How's your Italian? Giovanni Mardersteig wrote a book entitled Aldo Manuzio e i caratteri di Francesco Griffo da Bologna (1964).

Oh dear. Thanks for the suggestion!

Mr. Hudson is correct. I asked Mr. Martino Mardersteig, unfortunately
the volume is sold out and you can only look at it at the National
Library in Rome and Florence, or try some bibliophiles or rare book
shops like the German Zvab (www.zvab.com).

Regards,
AS

Thanks for going to the trouble, Alessandro. I found one book on Griffo in an edition of 32 copies, none of which seems to have come up for recent sale. I'm all for 'the book beautiful', but such a horendously limited edition seems a bit odd given that Aldus was the first printer to exploit the economics of the (relatively) large edition.

George

Type Spaces by Peter Burnhill is a good book on aldine type focusing not on the letterform styles but in the more important and less evident spacing and measuring method used by Aldus in all levels from letterform proportions to page measuring.

I enjoyed it a lot. It features a lot of enlargements, with sample grid impositions and annotations. It's well printed and well set in Charter.

Héctor

I ordered it only a few hours ago - it does indeed look good stuff.

George

I am quite late on this thread unfortunately (about two years), but still: Edizioni Il Polifilo of Milano, Italy, still sells a book titled Scritti di Giovanni Mardersteig sulla storia dei caratteri e della tipografia which includes both the Aldo Manuzio e i caratteri di Francesco Griffo da Bologna essay that was mentioned by John Hudson and another essay titled Il De Aetna di Pietro Bembo which was originally included in the facsimile edition of De Aetna done by the Officina Bodoni in 1969. The Aldo Manuzio e i caratteri di Francesco Griffo da Bologna was meant to be part of a book about Griffo that Mardersteig was going to write with Stanley Morison, a project that was never finished due to Morison’s passing.

The book is quite pricey but worth it: it cost me €110 and you can buy it directly from their Web site. It has been printed in 1988 by Stamperia Valdonega on hand-made paper in 650 copies (100 not for sale). They still have some copies at Il Polifilo, apparently, but of course you will need to be able to read Italian. I studied it before going to the Biblioteca Estense here in Modena to actually have a look at De Aetna, which by the way, is something mind-blowing when you actually see it with your own very eyes. The copy they have here in Modena is in a miscellanea of other incunabola, which means it’s been detached from its original binding and re-bound with other five books: the horror!

Also of note is that Mardersteig’s facsimile of De Aetna was dedicated to the recently deceased Morison and that in his honor Mardersteig decided to set the original latin text in his Griffo type, and the translation in Bembo. The two look quite different, actually. I haven’t seen Mardersteig facsimile, it too is available for sale but is extremely expensive, but having seen Griffo and Bembo you can tell the difference is very clear.

I also found on the Web the book on Griffo in 32 copies you were mentioning (and I, too, find it outrageous): it’s Fragment & Glimpses : Francesco Griffo da Bologna, compiled by Rollin Milroy, published in 1999 by A Lone Press.