Cloister™ Open Face Font Family

Cloister™ Open Face Roman (Linotype Originals) More details ... Add to shopping cart Price from: US$ 26.00

Linotype previously had three design studios located around the globe: Mergenthaler Linotype, in the United States, was founded in Brooklyn, but later moved to Melville, NY, and then to Hauppauge, NY. Mergenthaler Linotype's design studio employed at varying times up to 80 designers under the direction of Chauncey H. Griffith, Jackson Burke, Mike Parker, and Matthew Carter. In continental Europe, Linotype typefaces were produced by the D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, Germany. [...]

Cloister Open Face was designed in 1929 by Morris Fuller Benton as one weight of the Cloister Old Style family. Cloister itself appeared from 1897 with American Type Founders, and later for the typesetting machines of the Linotype, Intertype and Monotype companies. At that time, it was the truest modern industrial revival of the Jensonian Roman. Benton stayed close to the style of his model in both design and spacing. Cloister Open Face has an old-world elegance, and it works well for titling in books and magazines.

In 1458, Charles VII sent the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson to learn the craft of movable type in Mainz, the city where Gutenberg was working. Jenson was supposed to return to France with his newly learned skills, but instead he traveled to Italy, as did other itinerant printers of the time. From 1468 on, he was in Venice, where he flourished as a punchcutter, printer and publisher. He was probably the first non-German printer of movable type, and he produced about 150 editions. Though his punches have vanished, his books have not, and those produced from about 1470 until his death in 1480 have served as a source of inspiration for type designers over centuries. His Roman type is often called the "first true Roman." Notable in almost all Jensonian Romans is the angled crossbar on the lowercase e, which is known as the "Venetian Oldstyle e."