Jerry Kelly: Type Revivals: What Are They? Where Did They Come From? Where Are They Going?
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Jerry Kelly: Type Revivals: What Are They? Where Did They Come From? Where Are They Going? David R. Godine, Publisher Inc, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 2019, 198 pp., illustrated, $ 40.00, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-56792-647-7 Christopher Lapinski1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Typography innovates through revival. It is a pioneering art, but one that does not forget its lineage. Jerry Kelly calls our attention to the practice of revival in his magnificent book, Type Revivals: What are they? Where did they come from? Where are they going? Based on his 2011 monograph of the same title, this full-length study delves into the tangled histories and modern applications of type revival, focusing on a segment of digital typefaces in use today and the metal originals from which they sprang. Focus is paramount in Kelly’s book—he is concerned with roman and italic revivals exclusively, and with classic typefaces, in particular. He begins by clearing the field of anything that is, strictly speaking, not eligible for consideration. So long, then, to hand lettering and calligraphy: a true type revival, according to the author, is the rehabilitation of type. Sans serifs, slab serifs, and short-lived types are also excluded. Nor is a conversion of existing type to new technologies, like Monotype’s adaptation of Bembo for digital typesetting, an authentic type revival, despite the dexterity required for reformatting. When everything else is swept away or sharply defined, we are left with a critical standard: the original type needs to have been dormant for an extended period of time. This criterion is important for Kelly because, as he demonstrates in his taxonomy of type revival, much can be lost in the passage of time. In one kind of revival, the physical type (or the punches and matrices used to create it) has survived, enabling an almost perfectly accurate reconstruction. Such is the case with modern revivals of Caslon. In the second kind, however, almost nothing of the original and its material remains, thus the type must be entirely redrawn. Most type revivals fall into this category, a fact which provides Kelly ample opportunity for illustrating the perils, as well as the artistry, of reviving historical typefaces. * Christopher Lapinski [email protected] 1
Princeton, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Publishing Research Quarterly
Following this overture is a spellbinding tour through the era of small presses and the golden age of type revival, interspersed throughout with beautifully reproduced type specimens and pages from Renaissance, neo-Classical, and modern texts. William Morris receives special mention as the originator of the “first genuine type revival,” as do other exceptional typefaces that emerged from Kelmscott Press, as well as from Chiswick, Doves, Ashendene, and Cranach—all flourishing from the late-nineteenth century through the early-twentieth. Kelly moves from this first wave of modern type revivers to the second, among whom Stanley Morison, Bruce Ro
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