A lthough the existing roman letter was officially sanctioned as the standard medium for the printing of Irish language documents in the early 1960s, the four preceding centuries had witnessed a rich tradition of printing in the Irish character. The origins of Irish character typography regress to the high standard of calligraphy achieved by the monastic scribes of the fifth century, and to the two discrete styles __ the half-uncial and the minuscule__ that emerged from the scriptorium to subsequently exert a defining influence on the design of Irish printing types. The full, rotund form of the half-uncial was typically used in the transcription of Latin tracts _____ notably, in the earliest known Irish manuscript, the Cathach, and, magisterially, in the Book of Kells.



A sample page, in the half-uncial hand, from the Book of Kells.

Click on the image to enlarge

T he Irish minuscule, a more angular form with a pronounced vertical emphasis, was often resorted to in manuscripts where vellum, and as a consequence space, would have been premium, and normally for the transcription of Irish as opposed to Latin texts. Although mostly in Latin, early texts in which the Irish minuscule hand appears include the Book of Armagh and the Book of Leinster.



A sample page of minuscule, from the

Book of Armagh .

Click on the image to enlarge.

N o different to other inventions that originated on the continent of Europe at the beginning of the modern age, printing migrated relatively slowly to the remote island of Ireland. The indigenous population of the unconquered provinces possessed neither the technological knowledge nor the capital requisite to setting up printing presses; and, within the Pale, the occasional items printed in Irish with the imprimatur of official sanction were issued only out of the necessities of governance (the vast majority of the population had knowledge of no other language). The early decades of printing in the Irish character are marked by a proliferation of religious material. Those in control of the printing presses regarded as paramount the religious instruction, and conversion, of the population. The first fount of type in the Irish character was cast in London in 1571 by order of Queen Elizabeth. Insistent on communicating with foreign visitors to her court in their own language, the Queen __ in the period c. 1560 to 1565 __ commissioned from Christopher Nugent a manuscript Iryshe-Latten-Englishe Primer. The Primer included an Irish alphabet as well as a glossary of words and phrases in Irish with translations in Latin and English.





A page from the

Iryshe-Latten-Englishe Primer.

Click on the image to enlarge .

B y 1570, the attention of the Queen had focussed on the production of an Irish type that would permit the copious production and dissemination of religious material designed to convert the Irish population to the doctrines of the Reformed Church. On 23 October 1570, John Kearney agreed to provide stamps, forms and matrices necessary for printing 300 catechisms at a cost of £22. James Ware states in the Annals of Ireland (1571): "This year the Irish characters were first brought into this kingdom … and it was ordered that the prayers of the Church should be printed in that language and a Church set apart in the chief town of every diocese, where they were to be read, and a sermon preached to the common people, which was instrumental to convert many of the ignorant sort in those days." A hybrid Irish fount, consisting mainly of roman letters to which an italic capital and lower-case a as well as a number of distinctly Irish ”sorts” were added, the Queen Elizabeth type formed into a highly legible text with an orderly appearance on the page. Although a marked similarity of the nine Irish letters (d, e, f, g, i, p, r, s and t) to the type used from 1567 onward by John Day for the printing of Anglo-Saxon titles has led some bibliographers to speculate that the letters were appropriated directly from the Anglo-Saxon fount, close inspection divulges subtle differences; it is nonetheless probable that the Irish letters were modelled to some degree on the type cut earlier by Day.





The first book to use the Queen Elizabeth type,

Aibidil Gaoidheilge agus Caiticiosma,

a catechism in the Irish language,

by John Kearney.

Click on the images to enlarge.

O ne of a group that had sought refuge on the continent of Europe in the aftermath of the pillage of a Donegal monastery in the late sixteenth century, Bonaventure O Hussey entered the Franciscan monastic college at Louvain, Belgium, on 1 November 1601 and died as its guardian on 15 November 1614; it is for the printing of An Teagasc Criosdaidhe by O Hussey that the first authentic Irish type was cut. On 15 April 1614, O Hussey had petitioned for permission to print Irish material at Louvain with a note of alarm that the Reformed Church in Ireland had already issued a translation of the New Testament and that other propagandist titles in the Irish language were “daily appearing.” In May 1614, permission was granted to establish a printing press at the college. Clearly agitated by the development, William Trumbull, an English agent in Brussels, wrote to the authorities requesting that the Franciscans be refused a licence to print. Trumbull indicated that James I had argued vehemently against the Franciscan printing press; the monarch had demanded not only that the Franciscans be prohibited from printing, but also that all copies of titles already issued by the press be "collected and burned." The authorities refused to intervene. The Louvain type sustained its appearance in print. The Louvain might be described as the first authentic Irish character type. Accomplished scribes at the monastery had been indignant not only in respect of the content of the Queen Elizabeth titles, but also with regard to a corrupt typography; accordingly, the new type had been designed in strict adherence to manuscript sources. The letters exhibited the manuscript slope and irregular proportion; the text appeared unnecessarily crowded on the page; an upstroke (the remains of the ligature) began all possible letters; two sorts of r were included. All of which unfortunately resulted in a not very elegant typographic effect.







Samples of the Louvain type from

Elements of the Irish Language,

by Hugh MacCurtin.

Click on the images to enlarge.

L uke Wadding had been instrumental in the 1625 inauguration of the College of Saint Isidore in Rome, a section of the early community of which had migrated from Louvain and had brought with them to Italy an interest in publishing in the Irish language. A half-century after its inauguration, a series of titles would be produced at Saint Isidore under the auspices of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide; the “Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith,” established by Pope Gregory XV in 1622, numbered among the important instruments of its work the polyglot printing press. On 24 May 1638, approval was granted for the casting of an Irish type as a constituent of the polyglot press. Not dissimilar to the Louvain type, the Rome Irish type nonetheless represents a marked improvement on its predecessor. The letters have sloughed all of the vestiges of the ligature; now, they compose in a more vertical and distinct manner on the page. Not that typographic perfection had all of a sudden been achieved: in The Irish Character in Print, Edward Lynam compares the ungainly f to “a large policeman trying to keep an unruly crowd in order.” On a "visit" to Italy in the early nineteenth century, Napoleon requisitioned the Rome Irish type for the National Print Museum of the Republic, the Imprimerie Nationale. The type was used by the Paris printer JJ Marcel in the 1804 production of Alphabet Irlandais. Marcel gives an account of the appropriation by the Imprimerie of the Rome Irish type: "The punches for the characters used to print the alphabet were in two different sizes and were part of the founts of the printing works of the Propaganda in Rome; they were included in a number of punches and matrices sent from Italy to the printing works of the Republic, by the orders of Heros [Napoleon], whose armies were always victorious, elevating France to a high degree of celebrity and enriching her with the most precious masterpieces of all types of art. The printing museum gloried in a large increase in its stock, rendering it a unique establishment, with which the whole of Europe has nothing to compare." The Rome Irish type had been just one of an array of exotic punches pillaged in Italy and transported to the Imprimerie at the beginning of 1801; in an effort to obtain from the Propaganda samples of a range of foreign letters to complete the magnificent Paris collection, boxes of Arabic, Armenian, Brahmanic, Chaldaic, Coptic, Hebrew, Georgian, German Greek, Irish, Illyrian, Indian, Malabar, Persian, Ruthenian, Syriac and Tibetan had been unceremoniously looted and shipped northward. Ultimately, the original punches and matrices of the Rome Irish type were returned “under threat of violence by the commissioners of the Tuscan Government.”





A sample of the Rome Irish type from

Lochrann na gCreidmheach,

by Fr. Francis O Molloy.

Click on the image to enlarge.

B y 1640, William Bedell had completed his celebrated Irish translation of the Old Testament. Dissatisfied with the Queen Elizabeth type as it had appeared in an aibgitir, or elementary catechism, of 1631 (or with an inadequate supply of type), Bedell initiated the process of the preparation of a new fount in the Irish character. The death of Bedell in 1642 put paid to the project; however, thirty years later, Robert Boyle, anxious to propagate knowledge of the scriptures after the discontinuation in print of the 1602 Tiomna Nuadh, once again mooted interest in the initiative. In 1678, Boyle had sought out the Queen Elizabeth type for the printing of another aibgitir only to discover that the fount no longer existed; Boyle erroneously alleges that the Jesuits had been responsible for its mysterious disappearance: "By the covetousness of one, the letters were by the Jesuits gotten away and are now at Doway, for Irish prints, some of which, to my grief, [have been] sent here, further corrupting the people." In any event, a new type was required, and the preface to the Tiomna Nuadh recognizes Boyle as its architect: "God has raised up the generous spirit of Robert Boyle who hath caused the Book of the New Testament to be reprinted at his own proper cost; and as well for that purpose, as for printing the Old Testament and what other pious books shall be thought convenient to be published in the Irish tongue, has caused a new set of fair Irish characters to be cast in London, and an able printer to be instructed in the way of printing the language." The type was modelled on the earlier Louvain and its manufacture was carried out by Joseph Moxon.







A sample of the Moxon type.

Click on the image to enlarge.

D uring the early part of the eighteenth century, Irish language publication had been limited to a handful of Catholic religious pamphlets printed out of necessity in the roman character: the Moxton type had been strictly verboten for such literature. The discrepancy was not corrected until the expatriated began to print once again

__ in a new design of type __ at the Irish College in Paris. In 1732, an English Irish Dictionary, compiled by Conor O Begly, was printed by Jacques Guérin and the Paris type of its composition represented a major departure from preceding designs (it has been suggested that the type might have been modelled on a calligraphic sample supplied by O Begly). An unusual feature of the Paris type is its inclusion of an uncial, italic form of the letter a. With the exception of the Queen Elizabeth type, Irish character typography had to that point relied exclusively on the triangular or majuscule a.



A page from O Begly's

English Irish Dictionary .

Click on the image to enlarge.

A fount influenced by the Paris type __ occasionally referred to as the Brooke or Bonham type, but more properly designated the Parker type __ was produced in Dublin in 1787; and, as such, represents the first Irish character type cut and cast in Ireland. On account of its size, Dermot McGuinne remarks in Irish Type Design: a History of Printing Types in the Irish Character, the Parker was an extravagantly "paper-hungry" fount, and consequently lost much of its appeal for text use.



A page of Charlotte Brooke's

Reliques of Irish Poetry,

printed in the Parker Irish type.

Click on the image to enlarge.

T he eventual demise of the Parker type prompted the development of the more pragmatic Barlow type. Prepared in 1808 by the Gaelic Society of Dublin, the Barlow type imitated the earlier Queen Elizabeth in its appropriation of some of its letters from existing roman sorts; not only, it must be noted, out of convenience, but also in an effort to to encourage a growing audience of foreign readers interested in the study of the Irish language.



A sample of the Barlow type.

Click on the image to enlarge.

I n 1815, the founder James Christie designed an Irish character type that represented the most legible fount to date. The Christie type also managed to retain the calligraphic qualities of the authentic Irish style. The type required meticulous care in the application of ink on account of its boldness and extreme contrasts of weights.

A sample of the Christie type from

The Proverbs of Solomon.

Click on the image to enlarge.

T he end of eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries represented a very active period in the production of Irish printing types _____ a consequence of an increased scholarly awareness of the Irish language on the one hand; and, on the other hand, of a renewed enthusiasm for the promotion of the doctrines of the Reformed Church in the aftermath the 1801 Act of Union. The British and Foreign Bible Society, which in 1814 had begun to issue religious titles in a disparate range of languages and printing types, harboured among its core aspirations the religious conversion of the Irish speaking majority of the population; in 1815, an organ of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Hibernian Bible Society, agreed that an edition of the New Testament should be published that included an Irish translation in an authentic Irish character. A new type was cut specifically for the project by Richard Watts in London.

A sample of the Watts irish type

from Neilson's

Introduction to the Irish Language.

Click on the image to enlarge.

I n 1819, Edmund Fry cut a type once again commissioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The design of the Fry type signifies a departure from the angular minuscule toward the more rounded form of the half-uncial, a characteristic of Irish typography in the nineteenth century.

A sample of the Fry Irish type from

The Two First Books of the Pentateuch.

Click on the image to enlarge .

T he final fount cut during the period was the Figgins type, a slightly bizarre creation, with its condensed proportions and rigid vertical appearance.

A sample of the Figgins type from

Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy.

Click on the image to enlarge.

T he artist and antiquary George Petrie occupies a central position in the history of Irish character typography in the nineteenth century. In 1830, Petrie purchased a holograph copy of the Annals of the Four Masters and, shortly afterward, commenced the design and production of an Irish type suitable for the printing of the Annals. An artist of contemporary renown, Petrie possessed a sound knowledge not only of the aesthetics, but also of the mechanics and technology of print production. Writing in the Celtic Records of Ireland, John Gilbert remarks: "The most elaborate care seems to have been taken by the publishers [of the Annals], both literary and artistic. A peculiarly exquisite Irish type, modelled from the characters in the venerable Book of Kells, was manufactured expressly for the work." The Petrie type continued to be used in the Clann Lir periodical, printed until 1922 by Colm Ó Lochlainn at the Sign of the Three Candles, Temple Bar, and by the National University of Ireland until 1957 for the setting of its examinations in Irish.

A sample of the Petrie type.

Click on the image to enlarge.

A typeface that owed more to the minuscule calligraphic tradition was prepared specifically for the Catholic University of Ireland, also by George Petrie; the type was commissioned by Cardinal John Henry Newman and in order to avoid confusion with the earlier, half-uncial Petrie designs is generally referred to as the Newman type. Cardinal John Henry Newman: "These [early Petrie] forms are much more rounded than those of the beautiful letters now for the first time employed, and the use of them in Irish writing is considered by some antiquaries prior in point of date. Other authorities, however, are of the opinion that the more angular forms of the letters from which the present types are designed are quite as ancient. The rounded form seems to have been almost always used in the transcription of Latin pieces and for writing in what we should now call capital letters. On the other hand, the angular form seems to have been always preferred, if not invariably used, in transcribing pieces and even mere occasional sentences in the Irish language. The forms adopted in the present type have been carefully drawn by Doctor Petrie from those of the Book of Hymns, in which will be found exact facsimiles of every form among them."

A sample of the Newman type.

Click on the image to enlarge.