24/09/2023
The astronomical fall of 2023 has begun: a perfect time for some historical speculation, I reckon. As you may know, I am a bit into standardization and systematization in the Renaissance and Baroque type-production processes (see also: https://www.lettermodel.org). So the following musings may not come as a complete surprise.
The stem division as the basis for the production of a gauge as shown in the first attached image is a bit speculative. After all, it is an assumption based on measurements of type-foundry artifacts for which there seems to be no historical documentation to support it. However, in the case of the depicted Gros Canon Romain created by the talented Flemish punchcutter Hendrik van den Keere (ca.1540–1580) in 1573, the definition of a unit as one fourth of the stem thickness (image 2) results in 42 units from the top of the ascenders to the bottom of the descenders and is therefore equivalent to the division for the body that Joseph Moxon (1627–1691) mentions in Mechanick Exercises (1683–1685). The same is the case with Van den Keere’s La Plus Grande Romaine, type carved in boxwood from 1575 (the next two images).
Moxon defines the body as ‘[…] is meant, in Letter-Cutters, Founders and Printers Language, the Side of the Space contained between the Top and Bottom Line of a Long Letter.’ An example of such a long letter, according to Moxon, is the capital /J. About ten years ago I cut and pasted the unitization in Moxon's engravings from Mechanick Exercises and placed the units on the stem interval of the lowercase (fifth image). I have not changed the distances between the letters in the engravings. Moxon uses a division of the body into ‘seven equal parts’ of six units each. Four such units seem to fit the lowercase stem width. The stem interval, i.e., the distance from stem to stem, seems perfectly supported by the unitization system. It is a logic I expect based on my measurements and distillations of historical type-foundry artifacts.
Interestingly, body sizes in the past, such as Ascendonica, Vraie Parangonne, and Gros Canon, in general included leading. Ultimately, the aperture of the mould defined the body size, and normally it was larger than the distance from the upper ascender to the lower descender. Therefore, a translation of these sizes into points, as presented for example at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_point-size_names, is a bit tricky, because nowadays we use the point system to designate the body basically on the same way like Moxon’s top-to-bottom line of a ‘Long Letter’ definition. In this way one might get the impression that the relevant historical body sizes for text purposes contain a slightly larger type and thus larger x-heights than we are used to today. However, the translation to points on the aforementioned Wikipedia page is, of course, useful to show the mutual relationship between the different historical body sizes.
One can imagine that for reasons of consistency and because of technical complexities in the Renaissance and Baroque, no translation into dimensions in thumbs, feet, and phalanges was made by punchcutters and typefounders. On the other hand, however, one could argue that the use of these measurement systems could explain the local measurable differences in body sizes. That said, these can, for example, also be explained by a reproduction process related to copying existing letters. First of all, one must realize that it was not the punchcutter that ultimately determined the body size on which to cast the type, but the caster, or rather the mould selected for the job by the caster.
The mould itself could have been the result of a copying process: existing foundry type cast on a certain body size could be used to define a new mould for the same body size (warning: this is speculation). Translating to thumbs, feet, or whatever seems pointless here to say the least. That said, such a copying system can inevitably lead to minor deviations. After all, the source model could, for example, have been cast in a mould that allowed certain tolerances, because it had become somewhat unreliable over time due to intensive use. Copying could then be seen as standardizing errors.
The measuring systems outside the type foundries may have been superfluous in this case, because there was an intrinsic way of measuring that always worked, whether the type was bolder or lighter; variations caused, for example, by the transfer of soot images made of foundry type to pieces of steel for new punches. It could always be distilled in the same way, meaning that letterform images created an intrinsic unitization –of which they in turn were the result– that could be used for reproduction and modifications. In other words; with every image of a letter always came in principle a standardized measurement system that could be used for the production of a gauge.
However, as mentioned, this is for now speculation…
Frank