Typography Papers 6: The Classical Tradition in Letters

Typography Papers is an occasional book-length publication from the Department of Typography at the University of Reading (England) with a broad international scope, publishing extended articles relating typography to adjacent disciplines. Issue 6 is devoted to the reconstruction and reinvention of the classical letter in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It includes a previously unpublished article by the late Nicolete Gray; the first English translation of the late GiovanniMardersteig's brilliant and seminal essay of 1959 ("L. B. Alberti e la rinascita del carattere lapidario romano nel quattrocento"); James Mosley on Giovan Francesco Cresci's formative influence on the form of Western handwriting and typefaces; an analysis of the grand inscriptional capitals which appeared on new buildings in Rome between 1585 and 1590; and Victor Gaultney's innovative survey of how the character repertoire of the Latin alphabet has been extended to cater to languages without scripts.