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ABOUT

Jacques-François Rosart

Belgian punchcutter and typefounder (b. Namur, 1714, d. Brussels, 1777). His early life was spent in Namur, Belgium. In 1740, he started out in Haarlem as a punchcutter, and published twelve type specimens in 1741, as well as 14 ornaments. From 1746 until 1752, he cut another thirteen different alphabets. In 1749, he cut several sets of musical characters. He had a contract with Enschedé, where he made the gorgeous shaded capital typeface Rosart in 1759, aka Enschedé no. 811. He moved back to Brussels in 1759 where he ran his own foundry. He published books with specimens in 1752, 1761 and 1768.

F. Baudin and N. Hoeflake published The Type Specimen of J.F. Rosart, Brussels, 1768 (Amsterdam, London, New York, 1973). The original book by Rosart, Epreuve des caractères, qui se gravent et fondent dans la nouvelle fonderie de Jacques François Rosart has been scanned in.

Metal typefaces influenced by Rosart include a couple of typefaces by Douglas C. McMurtrie, McMurtrie Title (1922) and Vanity Fair Capitals (1923), and Stuyvesant (1942-1947) by W.A. Dwiggins.

Mac McGrew: Stuyvesant and Stuyvesant Italic were designed in 1942-47 by William A. Dwiggins, inspired by a quaint Dutch type cut by J. F. Rosart about 1750, and used in 1949 in The Shelby Letters, from the California Mines, 1851-1852, published by Alfred Knopf. An entirely different Stuyvesant, a novelty design, was made by Keystone before 1906, perhaps before 1900.

Mac McGrew: McMurtrie Title is a font of highlighted roman capitals, based on a typeface created by the eighteenth-century Dutch founder, J. F. Rosart. The source of the first line of the specimen, a major typographer, shows no characters except the alphabet and three points. But the cases of a prominent printer include the points and figures shown on the second line. Although the letters seem to be identical, each size is on the next larger body compared to the first showing (thus the second specimen line is on 30-point body). The second line seems to be a little less compatible with the capitals, and perhaps was substituted from another source. Compare Caslon Shaded, Cameo.

Mac McGrew: Vanity Fair Capitals were adapted by Douglas C. McMurtrie in 1923, from a type of J. F. Rosart, an eighteenth-century Dutch typefounder, and were privately cast for distribution by Continental Typefounders Association. They are a set of shaded italic capitals, with tendril designs used as serifs and breaking the main stems. John S. Carroll, then operating a private type foundry in Miami Beach, cut much the same typeface in 1964-65; the specimens here show both cuttings. Carroll's cutting is closer to the original, and true to the Dutch originals, smaller sizes are simpler, lacking the mid-stem ornamentation.

List of digital typefaces based on Rosart's work:

• The 2-line great primer letters of Enschedé no. 811 were digitized by ARTypes in 2007 as Rosart811.
• In 2012, the Enschedé no. 811, which was made for the Enschedé Printing House, was revived at Cyreal / Google Web Fonts by Alexei Vanyashin and Manvel Shmavonyan.
• In 2002, four students at ENSAD in Paris co-designed Rosart.
• Rosart (1995) by Roger White.
• Rosart (1991, Alfac, Thierry Gouttenègre).
• DTL Rosart by Antoon de Vylder at Dutch Type Library.
• Rosart Initials (2010, Dick Pape).
• Rococo Titling (2001): ornate titling caps by Lars Bergquist.
• Reiher Headline (2018, Ramiro Espinoza) contains a set of ornaments that are based on Rosart.
• In 2017-2018, Michel Paré, as a Dutch participant in the Expert Type program at the Plantin Institute in Antwerp, designed a font with most of Rosart's ornaments, and Rosart's floriated initial caps.
• Yulia Gonina, a Graphic designer in Saint Petersburg, Russia, published a thesis entitled Jacques-François Rosart Revival (2018) that documents not only Rosart's life but also some of her revivals of Rosart's typefaces. Hers are called Rosart Text and Display and include italics.
• Rosart (2011, Camelot Typefaces), by Katharina Köhler.

Klingspor link.

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