|
Johann Michael Fleischmann: Biography by Ingo Preuss
The biography of Johann Michael Fleischmann (1707-1768) as told by Ingo Preuss: - Johann Michael Fleischmann was born June 15th, 1707 in Wöhrd near Nuremberg. After attending Latinschool he started an apprenticeship as punchcutter in the crafts enterprise of Konstantin Hartwig in Nuremberg, which ought to last six years. For his extraordinary talent Fleischmann completed his apprenticeship after four and a half years, which was very unusual. 1727 his years of travel (very common in these days) began, during which he perfected his handcraft by working in different enterprises as journeyman. First location was Frankfurt/Main where he worked for nearly a year at the renowned type foundry of Luther and Egenolff. Passing Mainz he continued to Holland, where he arrived in November 1728 and stayed till he died in 1768.
- In Amsterdam he worked for several type foundries, among others some weeks for Izaak van der Putte; in The Hague for Hermanus Uytwerf. Between 1729 and 1732 he created several exquisite alphabets for Uytwerf, which were published under his own name (after his emigration to Holland Fleischmann abandoned the second n in his name), apparently following the stream of the time.
- After the two years with Uytwerf, Fleischmann returned to Amsterdam, where he established his own buiseness as punchcutter; following an advice of the bookkeeper and printer from Basel Rudolf Wetstein he opened his own type foundry 1732, which he sold in 1735 to Wetstein for financial reasons. In the following Fleischmann created several types and matrices exclusively for Wetstein.
- In 1743 after the type foundry was sold by Wetstein's son Hendrik Floris to the upcoming enterprise of Izaak and Johannes Enschedé, Fleischmann worked as independent punchcutter mostly for this house in Haarlem. Recognizing his exceptional skills soon Fleischmann was consigned to cutting the difficult small-sized font types. The corresponding titling alphabets were mostly done by Jaques-Francois Rosart, who also cut the main part of the ornaments and borders used in the font examples of Enschedé.
- Fleischmann create dvarious fonts for Enscheé. The font example published 1768 by Enschedé contains three titling alphabets, 16 antiqua cuts, 14 italic cuts, 13 textura typefaces, 2 scripts, two Greek types, one Arabic, one Malayan and seven Armenian font systems, five sets of music notes and the poliphonian music note system by Fleischmann. In total he brought into being about 100 alphabets---the fruits of fourty years of creative work as a punchcutter.
- Fleischmann died May 27th, 1768 at the age of 61. For a long time he was thought one of the leading punchcutters in Europe. A tragedy, that his creating fell into the turning of baroque to classicism. The following generations could not take much pleasure in his imaginative fonts, which were more connected to the sensuous baroque than to the bare rationalism of the upcoming industrialisation. Unfortunately therefore his masterpieces did not survive the 19th century and person and work of Fleischmann sank into oblivion.
|
EXTERNAL LINKS
Johann Michael Fleischmann: Biography by Ingo Preuss
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search
INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿
Type designers ⦿
Dutch type design ⦿
|
