently different from those of Germany to make a separate group. In the second half of the sixteenth century, however, Christophe Plantin, a Frenchman, built up his famous business in Antwerp. He used decorated and picture initials extensively. Some are not good, being overornate, and one feels in looking at them that initial letters had run their course for the time and could go no father. But his best letters have the quality of distinction. The large Q (A) is characteristic of its time, and has its decoration well adjusted to the letter; the engraving is skilled indeed. The same may be said of the calligraphic P and of th G. (B, C) They all harmonize in colour-value with most of Plantin's type’.

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A

B

C