Hi Alex,

Global Type lists a Paganini by A. Butti/R. Bertieri – made before 1935 for Società Nebiolo – and claims there was also a digital version (‘PS’, next to ‘B’ for Blei = lead and ‘F’ for Fototype).

By the way, it’s not about this Paganini.

For those who want to take a look at a sample of Paganini: check out this PDF from Klingspor-Museum.

F

I see the claim there, but I'm just curious if anyone's ever actually *seen* it. Thanks for the PDF though! That's a great sample of Butti's work. Oh, and I found the other Paganini quite quickly, which is why I specified Butti.

Hi Alex. The Paganini typeface is featured on most of the Nebiolo specimens I’ve seen. Giangiorgio Fuga has put online some pictures from one of his copies of said specimens, like this picture where you can see Paganini quite well.

According to 20 alfabeti brevemente illustrati (1933) by Raffaello Bertieri, the typeface was his own creation. He art directed and drew the first preliminar sketches while Alessandro Butti did most of the actual drawing of the typeface itself. It’s a well regarded typeface if you consider that even Giovanni Mardersteig has been known to use it.

OK. I'm learning more about this all the time! (Who ever said the internet wasn't educational?)

Pardon my utter ignorance, but who is Giovanni Mardersteig?

Giovanni Mardersteig.
The Typophile Wiki isn’t so bad after all. ;°)

Alex, I'm actually working on a (non-literal) revival of Paganini.
I haven't seen any phototype or digital samples of it, but frankly
I wouldn't expect much of them.

Most of my reference samples are in fact from Mardersteig's books,
although I've also found great repro (like of the Filettata cut) in
"Encyclopaedia Typographica" by A J Bastien et alia (1961).

hhp

Nice to see your post Hrant! Paganini does look like your cup of tea.

In this case, espresso! :-)

hhp

I'm very surprised to hear your appreciation of Paganini, Hrant.
Although very well drawn I thought you could consider it too "artsy".
What do you mean by "non-literal"? Are you using it as a staring point?

For Hrant I think it isn't an aesthetically related epithet. When he has used the term in the past it had to do with his sense of the intent of the type maker. If the choices ( florid or no ) were in his eyes aimed at better reading then they were craft. If not, artsy as in for personal expression. The modern/Bodoni look is the aesthetic that I have seen Hrant attracted to over time. Fleischmann & Paganini both have it. Hrant, feel free to correct this if it is mistaken.

So I would like to hear what Hrant would think about other faces designed by Raffaello Bertieri, since many of them seem more interested in recovery of historical letters within a "romantic" conception.

Hrant,

This is wonderful, to hear that you're doing a non-literal revival. I'm sure it'll be great!

To hone my skills at working on such things, I'm creating a for-my-use-only digitization. Learning a lot about how letters work just from the up-close-and-personal work with this typeface!

Ruano (also by Raffarello Bertieri) rocks!

I can't seem to find any images of Ruano. Is there a misspelling? Or is the work really obscure?

Eben: yes, it’s a pretty obscure typeface. Think of an upright chancery italic, pretty black. Me and Claudio where looking at it last week together and although it was promoted for text work (albeit short texts), we thought it was much more suited for display.

The picture is not very good I’m afraid, but hopefully it should give you an idea of the typeface:

Thanks very much! Thats quite interesting! By "black" do you mean the weight itself or a bit of a blackletter sensibility? Or a bit of each?

Ruano is basically an upright cancelleresca, systematized into a typeface.
By "black" Antonio means that's pretty heavy in weight, I think, compared to the cancelleresca calligraphy. I have the original specimen of Ruano, and although I don't like so much the lowercase it is undoubtedly an original typeface, even more, considered it was designed in 1926.
I was incredibly surprised to see some uppercase forms I have incorporated into my old Exegetic are amazingly similar to Ruano (the uppercase R and S, the lowercase S).
I think - willingly or not - these forms got in the blood of us Italians, even if the faces were maybe not so extensively used (Ruano was not so ubiquitous as Paganini or Semplicità).

Yes, I meant the weight of the typeface itself. I don’t think there’s any sort of blackletter sensibility at play, but I admit my knowledge of these forms at the moment is very limited.

Does anyone have a sample of some punctuation from the Paganini font? I simply don't have any in any of the samples I've dug up. Again, this is just for my personal use.

Ran across this site where this designer did a digitization of Paganini for her project:
Paganini

Much better job than I did for my own!