Hendrik van den Keere explained

Hendrik van den Keere (c. 1540/2 – 1580) was a punchcutter, or cutter of punches to make metal type, who lived in Ghent in modern Belgium.[1] [2] [3]

Career

Van den Keere was the son of Ghent printer and schoolmaster Hendrik van den Keere the Elder,[4] and his career has sometimes been confused with that of his father.[5] Both he and his father used the name "Henri du Tour" in French.[6]

Van den Keere's grandfather had taken over the type foundry of Joos Lambrecht. In 1566 he took over his father's printing firm, but soon gave up printing and began to specialise in punchcutting.[7]

From 1568 he worked particularly for Christophe Plantin of Antwerp, who operated a gigantic printing concern by contemporary standards. Van den Keere stayed living in Ghent, up the River Scheldt from Antwerp. He was Plantin's sole typecaster from 1569 onwards.

Over the course of his career he cut around 30 typefaces.

Types

Van den Keere primarily cut punches in the textura style of blackletter,[8] roman type and music type.[9] Shown are some images of van den Keere's types, all from the Plantin specimen of c. 1585.[10]

The largest roman types cut by van den Keere had very bold proportions, a high x-height and a dense type colour on the page, much bolder than earlier types in the Garamond style. This style remained popular in the Low Countries after his death; the standard term for it is "Dutch taste" or goût Hollandois, the description used by Pierre-Simon Fournier for it.[11] [12] [13] [14] Hendrik Vervliet has suggested that the goal was to create roman type "comparable for weight with Gothic letters" at a time when blackletter was still very popular for continuous reading in body text. His Gros canon was used by Plantin in his 1574 Commune sanctorum, a church liturgy choirbook intended to be readable at a distance by an entire choir. John A. Lane comments that his roman types "must be accepted as a major innovation...[they] influenced the seventeenth-century Dutch types that in turn influenced types in England and elsewhere" although Leon Voet felt that they "never quite equaled the elegance of his French models".[15]

As influences on his types, Lane suggests types by Ameet Tavernier, Robert Granjon and Pierre Haultin, and Vervliet an earlier type cut by Maarten de Keyser. His body text type in contrast is more similar to earlier French types by the established French engravers such as Claude Garamond and Granjon.

One of the more striking features of van den Keere's largest roman types is considerable variation in proportions to modern eyes: letters like 'n' and 'u' are very narrow while round letters such as 'o' stay near-circular. Digital font designer Fred Smeijers speculates that van den Keere wanted to "make the type economical" with the letters that could be compressed, while at the time it would not be normal to condense the circular letters: "it was to be two centuries" before truly condensed types which condensed all letters. Smeijers noted that van den Keere's style could not be an accident as he "could work perfectly in the French tradition" when he wanted to, when cutting smaller types.

Van den Keere also cut a rotunda gothic type, apparently based on Spanish lettering and intended for a book to be sent to Spain, a Civilité and in Lane's view probably a spectacular set of Gothic capitals used as initials with an intricate, interlaced (Dutch; Flemish: gestricte) design. He is not known to have cut any italic types, which were not popular in the Netherlands during the 1570s. His largest types were cut in wood and then duplicated by sand casting.

Besides his own types, he justified matrices (setting their spacing) from other engravers, cut replacement characters for some of Plantin's types with shorter ascenders and descenders to allow tighter linespacing, and in 1572 compiled an inventory for Plantin of the types Plantin owned.[16] Van den Keere also owned matrices for type by other engravers, at the end of his life owning three roman types by Claude Garamond, two romans by Ameet Tavernier, and six italics and a music type by Robert Granjon.

Many of van den Keere's punches, matrices and wooden pattern letters survive at the Plantin-Moretus Museum:

Legacy

Van den Keere died young between 11 July and October 1580, giving him a mature career of only about 12 years, likely as a result of a leg injury he mentioned in his final letter to Plantin.[17] Van den Keere's family were Protestants, and with the capture of Ghent in 1584 by Spanish royal forces van den Keere's daughter Colette (or Coletta) and his son Pieter, who became an engraver and mapmaker, lived in London around the period 1584–1593.[18] There in 1587 at the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, Colette van den Keere married Jodocus Hondius,[19] [20] a mapmaker who was probably also a punchcutter. Pieter sometimes collaborated with him.[21] All three later returned to the Netherlands; following Hondius's death Colette took over his publishing business.[22]

In 1581, van den Keere's widow sold many of his punches and matrices to Plantin. Plantin's successors preserved the sixteenth-century materials and records of his printing office, which became the Plantin-Moretus Museum, and a large amount of van den Keere's work survives intact there.

Thomas de Vechter, van den Keere's foreman, also acquired many of his materials from his widow, documented in a surviving inventory. He moved to Antwerp and then Leiden, establishing a type foundry casting many van den Keere types. De Vechter's foundry was later taken over by Arent Corsz Hogenacker in stages from 1619–1623, and on the closure of his type foundry in 1672 his types reached other Dutch foundries.[23] [24] Matrices for the interlaced capitals ended up owned by the type foundry of Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé.

A close copy of van den Keere's Gros Canon capitals was used in Spain for over a century after his death, with a later copy on two-line great primer size cut by punchcutter Pedro Disses in c. 1686, which remained in use until the late eighteenth century, especially in Andalusia.[25] [26]

Digital fonts

Digital font designers who have designed interpretations of van den Keere's roman type include Frank E. Blokland whose company Dutch Type Library (DTL) has published revivals of his roman types under the names DTL Vandenkeere and DTL Gros Canon for a display size; DTL Vandenkeere is used in signage at the Plantin-Moretus Museum.[27] [28] [29] DTL has also published Flamande by Matthew Carter, a revival of his textura.[30] [31] In 2016 Blokland received a doctorate on the spacing and proportions of early metal type, including van den Keere's, from Leiden University.[32] [33]

Kris Sowersby, whose Heldane typeface is based on van den Keere's work, describes it as "dense, sharp and powerful...I love van den Keere’s texturas. I can feel the influence of them within his roman forms: they’re both narrow, dense and sharp".[34] Hoefler & Co.'s release notes for its Quarto typeface describe van den Keere's Two-Line Double Pica display-sized roman (shown above; size is around 42pt) as "an arresting design marked by striking dramatic tensions";[35] [36] [37] designer Sara Soskolne has said that she was attracted to "its crispness, its drama" but noted that they removed details such as the wide horizontal of the centre bar of the 'E' which she felt did not work.[38]

Fred Smeijers, whose TEFF Renard typeface is based on his work, felt that basing a typeface on his work produced a "solid and sturdy variant of the Garamond style" and that he was "one of the first to make roman display types that were explicitly conceived as such."[39] [40]

Sources

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Devroye . Luc . Hendrik van den Keere . Type Design Information . 29 July 2020.
  2. Book: Neil Macmillan. An A-Z of Type Designers. 2006. Yale University Press. 0-300-11151-7. 124.
  3. Book: Shaw, Paul. Paul Shaw (design historian). Revival Type: Digital Typefaces Inspired by the Past. 2017. Yale University Press. 978-0-300-21929-6. 36,70–74.
  4. Book: Briels . J. G. C. A. . Zuidnederlandse boekdrukkers en boekverkopers in de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden omstreeks 1570-1630 : een bijdrage tot de kennis van de geschiedenis van get boek . B. de Graaf . 9789060043233 . 336.
  5. Web site: Laveant . Katell . Imprimeur, libraire, éditeur, traducteur, auteur : Hendrik van den Keere, polymathe du livre à la Renaissance . 10 March 2018 . Société bibliographique de France . 30 July 2020.
  6. Keuning . Johannes . Pieter van den Keere (Petrus Kaerius), 1571–1646 (?) . Imago Mundi . 1960 . 15 . 1 . 66–72 . 10.1080/03085696008592179.
  7. Book: Blouw, Paul Valkema . Dutch Typography in the Sixteenth Century: The Collected Works of Paul Valkema Blouw. 7 June 2013. BRILL. 978-90-04-25655-2. 899.
  8. Book: Enschedé. Johannes. Lane. John A.. The Enschedé type specimens of 1768 and 1773: a facsimile. 1993. Stichting Museum Enschedé, the Enschedé Font Foundry, Uitgeverij De Buitenkant. 9070386585. 29–30 etc.. [Nachdr. d. Ausg.] 1768..
  9. Web site: Hendrik van den Keere (1540-1580), Grande musicque . . 29 July 2020.
  10. Book: [Specimen characterum] ]. c. 1585 . Christophe Plantin . 13 October 2022.
  11. Web site: Mosley. James. James Mosley. Type and its Uses, 1455-1830. Institute of English Studies. 7 October 2016. Although types on the 'Aldine' model were widely used in the 17th and 18th centuries, a new variant that was often slightly more condensed in its proportions, and darker and larger on its body, became sufficiently widespread, at least in Northern Europe, to be worth defining as a distinct style and examining separately. Adopting a term used by Fournier le jeune, the style is sometimes called the 'Dutch taste', and sometimes, especially in Germany, 'baroque'. Some names associated with the style are those of Van den Keere, Granjon, Briot, Van Dijck, Kis (maker of the so-called 'Janson' types), and Caslon.. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20161009181144/http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/LRBS/Outline%20of%20Course_Type%26itsUses2013_2.pdf. 9 October 2016.
  12. Web site: de Jong . Feike . The Briot project. Part I . PampaType . TYPO, republished by PampaType . 10 June 2018.
  13. Book: Baines. Phil. Haslam. Andrew. Type & Typography. 2005. Laurence King Publishing. 978-1-85669-437-7. 67.
  14. Book: McKitterick, David. David McKitterick. A History of Cambridge University Press: Volume 1, Printing and the Book Trade in Cambridge, 1534-1698. 28 September 1992. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-30801-4. 13–14.
  15. Book: Voet . Leon . The Golden Compasses .
  16. Web site: Mosley. James. James Mosley. Garamond or Garamont. Type Foundry blog. 3 December 2015.
  17. Rooses . Max . Max Rooses. Une lettre de Henri du Tour, le Jeune . Messager des sciences historiques, ou, Archives des arts et de la bibliographie de Belgique . 1878 . 449–462 . 1 August 2020.
  18. Book: Sutton . Elizabeth . Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa . 2012 . 9781409439707 . 29–30. Ashgate Publishing .
  19. Book: Leslie Stephen. Sir Sidney Lee. DNB. 1891. Smith, Elder, & Company. 242.
  20. Cust . Lionel . Lionel Cust. Foreign Artists of the Reformed Religion Working in London from about 1560 to 1660 . Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London . 1905 . 52 . 30 July 2020.
  21. Book: Hind . Arthur . Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Part I . 1952 . Cambridge University Press . 203–204.
  22. Book: Davies . Surekha . Renaissance ethnography and the invention of the human : new worlds, maps and monsters . 2017 . Cambridge . 9781108431828 . First paperback.
  23. Lane . John A. . Arent Corsz Hogenacker (ca. 1579-1636): an account of his typefoundry and a note on his types Part one: the family and the foundry . Quaerendo . 1995 . 25 . 2 . 83–114 . 10.1163/157006995X00053.
  24. Lane . John A. . Arent Corsz Hogenacker (ca. 1579-1636): an account of his typefoundry and a note on his types Part two: the types . Quaerendo . 1995 . 25 . 3 . 163–191 . 10.1163/157006995X00017.
  25. Cruickshank . Don W. . The Types of Pedro Disses, Punchcutter . Journal of the Printing Historical Society . 1982 . 17 . 72–91.
  26. Web site: Cruickshank . D. W. . Comedias sueltas: An Introduction . Comedias sueltas . 29 July 2015 . 7 July 2021.
  27. Web site: DTL Van den Keere . . 29 July 2020.
  28. Web site: DTL Gros Canon . . 29 July 2020.
  29. ExquisiteFonts . 1557720762114605056 . Blokland . Frank E. . In the illustrious Museum Plantin-Moretus, DTL VandenKeere has been used as a house-style typeface since the mid-1990s. The revival is based on the Reale Romaine by Hendrik van den Keere and the Ascendonica Cursive by François Guyot. One will find it applied throughout the MP-M..
  30. Web site: DTL Flamande . . 29 July 2020.
  31. Twardoch . Adam . Carter . Matthew . Typo Interview: Matthew Carter . Typo . 2005 . 18. 27, 31.
  32. Web site: Blokland . F. E. . Frank E. Blokland. On the origin of patterning in movable Latin type: Renaissance standardisation, systematisation, and unitisation of textura and roman type . . 6 October 2019.
  33. Web site: Blokland . F. E. . Frank E. Blokland. On the Origin of Patterning in Movable Latin Type (blog) . . 6 October 2019.
  34. Web site: Sowersby . Kris . Heldane design information . . 29 July 2020.
  35. Web site: Buchanan . Matthew . Quarto . Typographica . 29 July 2020.
  36. Web site: Introducing Quarto . . 29 July 2020.
  37. Web site: Quarto Fonts - Design Notes . . 29 July 2020.
  38. Web site: Soskolne . Sara . Sara Soskolne . An H&Co Double Bill with Sara Soskolne . Vimeo . 11 December 2015 . 14 September 2019.
  39. Web site: TEFF Renard . The Enschede Font Foundry . 30 July 2020.
  40. Burke . Christopher . Christopher Burke (design writer) . Typeface Review: TEFF Renard . Bulletin of the Printing Historical Society . 8–9.

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