Two years ago The Monotype Corporation paid tribute to Dr. Giovanni Mardersteig on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday by issuing a limited edition of a publication devoted to his typographic work with ‛Monotype’ faces. In view of the great interest shown in this publication, we are here printing an adaptation of the introductory essay by John Dreyfus. It is set in the 10 Didot size of Dr. Mardersteig’s Dante type (Series 592), together with the new semi-bold (Series 682) which is now available in 10, 11 and 12 Didot.

Dr. Giovanni Mardersteig has been printing in Italy since 1927. Many formative years preceded the move to Verona with his Officina Bodoni. While still a student in Germany he acquired practical experience and a lively interest in both printing and publishing. Law and history of art were the subjects of his formal studies at university, but his greatest enthusiasm was for the world of books.

At the end of his university studies, trouble with his health forced him to spend long periods in Switzerland. Nevertheless he was able to return at intervals to Germany, where in the spring of 1917 he joined the publishing house of Kurt Wolff in Leipzig. There he helped to build up a list of books on modern art, suggesting titles and authors, and directing the production department concerned with these books.

In the summer of 1917 an important exhibition of German painting was to be shown in Switzerland. As Mardersteig was known to be in contact with many private collectors of expressionist paintings, and also with their painters, he was invited to arrange the section devoted to this new trend in painting. It was mounted at the Kunsthaus in Zurich and was the first exhibition of Expressionism ever to be shown outside Germany.

In the spring of 1919 there appeared the first issue of Genius, a new bi-annual in a large format which gave a representative review of art and literature, produced at Mardersteig’s suggestion and edited by him in collaboration with Carl Georg Heise. The review was published by Kurt Wolff whose enthusiasm coincided with that of his two editors. Genius was copiously illustrated with many separately printed woodcuts, lithographs and plates. In trying to arrange this intractable material, Mardersteig came to realise how hard it was to achieve an appearance of unity unless the task of printing, binding and publishing were all assumed by one man.

Move to Switzerland

The bad climate of Munich, where the Kurt Wolff Verlag had been transferred in 1919, did not suit his health, and when he was forced to settle down in a milder climate he decided to establish his own press and bindery in the Ticino.

One of the first problems was to decide what type to use. He could not then afford a new type so he had to find one which was already in existence, but not in common use. For many years he had admired the types of Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) from whose printing house in Parma a magnificent series of books had appeared, culminating in the two posthumously published volumes of his Manuale Tipografico. Bodoni’s books had caught Mardersteig’s eye during his first visit to Italy in 1912. One title attracted him for it was called PERICLÈS, de l’influence des Beaux Arts sur la félicité publique, and when he found a copy at an antiquarian bookseller he bought it because of its beautiful typography. In time he acquired many more of Bodoni’s books and came to know his work in considerable detail.

His interest in Bodoni was shared by a friend in Rome, so the two men planned to set up a press together. They were lucky enough to obtain permission to use Bodoni’s original types for which matrices were still preserved at Parma. From Bodoni’s enormous range of faces they chose a small number of text founts and a few sets of titling.

The precarious health of the young Roman upset these plans. In 1922 Mardersteig went alone to Montagnola near Lugano, where he printed his first book on the hand press of the Officina Bodoni. In the next four years he produced a distinguished series of books, all composed in Bodoni’s types although every book was immediately distinguishable from Bodoni’s own productions. Mardersteig’s books excited the interest and admiration of printers and book collectors in many countries. Nevertheless, it soon became obvious that there were disadvantages in printing with such a limited range of types. One of Mardersteig’s many ambitions was to print books with illustrations by contemporary artists, and for such work Bodoni’s types (apart from the italics) were far from ideal.

A remarkable extension to the range of types used at the Officina Bodoni began with a visit to Montagnola by Stanley Morison, a few years after the press had been established. Morison had recently been appointed typographical adviser to The Monotype Corporation in London, and had already set in motion his ambitious programme of recutting the best types of the past and introducing entirely new types for mechanical composition. Among his many interests was a plan to recut a chancery italic of the kind used in Rome in the early sixteenth century. In this he found a fellow-enthusiast in Frederic Warde who had a scheme for such a type, and had crossed the Atlantic to seek out a punchcutter and a printer to make and print his new type.

At Morison’s suggestion, Warde got in touch with Mardersteig, with whom he later printed a facsimile of the Writing Books published in 1522 and 1523 by Ludovico degli Arrighi surnamed Vicentino, with a new introduction by Morison. This book was composed in Warde’s Arrighi types, which were first cut by hand in Paris by Charles Plumet. The types were recut by The Monotype Corporation in 1929 to provide an italic for Bruce Rogers’ Centaur roman, which was later acquired by Mardersteig.

Centaur is one of five distinguished ‛Monotype’ recuttings used today at Mardersteig’s two printing offices in Verona. The five revivals were matched by an equal number of new type designs also manufactured by The Monotype Corporation. Before describing the other types in greater detail, some account must first be given of the Officina Bodoni’s transfer to Italy and of the subsequent foundation of the Stamperia Valdònega.

Officina Bodoni in Italy

In 1926 a National Institute was established in Italy to produce a complete edition of the works of Gabriele d’Annunzio. To discover which printer most deserved the honour of printing the 49 volumes, a competition was arranged in which Mardersteig was invited through Arnoldo Mondadori to take part. The specimen pages he submitted for the project were judged to be the best.

For many months prior to this great scheme, he had planned to transfer the Officina Bodoni to Italy, and even printed a prospectus for a new Academia Tipografica to be set up in Florence. Now he decided instead to settle in Verona, conveniently close to d’Annunzio’s home on Lake Garda, and in a fine city where he was able to find, in collaboration with Mondadori, new quarters and additional staff before the transfer was made in 1927.

The Officina Bodoni continued to operate with hand presses, and by this method 200 sets of the works of d’Annunzio were printed on Japanese vellum and a further nine sets of a selection of his foremost works on real vellum. In addition to this vast work accomplished entirely on the hand presses, 2,000 sets were printed on Fabriano paper by machine.

He also established a small foundry for casting the great quantity of Bodoni types which he needed for the 49 volumes of d’Annunzio’s works, all of which had to be set by hand. After he had finished the National Edition he installed his hand press again in his private house on the hills of a valley called Valdònega, on the outskirts of Verona, and continued to set, print and publish books as in earlier years in Montagnola.

During the nineteen-thirties and throughout the early forties, a great variety of fine work was produced at the Officina Bodoni. Most of these productions were composed and printed entirely by hand. Limited use was occasionally made of the mechanical facilities in collaboration with Mondadori, but interest remained centred upon the hand press.

Stamperia Valdònega

Only after the war was Mardersteig led to conclude that the hand press had become an anachronism. He therefore decided to put his knowledge of printing to more effective use by starting up a second department in which machinery would be used for both typesetting and printing. It opened in 1949 and was named the Stamperia Valdònega, after the valley where the printing house is located.

The new plant attracted new customers, but there were still some discriminating patrons of printing in Europe and in the United States who would accept nothing less than the product of the hand press. To satisfy such conoscitori, and to carry on his own editions which he had planned and prepared for a long time, Mardersteig decided to keep the Officina Bodoni active as a printing house as well as his new mechanised printing plant. Standards of perfection set for his hand press between 1922 and 1949 were not lowered for the operation of his machines.

Mechanical typesetting offered many distinct advantages over hand composition. Not least of these was the remarkable range of types manufactured by The Monotype Corporation, and its facilities for providing Mardersteig with new types made to his own designs. He acquired a number of ‛Monotype’ faces including Centaur (Series 252), Bembo (Series 270), Poliphilus (Series 170), Garamond (Series 156), Baskerville (Series 169), Imprint (Series 101), and Times New Roman (Series 327). He has used Imprint extensively at the Stamperia Valdònega for a splendid compendious series of Italian classics in which so far more than 60 volumes have been published, and Times New Roman for 11volumes of The History of Mantua which deals with both the art and literature of that city.

A type of utterly different character is Pastonchi (Series 206), designed by Eduardo Cottin of Turin for the author and poet Francesco Pastonchi. Seeking in vain for a type which would possess ‛the greatest clearness and legibility of print, and be beautiful in its outward form’, Pastonchi determined to create a new type in the Italian tradition but avoiding the archaic. The resulting design is too mannered to be suitable for everyday use, but specimens of Mardersteig’s work show that it can serve to create a delightful page.

Fontana and Dante

The last pair of types which remain to be described were both designed by Mardersteig. Fontana (Series 403) resulted from a stay in Glasgow, where he worked for a year at the Collins Cleartype Press. One of his first questions on arrival was ‛May I see your clear type?’ It was explained to him that no such type existed, although all their types were in fact clear. This did not satisfy Mardersteig who suggested that if they called themselves a Cleartype Press, they ought to have a type which would distinguish them from other printers. A type of Scottish origin seemed to be indicated and his choice fell upon a type used by Foulis in the eighteenth century. The Monotype Corporation agreed to make the type under Mardersteig’s direction for exclusive use by Collins. Nevertheless, he was allowed to use it himself for an edition of Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations which he designed and printed for The Limited Editions Club of New York, whose founder considered it to be one of the ten finest books he had ever published. Collins later gave permission for the unrestricted sale of this type to other printers.

Finally we come to Mardersteig’s latest design, Dante type (Series 592), first used in 1954 for Boccaccio’s Trattatello in laude di Dante. That text was composed in founts cast from a handcut version by Charles Malin, a skilled punchcutter who made several other types for Mardersteig’s exclusive use. Malin’s dexterous cutting of Dante was subsequently used by The Monotype Corporation as the basis of its mechanically engraved matrices, in which the liveliness of the original was skillfully retained. After Malin’s death, it was decided that a semi-bold should be made for this design. Some trial punches were cut by Matthew Carter in accordance with Mardersteig’s sketches, and these were used as the basis for the complete semi-bold founts subsequently manufactured by the Corporation. Dante is Mardersteig’s finest and most popular type design, as can be seen from the lines in which this article is set.