Hendrik van den Keere

Hendrik van den Keere
Metal matrices for the Parangonne Flamande typeface cut by Hendrik van den Keere
Matrices for van den Keere's Parangonne Flamande typeface, preserved at the Plantin-Moretus Museum
Bornc. 1540
Ghent, Spanish Netherlands
Died1580
Known forTypography, punchcutting
Van den Keere's Two-Line Double Pica roman type

Hendrik van den Keere (c. 1540/2 – 1580) was a punchcutter, or cutter of punches used to make metal type, who lived in Ghent in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium). He is known for his work supplying type to the printing house of Christophe Plantin in Antwerp, one of the largest printing enterprises of the sixteenth century.[1]

Over the course of his career he cut around thirty typefaces, including blackletter, roman type and music type.[2][3] His large roman types, notable for their bold proportions and dense appearance on the page, influenced later Dutch typography and are associated with the style later described as the "Dutch taste" (goût Hollandois).[4]

Many of van den Keere's punches, matrices and wooden pattern letters were preserved in the Plantin printing office and survive today in the collections of the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.[5]

Early life and family

Hendrik van den Keere was born around 1540 in Ghent, in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium). He was the son of the Ghent printer and schoolmaster Hendrik van den Keere the Elder. His career has sometimes been confused with that of his father, and both father and son used the French form of their name, "Henri du Tour", in some records.[6]

Van den Keere married Elisabeth van Estelaer. The couple had several children, including Colette van den Keere (born 1568) and Pieter van den Keere (born 1571).[7]

The family were Protestant and, during the religious conflicts in the Spanish Netherlands, moved to London in the early 1580s for religious reasons.[8]

Their daughter Colette later became an engraver and, after her marriage to the cartographer Jodocus Hondius, helped manage the Hondius map-publishing and engraving workshop in Amsterdam.[9] Their son Pieter became an engraver, cartographer, and publisher who worked in England and the Dutch Republic.[10]

Career

Van den Keere's Spanish-style "rotunda" Gothic
Most of van den Keere's work was for prominent printer Christophe Plantin in Antwerp. His printing office survives as the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

Van den Keere's grandfather had taken over the type foundry of Joos Lambrecht.[11] In 1566 he took over his father's printing firm, but soon gave up printing and began to specialise in punchcutting.[12]

From 1568 he worked particularly for Christophe Plantin of Antwerp, who operated a large printing concern by contemporary standards. Van den Keere stayed living in Ghent, up the River Scheldt from Antwerp.[13][14] He was Plantin's sole typecaster from 1569 onwards.[15]

Over the course of his career he cut around 30 typefaces.[11]

Types

Van den Keere primarily cut punches in the textura style of blackletter,[16] roman type and music type.[17][18] Shown are some images of van den Keere's types, all from the Plantin specimen of c. 1585.[19][20][21]

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.[25][26][27][3][28][29][30] Hendrik Vervliet has suggested that the goal was to create roman type "comparable for weight with Gothic letters"[31] at a time when blackletter was still very popular for continuous reading in body text.[32] 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.[33] 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"[4] although Leon Voet felt that they "never quite equaled the elegance of his French models".[34]

As influences on his types, Lane suggests types by Ameet Tavernier, Robert Granjon and Pierre Haultin,[4] and Vervliet an earlier type cut by Maarten de Keyser.[35][36] His body text type in contrast is more similar to earlier French types by the established French engravers such as Claude Garamond and Granjon.[37][38]

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.[33] 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.[33]

Van den Keere also cut a rotunda gothic type, apparently based on Spanish lettering and intended for a book to be sent to Spain,[23][39] a Civilité and in Lane's view probably a spectacular set of Gothic capitals used as initials with an intricate, interlaced (Dutch: gestricte) design.[4][40][41][a] He is not known to have cut any italic types, which were not popular in the Netherlands during the 1570s.[42] His largest types were cut in wood and then duplicated by sand casting.[43]

Besides his own types, he justified matrices (setting their spacing) from other engravers,[44] cut replacement characters for some of Plantin's types with shorter ascenders and descenders to allow tighter linespacing,[45] and in 1572 compiled an inventory for Plantin of the types Plantin owned.[46][47] 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.[13]

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

Death

Many of van den Keere's materials became owned by Leiden typefounder Arent Corsz Hogenacker, whose premises (seen in 1963) are now a shop. In 1630 he commissioned this statue for the building of Laurens Janszoon Coster, subject of the now-debunked Dutch claim to the invention of printing.[48]

Hendrik van den Keere died in 1580, probably in his late thirties.[49] In one of his final surviving letters to the printer Christophe Plantin, he mentioned suffering from a serious leg injury. Later historians have suggested that this injury may have contributed to his early death.[50]

Legacy

After van den Keere's death in 1580, many of his punches and matrices were sold by his widow to the printer Christophe Plantin in 1581.[51] Plantin's successors preserved the materials and records of the printing office, which later became the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp. A large number of van den Keere's punches, matrices and wooden pattern letters survive there today.[52]

Some of van den Keere's materials were also acquired by his foreman, Thomas de Vechter, whose purchase from the widow was recorded in a surviving inventory.[53] De Vechter later established a type foundry in Antwerp and subsequently in Leiden, where many of van den Keere's designs continued to be cast. The foundry was later taken over by the typefounder Arent Corsz Hogenacker between 1619 and 1623. When Hogenacker's foundry closed in 1672, the types passed into other Dutch foundries, helping to circulate van den Keere's designs more widely.[54][55]

Matrices for van den Keere's interlaced capital letters later came into the possession of the type foundry of Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé.[41]

Some of van den Keere's designs continued in use long after his death. A close copy of his Gros Canon capitals was used in Spain for more than a century. A later version cut around 1686 by the punchcutter Pedro Disses, in a two-line great primer size, remained in use until the late eighteenth century, particularly in Andalusia.[56][57]

Digital fonts

Type designer Matthew Carter showing his DTL Flamande typeface, based on van den Keere's Textura[58]

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.[59][60][61] DTL has also published Flamande by Matthew Carter, a revival of his textura.[58][62] In 2016 Blokland received a doctorate on the spacing and proportions of early metal type, including van den Keere's, from Leiden University.[63][64]

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".[32] 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)[65] as "an arresting design marked by striking dramatic tensions";[66][28][29] 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.[67]

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"[68] and that he was "one of the first to make roman display types that were explicitly conceived as such."[69][70][71]

Notes

  1. ↑ There is a reproduction in Charles Enschede's book; see link.

References

  1. ↑ Devroye, Luc. "Hendrik van den Keere". Type Design Information. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  2. ↑ Neil Macmillan (2006). An A-Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press. p. 124. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
  3. 1 2 Shaw, Paul (2017). Revival Type: Digital Typefaces Inspired by the Past. Yale University Press. pp. 36, 70–74. ISBN 978-0-300-21929-6.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Lane 2004, p. 42.
  5. ↑ "Hendrik van den Keere (1540–1580), Grande musicque". Plantin-Moretus Museum. Retrieved 19 April 2026.
  6. ↑ "Hendrik van den Keere". Type Design Information. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
  7. ↑ "Colette van den Keere". ECARTICO – University of Amsterdam. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
  8. ↑ Hind, Arthur (1952). Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Cambridge University Press. pp. 203–204.
  9. ↑ "Colette van den Keere". ECARTICO – University of Amsterdam. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
  10. ↑ "Pieter van den Keere". Antique Maps. Retrieved 10 April 2026.
  11. 1 2 Lane 2004, p. 41.
  12. ↑ Blouw, Paul Valkema (7 June 2013). Dutch Typography in the Sixteenth Century: The Collected Works of Paul Valkema Blouw. BRILL. p. 899. ISBN 978-90-04-25655-2.
  13. 1 2 Carter 2002, p. 97.
  14. ↑ Middendorp 2004, p. 18.
  15. ↑ Carter 2002, p. 12.
  16. ↑ Enschedé, Johannes; Lane, John A. (1993). The Enschedé type specimens of 1768 and 1773: a facsimile ([Nachdr. d. Ausg.] 1768. ed.). Stichting Museum Enschedé, the Enschedé Font Foundry, Uitgeverij De Buitenkant. pp. 29–30 etc. ISBN 9070386585.
  17. ↑ "Hendrik van den Keere (1540-1580), Grande musicque". Museum Plantin-Moretus. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  18. ↑ Vervliet 2008, p. 466.
  19. ↑ Vervliet & Carter 1972, pp. 6–11.
  20. ↑ Lane 2004, pp. 191–193.
  21. ↑ [Specimen characterum]. Christophe Plantin. c. 1585. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
  22. ↑ Vervliet & Carter 1972, pp. 7–8.
  23. 1 2 3 4 Vervliet & Carter 1972, p. 8.
  24. ↑ Vervliet & Carter 1972, p. 11.
  25. ↑ Mosley, James. "Type and its Uses, 1455-1830" (PDF). Institute of English Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 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.
  26. ↑ de Jong, Feike. "The Briot project. Part I". PampaType. TYPO, republished by PampaType. Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  27. ↑ Baines, Phil; Haslam, Andrew (2005). Type & Typography. Laurence King Publishing. p. 67. ISBN 978-1-85669-437-7.
  28. 1 2 "Introducing Quarto". Hoefler & Co. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  29. 1 2 "Quarto Fonts - Design Notes". Hoefler & Co. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  30. ↑ McKitterick, David (28 September 1992). A History of Cambridge University Press: Volume 1, Printing and the Book Trade in Cambridge, 1534-1698. Cambridge University Press. pp. 13–14. ISBN 978-0-521-30801-4.
  31. ↑ Vervliet 1968, p. 230.
  32. 1 2 Sowersby, Kris. "Heldane design information". Klim Type Foundry. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  33. 1 2 3 Smeijers 1999, p. 54.
  34. ↑ Voet, Leon. The Golden Compasses.
  35. ↑ Vervliet 1968, p. 64.
  36. ↑ Carter 2002.
  37. ↑ Vervliet 1968, pp. 65–66.
  38. ↑ Smeijers 1999, pp. 54–57.
  39. ↑ Vervliet 1968, pp. 178–179.
  40. ↑ Lane, John A. (1995). "Arent Corsz Hogenacker (ca. 1579-1636): an account of his typefoundry and a note on his types Part two: the types". Quaerendo. 25 (3): 163–191. doi:10.1163/157006995X00017.
  41. 1 2 Enschedé 1978, p. 56.
  42. ↑ Vervliet 1968, p. 74.
  43. ↑ Enschedé 1978, p. 34.
  44. ↑ Vervliet 2008, p. 230.
  45. ↑ Smeijers 1999, p. 57.
  46. ↑ Vervliet 2008, p. 346.
  47. ↑ Mosley, James. "Garamond or Garamont". Type Foundry blog. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  48. ↑ Lane, John A. (1995). "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. 25 (2): 83–114. doi:10.1163/157006995X00053.
  49. ↑ Devroye, Luc. "Hendrik van den Keere". Type Design Information. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  50. ↑ Rooses, Max (1878). "Une lettre de Henri du Tour, le Jeune". Messager des sciences historiques, ou, Archives des arts et de la bibliographie de Belgique: 449–462.
  51. ↑ Lane, John A. (1995). "Arent Corsz Hogenacker (ca. 1579–1636): an account of his typefoundry and a note on his types". Quaerendo. 25 (2): 83–114. doi:10.1163/157006995X00053.
  52. ↑ "Hendrik van den Keere (1540–1580), Grande musicque". Plantin-Moretus Museum. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  53. ↑ Lane, John A. (1995). "Arent Corsz Hogenacker (ca. 1579–1636): an account of his typefoundry and a note on his types. Part two: the types". Quaerendo. 25 (3): 163–191. doi:10.1163/157006995X00017.
  54. ↑ Lane, John A. (1995). "Arent Corsz Hogenacker (ca. 1579–1636): an account of his typefoundry and a note on his types". Quaerendo. 25 (2): 83–114. doi:10.1163/157006995X00053.
  55. ↑ Lane, John A. (1995). "Arent Corsz Hogenacker (ca. 1579–1636): an account of his typefoundry and a note on his types. Part two: the types". Quaerendo. 25 (3): 163–191. doi:10.1163/157006995X00017.
  56. ↑ Cruickshank, Don W. (1982). "The Types of Pedro Disses, Punchcutter". Journal of the Printing Historical Society. 17: 72–91.
  57. ↑ Cruickshank, D. W. (29 July 2015). "Comedias sueltas: An Introduction". Comedias sueltas. Retrieved 7 July 2021.
  58. 1 2 "DTL Flamande". Dutch Type Library. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  59. ↑ "DTL Van den Keere". Dutch Type Library. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  60. ↑ "DTL Gros Canon". Dutch Type Library. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  61. ↑ Blokland, Frank E. [@ExquisiteFonts] (11 August 2022). "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" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  62. ↑ Twardoch, Adam; Carter, Matthew (2005). "Typo Interview: Matthew Carter" (PDF). Typo (18): 27, 31.
  63. ↑ Blokland, F. E. "On the origin of patterning in movable Latin type: Renaissance standardisation, systematisation, and unitisation of textura and roman type". Leiden University. Retrieved 6 October 2019.
  64. ↑ Blokland, F. E. "On the Origin of Patterning in Movable Latin Type (blog)". Dutch Type Library. Retrieved 6 October 2019.
  65. ↑ Vervliet 2008, p. 6.
  66. ↑ Buchanan, Matthew. "Quarto". Typographica. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  67. ↑ Soskolne, Sara (11 December 2015). "An H&Co Double Bill with Sara Soskolne". Vimeo. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
  68. ↑ Smeijers 1999, p. 59.
  69. ↑ Smeijers 1999, p. 56.
  70. ↑ "TEFF Renard". The Enschede Font Foundry. Retrieved 30 July 2020.
  71. ↑ Burke, Christopher. "Typeface Review: TEFF Renard". Bulletin of the Printing Historical Society: 8–9.

Sources

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