Romain du Roi: Épreuve des caractères de l’Imprimerie royale (1760)
The first three pages show theoretical, synthetic construction boards for the Romain du Roi, cut by Louis Simonneau.
The other two pages show a selection of the 21 sizes from Romain du Roi, cut by Philippe Grandjean, Jean Alexandre and Louis Luce between 1696 and 1756. Their have been reproducted from a small in-4º (16 sheets) which is still sleeping at the Imprimerie nationale. A rather rare book (only one copy there and two copies at the Bibliothèque nationale de France) which show the type in the very same state it had been used for printing books, laws and other official documents for more than a century. Each size features its own matching italics and lettres de deux-points.
Those partial scans show some of the biggest of the 16 cuts, and are named after the geometric and regular scaling of pied de roi, invented by father Truchet around 1694. However, around the 18th century, five additional sizes (of unknown dimensions) were added, ranging from 5½ to 9½. This specimen also showed that traditionnal names were still mentionned, from Perle to Quadruple Canon.
I decided to put those documents online for two reasons: first, good scans of Romain du Roi a rather rarely seen online ; then, italics are even harder to find. Enjoy.
These pictures (and much more) come from the exhibition catalog “Le romain du roi: la typographie au service de l‘état”, held at Lyon in 2002 at the Musée de l’Imprimerie and still available from its boutique.