Type Tuesday - French Types

The American Type Founders Company offers its customers beautiful French Type!

This colorful type catalog features typefaces inspired by 18th century French designers Nicolas Cochin and Pierre Simon Fournier.

Nicolas Cochin was a copperplate engraver whose work was so admired he was appointed perpetual secretary of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. The American Type Founders Company notes his work as eminent among the lettering done by French copperplate engravers in their descriptions of engravings and on the frames of their portraits. His work provided the inspiration for their Nicolas Cochin series, seen below.

Nicolas Cochin series by American Type Founders Company

The Fournier series was a reproduction of a type design originally created by distinguished type founder Pierre Simon Fournier in 1764. According to the American Type Founders catalog, Fournier's work was exceptional in his use of decorative ornamental types as there "were not decorative type faces, except certain initial letters, until the dawn of the eighteenth century."  Here his florid ornament and type were featured in examples of advertising print to be had by the American Type Founders Company.

Fournier series by American Type Founders Company

Jaime Henderson,
Archivist