100types.com.60hammeruncial

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Date: 1923

Designer:
Victor Hammer

Foundry:
Klingspor / Stempel Linotype

Location:
Offenbach Am Main, Germany

Current equivalent:
Linotype Neue Hammer Unziale

See also:
American Uncial, by the same designer, Samson, Libra, Goudy Friar

Technologies:
Metal (foundry)
Postscript
Truetype

Famous for:
First uncial designed as a printing typeface.

Applications: Religious and Devotional

Ubiquity:
Not widely used

Category:
Blackletter Uncial

Stress: Angled
Serifs: Calligraphic

Design history:
Victor Hammer’s designed his first type in Austria in 1923. It combined roman capitals with an uncial lowercase and was released by Klingspor in the same year. Uncial letterforms have a calligraphic basis and were widely used in the monastic scribal tradition between the 4th and 9th centuries, but had lapsed into disuse by the time of Gutenberg. True uncials were not used as the basis for printing typefaces until the 19th century. Forced to leave Austria by the Nazis in 1939, Hammer continued to design uncial types and print them at his own press in Aurora, New York, America. American Uncial dates from this period. Neue Hammer Unziale was released in 1952 by Stempel which had acquired the Klingspor Foundry.

profile 60

picture: Black Dog & Leventhal Pubs