The Philidor Company

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The Philidor Company [Scott-Martin Kosofsky] Scott-Martin Kosofsky (b. 1953) was based in Boston for 40 years, and is now located in Rhinebeck, NY, where he heads The Philidor Company. Among many other things, he was also the principal designer of most Titanic Records packaging, and designed a book on the holocaust. He designed a number of Hebrew types for his own use---several are licensed to various major rabbinic organizations. Over the years he has become the leading designer, producer, and editor of the bilingual Jewish prayer books that are used by the majority of Jews in the English-speaking world. Some of his type designs: Philidor Bell-Text (1995) (an absolutely fantastic family, after Richard Austin, London, 1788), and Philidor Hillel (Hebrew). These typefaces won awards from the Type Directors Club in 1999. Prague Hebrew (2020). He explains the genesis of this typeface: In 1514, three years before Daniel Bomberg established his renowned Hebrew publishing venture in Venice, Gershom ben Solomon haKohen (d. 1544) founded a Hebrew printing house in Prague that would continue under his descendants, known as the Gersonides, until 1784. It was the second such establishment in Prague, the first having been founded in 1512, but it was the first to achieve a quality of production to equal the best in Italy, where Hebrew printing began in 1475. Early in the production of Hebrew books in Italy, types based on Sephardic (i.e., Iberian) letterforms became the norm, prevailing through the 16th century in the massive output of Hebrew books in Venice. The Antwerp books of later in the century and the Amsterdam books of the 17th century continued the trend. But Gershom, instead, made (or likely caused to be made) types that were typical of the manuscript letters of the Ashkenazic world of Western and Central Europe, a style akin to the Gothic style of German writing. Cultural identification in type styles has always been a persistent element of design, yet in the long history of Hebrew types, the Ashkenazic style has been in the minority---never quite absent, but seldom dominant, even in Germany. Perhaps its best-known modern manifestation is Henri Friedlaender's exceedingly popular Hadassah type, which retains Ashkenazic forms while eschewing the thick-thin contrast that is typical of the style. Le Bé (Large Hebrew, Hebrew Text). Designed in 2010 together with Matthew Carter, this typeface is based on text types by Guillaume Le Bé the most prolific designer of Hebrew types of the 16th century. The Large Hebrew style is a replica, more or less, of Le Bés seven-line pica Hebrew (Vervliet Conspectus, #403) with some modifications and the addition of diacritics.	EXTERNAL LINKS The Philidor Company MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Hebrew font links ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Type scene in Massachusetts ⦿ Type scene in New York ⦿