Centaur (typeface)

File:Jenson 1475 venice laertius.png

Rogers' primary influence was Nicholas Jenson's 1470 Eusebius, considered the model for the modern upright printing of the Roman alphabet, which Rogers studied through enlarged photographs.{{cite journal|title=Facts about Centaur|journal=Monotype Recorder|date=1933|volume=32|issue=1|pages=20–21|url=http://www.metaltype.co.uk/downloads/mr/mr_32_1.pdf|accessdate=20 September 2015}}{{efn|Modern font designer Juliet Shen comments on Jenson's books that "A type designer looking at the Eusebius font is struck at once by how difficult it is to envision what the actual type looked like from its inked impression. Details are obscured: the stroke terminals and serifs are rounded from ink spread. So the first task of interpretation must be to decide what the skeletal form of each letter may have been before imper- fect printing added a layer of disguise."}} Centaur also shows the influence of types cut by Francesco Griffo in 1495 for a small book titled De Aetna written by Pietro Bembo. The typeface is classified as belonging to the humanist style of old-style designs, based on the predominant influence of Jenson's work. The style is also called Venetian for the city Jenson worked in during his career as a printer. In the late nineteenth century, Jenson's work had become a popular model for William Morris and then other fine printers of the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris commissioned a revival font copying Jenson's work, and several other revivals and imitations of Morris' work had followed by 1914.{{cite web|last1=Shen|first1=Juliet|title=Searching for Morris Fuller Benton|url=http://typeculture.com/academic-resource/articles-essays/searching-for-morris-fuller-benton/|website=Type Culture|accessdate=11 April 2017}}

File:Arrighi italic.png, ca. 1527. At the time italic capitals had not been invented, but were always upright in the Roman inscriptional tradition.]]

Italic typefaces did not exist in Jenson's time, and so the inspiration for Centaur's italic comes from thirty years later, in the calligraphy and printing of Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi.{{cite book|last1=Novoa|first1=James Nelson|editor1-last=Zinguer|editor1-first=Ilana|title=Hebraic Aspects of the Renaissance: Sources and Encounters|date=2011|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden|isbn=9789004212558|pages=65–77|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jwMGPYlnFeoC&pg=PA69|accessdate=28 December 2015}} Arrighi was a Rome-based calligrapher who made the transition to working in printing, releasing a writing manual, La operina…, and other printed works.{{cite book|last1=Arrighi|first1=Ludovico Vicentino degli|title=La operina di Ludouico Vicentino, da imparare di scriuere littera cancellarescha|date=1524|location=Rome/Venice?|url=https://archive.org/details/laoperinadiludou00arri|accessdate=28 December 2015}}{{cite book|last1=Clayton|first1=Ewan|title=The Golden Thread: the story of writing|date=2013|publisher=Counterpoint|isbn=9781619023505|pages=128–151|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GYUaAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA128}}{{efn|Arrighi's book had a complex publication history apparently involving a dispute between Arrighi and his publisher, making its dating and printing location(s) both somewhat involved. It is believed to have been published in Rome and Venice between 1522 and 1525.{{cite book|last1=Goldberg|first1=Jonathan|title=Writing matter: from the hands of the English Renaissance|date=1990|publisher=Stanford University Press|isbn=9780804719582|pages=70–75|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ADdrpN4jC8MC&pg=PA70|accessdate=28 December 2015}}{{cite book|last1=Witcombe|first1=Christopher L.C.E.|title=Copyright in the Renaissance: prints and the privilegio in sixteenth-century Venice and Rome|date=2004|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden|isbn=9789004137486|pages=285–286|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qijgk6YdxgMC&pg=PA285|accessdate=28 December 2015}}}} These used an italic font presumably based on his calligraphy.{{cite book|last1=Morison|first1=Stanley|last2=Johnson|first2=Alfred|editor1-last=McKitterick|editor1-first=David John|title=Selected essays on the history of letter-forms in manuscript and print|date=2009|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=9780521183161|pages=30–45|edition=Paperback reissue, digitally printed version.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-G2tQVnPiCAC&pg=PA30|accessdate=28 December 2015|chapter=3: The Chancery Types of Italy and France}} It inspired later French italic types from 1528 onwards.{{cite book|last1=Vervliet|first1=Hendrik D.L.|title=The palaeotypography of the French Renaissance. Selected papers on sixteenth-century typefaces. 2 vols.|date=2008|publisher=Koninklijke Brill NV|location=Leiden|pages=90–91|isbn=9789004169821}}The Monotype Corporation limited, specimen blade 5-64, Bembo 270{{efn|Centaur's italic is one of several based on the work of Arrighi created by Monotype in the 1920s, including the italic Blado and Bembo Condensed Italic. Bembo's default italic is based on the work of Arrighi's contemporary Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, another calligrapher-turned-printer.}}

Rogers' revival was originally drawn as titling capitals in 1914 for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.{{cite web|last1=Stössinger|first1=Nina|title=Centaur|url=http://www.alphabettes.org/centaur/|website=Alphabettes|date=9 November 2012 |accessdate=15 May 2016}} Rogers later expanded it, adding lower case, for his 1915 limited edition of Maurice de Guérin's The Centaur.

File:PencilToPixel - 40 (8713317629).jpg

For the original release, matrices were cut by Robert Wiebking and the type was privately cast by American Type Founders.{{cite book|last1=Middleton|first1=R. Hunter|authorlink1=R. Hunter Middleton|title=Chicago Letter Founding|date=1937|publisher=Black Cat Press|location=Chicago|pages=12–22|url=https://archive.org/details/MiddletonChicagoLetterFounding1937|accessdate=9 July 2017}} Some years later, the Monotype Corporation commissioned Rogers to release it for the general market. Rogers did not feel able to create a matching italic, and asked the calligrapher Frederic Warde if he could pair Centaur with a design Warde had created based upon Ludovico Arrighi’s 1520 chancery face, made in 1926 for the Officina Bodoni.Friedl, Ott, and Stein, Typography: an Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History. Black Dog & Levinthal Publishers: 1998. {{ISBN|1-57912-023-7}}, pp. 540-41. Warde's design had the separate name Arrighi, which appears in some earlier specimens.{{cite web|title=Centaur & Arrighi|url=http://www.thechestnutpress.com/centaur---arrighi.html|publisher=Chestnut Press|accessdate=28 December 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160113113911/http://www.thechestnutpress.com/centaur---arrighi.html|archive-date=13 January 2016|url-status=dead}}

File:Centaur & Arrighi.jpg

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| image1 = Centaur & Arrighi text (roman).jpg

| alt1 = The upright type of Centaur

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| alt2 = The italic type of Centaur, originally named Arrighi

| caption2 = Centaur & Arrighi at text size

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The completed family was released for general use in 1929, with a first showing in Monotype's specimen booklet The Trained Printer and the Amateur by Alfred W. Pollard.Alexander S. Lawson, Anatomy of a Typeface David R. Godine: 1990. {{ISBN|978-0-87923-333-4}}, pp. 92-93.{{cite journal|title=The Fifty Best Books exhibition|journal=Monotype Recorder|date=September 1930|volume=29|pages=6–11|url=http://www.metaltype.co.uk/downloads/mr/mr_29_237.pdf|accessdate=19 September 2015}} Monotype described it as a 'long-descender type of great distinction', emphasising its feeling of not having been restricted to allow tighter linespacing, as other types often had been in the hot metal period.{{cite journal|title=Colophon|journal=Monotype Recorder|date=Summer 1937|volume=36|issue=2|page=2|url=http://www.metaltype.co.uk/downloads/mr/mr_36_2.pdf}} Monotype has sold the design with bold and bold italic designs (their invention, since bold type did not exist until long after Jenson's and Arrighi's work), and swash italic alternate characters.{{cite web|title=Centaur Swash MT|url=https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/centaur/swash-mt/|website=MyFonts|publisher=Monotype|accessdate=29 December 2015}}

Centaur shows some of the irregularities of early type compared to later designs. The dots of the i and j are very visibly shifted to the right, a feature of Jenson's original design. The horizontal stroke of the 'e' is slanted, not exactly horizontal as came to be the norm in print.{{cite web|last1=Boardley|first1=John|title=The First Roman Fonts|url=http://ilovetypography.com/2016/04/18/the-first-roman-fonts/|website=i love typography|accessdate=4 May 2016}} On the other hand, while based on study of Jenson's work, Centaur is a deliberately loose imitation, more slender (especially in the serifs) than Jenson's original. It also modernises Jenson's two-way serifs on the top of the 'M' in favour of one-way serifs. In addition, the italic capitals slope in the modern tradition, which was established after Arrighi's time in the later 16th century.{{cite book|last1=Dearden|first1=James|title=Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Claude Garamond|date=1973|publisher=Dekker|location=New York u.a.|isbn=978-0-8247-2109-1|pages=196–199|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rXZnDZ2jHcwC&pg=PA196|accessdate=11 December 2015}} Monotype advisor and historian of printing Stanley Morison, who was influential in Monotype's series of revival designs of the 1920s and 30s, described Centaur in his book A Tally of Types as "a freehand emphasis of the calligraphic basis of the original" and its modernisation "a concession to contemporary sense".{{cite book|author=Stanley Morison|title=A Tally of Types|url=https://archive.org/details/tallyoftypes0000mori|url-access=registration|date=7 June 1973|publisher=CUP Archive|isbn=978-0-521-09786-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/tallyoftypes0000mori/page/41 41]–6}} Sebastian Carter calls it "an imaginative recreation".

Centaur has been digitised, both by Monotype in collaboration with Adobe, and by LTC, who assumed the rights to many Lanston (American) Monotype typefaces, under the name of Metropolitan. The revivals have slightly different features; Monotype’s having a bold and bold italic and swash caps and LTC’s having a more complex, less smooth digitisation with many italic alternates and complementary ornaments.{{cite web|title=LTC Metropolitan YWFT|url=https://www.youworkforthem.com/font/T1268/ltc-metropolitan|website=YWFT|date=30 November 2010 |publisher=LTC|accessdate=29 December 2015}}{{cite web|title=LTC Metropolitan|url=http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/lanston/ltc-metropolitan/|website=MyFonts|publisher=LTC|accessdate=29 December 2015}}

At least two open-source digital typefaces, Museum (by Raph Levien){{cite web|url=https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/museum|title=Museum|first=Ralph|last=Levien|publisher=Open Font Library|date=September 21, 2015|accessdate=May 29, 2018}} and Coelacanth,{{cite web|url=https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/coelacanth|title=Coelacanth|publisher=Open Font Library|first=Ben|last=Whitmore|date=August 29, 2014|accessdate=May 29, 2018}} are based on Centaur.

Other Monotype fonts of the hot metal period inspired by Renaissance printing included the very popular Bembo (with a roman based on a slightly later font used by Aldus Manutius), Lutetia by Jan van Krimpen (a more personal design, as opposed to a direct revival) and the post-war Dante.

Among other Venetian revivals, Adobe Jenson is a notable and extremely complete digital revival from 1996 with features such as optical size fonts for different text sizes. William Morris's Golden Type began revivals of the Jenson style in 1892 with a more solid structure (no matching italic was created for it); other Jenson interpretations included the Doves Type while ATF's Satanick was a direct imitation of it. American Type Founders' Cloister Old Style was created by its design team led by Morris Fuller Benton around 1915, during the same period as Centaur.{{cite web|title=ITC Golden Type|url=http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/itc/golden-type/|website=MyFonts|publisher=ITC|accessdate=29 December 2015}}{{cite web|title=LTC Cloister|url=http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/lanston/ltc-cloister/|website=LTC|publisher=MyFonts|accessdate=29 December 2015}} Ludlow created another release with italic under the direction of Ernst F. Detterer and Robert Hunter Middleton in the 1920s.{{cite web|title=Nicolas Jenson SG|url=http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/spiecegraphics/nicolas-jenson-sg/|website=MyFonts|publisher=Speice Graphics/Ludlow|accessdate=29 December 2015}} American Type Founders also issued a very eccentric Jenson revival inspired by the work of Morris which is little-known today.{{cite web|title=LTC Jenson|url=http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/lanston/ltc-jenson/|website=LTC|publisher=MyFonts|accessdate=29 December 2015}} Tobias Frere-Jones created a revival in 1994 named Hightower Text that is bundled with some Microsoft software, adding his own italic design.{{cite web|last1=Frere-Jones|first1=Tobias|title=Hightower|url=http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Hightower/|publisher=Font Bureau|accessdate=29 December 2015}}

Outside its common uses, Centaur is also used for the wordmark of John Varvatos and in the children's book Crispin: The Cross of Lead, set in the Middle Ages.{{cite web|last1=Gramly|first1=P.R|title=Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi|url=http://fontsinuse.com/uses/8608/crispin-the-cross-of-lead-by-avi|website=Fonts in Use|date=28 January 2015 |accessdate=20 September 2015}}{{cite web|last1=Shaw|first1=Paul|title=Flawed Typefaces|url=http://www.printmag.com/featured/flawed-typefaces/|website=Print magazine|accessdate=2 July 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130816012327/http://www.printmag.com/featured/flawed-typefaces/|archive-date=16 August 2013|url-status=dead}}

{{reflist|30em}}

{{notelist|30em}}

• Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type. Yale University Press: 2004. {{ISBN|0-300-10073-6}}.
• Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. {{ISBN|1-57912-023-7}}.
• Lawson, Alexander S., Anatomy of a Typeface. Godine: 1990. {{ISBN|978-0-87923-333-4}}.
• Meggs, Philip B. and Rob Carter. Typographic Specimens: The Great Typefaces. Wiley: 1993. {{ISBN|0-471-28429-7}}.
• Meggs, Philip B. and McKelvey, Roy. Revival of the Fittest: Digital Versions of Classic Typefaces. RC Publications: 2000. {{ISBN|1-883915-08-2}}.
• Updike, Daniel Berkeley. Printing Types Their History, Forms and Use. Dover Publications, Inc: 1937, 1980. {{ISBN|0-486-23929-2}}.

Bruce Rogers:

• [http://www.mccunecollection.org/fine_printing.html#bruce_rogers Cover of the book The Centaur printed by Bruce Rogers]
• [http://www.bccbooks.org/store/products/the-noblest-roman/ The Noblest Roman] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160916063239/http://www.bccbooks.org/store/products/the-noblest-roman/ |date=2016-09-16 }} - September 2016 book on the history of Centaur by Jerry Kelly & Misha Beletsky

Professional digitisations:

• [http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/lanston/ltc-metropolitan/ LTC Metropolitan] - the LTC digitisation with many italic alternates and small caps in regular and italic, but no bold as in the original or swash caps
• [https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/centaur/ Monotype digitisation] (includes swash letters in italic and small caps in the regular style only)
• [http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/centaur/ Adobe release]
• [http://fontsite.com/font-library/jenson-recut/ Jenson Recut] - alternative Fontsite release; name changed for legal reasons, basic character set

Amateur projects:

• [http://benwhitmore.altervista.org/ Coelacanth] — Unfinished open-source implementation with optical sizes
• [http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/museum.html Museum] — Unfinished open-source implementation by Raph Levien, optical sizes but no italics

{{Monotype typefaces}}

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Category:Monotype typefaces

Category:Old style serif typefaces

Category:Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1929

Category:Letterpress typefaces

Category:Digital typefaces