KUPA ASI

Simon de Colines (1480-1546) was a Parisian printer, one of the best printers of the golden age of French typography. He was active in Paris between 1520 and 1546. At that time printers used to design the books. We could use the title “illustrator” for printers of that era but they used to be called “printers”. 

Theinnovation of de Colines is, he was probably the first to mix roman and italic typefaces. Colines used elegant roman and italic types and a Greek type, with accents, that was superior to its predecessors. His books usually were small in format and superbly crafted.

Colines was associated with the elder Henri Estienne and continued his work after his death in 1520. In 1526 he opened his own shop and in 1528 he began to use italic type. Colines published many Greek and Latin classics. Although he was not a scholar himself, he extended the range of the Estienne firm’s learned and scientific works to include the natural sciences, cosmology, and astrology. He is credited with the design of italic and Greek fonts and of a roman face for St. Augustine’s Sylvius (1531), from which the Garamond types were derived. In 1525 he published the notable Grandes Heures de Simon de Colines, with decorations by Geoffroy Tory.

This entry was posted on December 6, 2009 at 21:31 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.