Would this be something along the lines of Fournier?

Although Fournier is known to have been inspired by the RdR in making his own fonts, his stuff was much more conventional in nature. The RdR style is very distinctive: it is a "constructed" letter, with vertical stress, high contrast, a smallish x-height, and most notably double serifs on the ascenders. It also exhibits a short line on the lc "el" (which apparently Grandjean introduced because the constructivism was leading to confusable forms), but to me that's not critical to its nature.

Here's a metal RdR-style font, the "Types de Charles X" of the Imprimerie Nationale:



But it doesn't have the double serifs on the ascenders.

hhp

Hrant,

The following are samples of the "Ordonnance du Roy" from Northwest Louisiana's library:









The document is dated as 1731. This sample looked more like Fournier to me, but the one you're showing looks almost like Didot. The short line on the "el" is present in both samples.

Are you considering a revival?

I almost forgot about this, too.

Wow, nice! Yeah, that's definitely the RdR. I'm not really a revivalist, but when an entire category of type design is so neglected, there's certainly good reason to at least make one digital instance. Like in Thom's Thai project it would be perfect. But I wouldn't revive the RdR itself, it was still only a formative effort (look how conventional the italics are for example) - I would revive the later, higher form, done by Tuleu (at Deberny) - a design as obscure as it is phenomenal.

Arnhem: You're not saying it's an RdR, are you?

hhp

I haven't read that Andy Crewdson article in a while, but I remembered something about the romain du roi and the Arnhem fonts. Sorry, I was a little off there...

Tell us more about Tuleu... I'm not familiar with this.

hhp, the article shows a RdR sample in parapraph 2 siting it as part of the climate Arnhems roots were reacting to. (or something). BTW, I quite like what I see of RdR.

Randy

Addison, you're right - I was just wondering if you saw something in Arnhem that alluded to the RdR somehow - not because I'd get on your case :-) but because your eyes are different and you might see things I don't.

Tuleu was the bastard son of Deberny, and he ran the foundry in the last quarter of the 19th century. He took the RdR style to its pinnacle*, only to be undercut by a double whammy: the Arts & Crafts revival of Morris; and Gustave Peignot's obsession with display typography: the Deberny and Peignot houses merged in 1923, and Gustave's charisma and business sense caused all of the wonderful old Deberny text faces to get tossed out.

* The italic is staggering in its purity.

> part of the climate Arnhems roots were reacting to

Without re-reading that New-Series piece, I guess what you're saying then is that Arnhem is an Elzevir. Interestingly, the best Elzevirs were also made in the second half of the 19th century!
http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/30/20897.html

hhp