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The weighty type of literature on display in New York.

By DAVID W. DUNLAP [New York Times] – Hundreds of historical punches and matrices of various typefaces and dozens of books are on view at the Grolier Club in “Printing for Kingdom, Empire & Republic: Treasures From the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale.” (It ceased being Royale in 1789, as did everything else in France.)

This is the first time these exquisite artifacts have been shown outside France, said H. George Fletcher, a club member who is the curator of the show. Their arrival could not be more timely.

They offer a reminder, in the ethereal era of bitmapping, that type was once the tangible province of engravers and metal casters who labored in unforgiving but enduring media. To make a C with a cedilla, for example, involved a lot more effort and thought than holding down the Option key on your Mac. A comma-shaped steel appendage had to be lashed with string to the bottom of the C punch to produce a new matrix.

“People are practically printing books with their smartphones,” Mr. Fletcher said, in a tone suggesting that he did not think this was such a good idea. “It’s much more gratifying to be able to touch something and find out it’s real, rather than a matter of bits and bytes.”

Mr. Fletcher, 70, is a former curator at the Morgan Library & Museum and the retired director of special collections at the New York Public Library, so his assessments carry special weight. He paused appreciatively before a copy of “De Imitatione Christi,” the first book printed by the Imprimerie Royale in 1640. “It suits the grandeur that is France,” he said.

James Mosley, an eminent scholar of printing, identified the type in “De Imitatione Christi” as the work of Claude Garamond, or Garamont. That name ought to be familiar to anyone who has ever pored over type specimens.

Continued at The New York Times | More Chronicle & Notices.

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