Christoffel van Dijck

Christoffel van Dijck (c. 1600/1605, Dexheim-1669, Amsterdam) was a German-born Dutch engraver and punchcutter, who engraved, cast and sold metal type. Although his career is poorly documented, he is believed to have been influential in the history of printing and typefounding in the Netherlands.[1][2]

Early life

Van Dijck was born in Dexheim, in modern-day Germany, to a Protestant family of Dutch ancestry.[3][4] His father Gilbert Breberenus van den Dijck was a minister.[3] By 1640 he had moved to Amsterdam as a journeyman goldsmith.[3]

Career

Van Dijck changed career to become an engraver of steel punches, the masters used to stamp moulds, or matrices, used to cast metal type.[lower-alpha 1] On 1 May 1647 he rented a house in Amsterdam which he set up as a type foundry.[4] He became the most prominent type-founder of his time in the Netherlands,[5] cutting type in roman, italic, blackletter,[4] Armenian,[3] music type and probably printers' flowers.[4] In or shortly before 1655 he drew out lettering for rooms in the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, then the city hall.[6] He was buried in Amsterdam in 1669 and his foundry taken over by his son Abraham.[7]

Work

From a surviving 1681 specimen (see below), historian Paul Shaw explains that van Dijck's aesthetic style is "closer in color and spirit to 16th-century French types such as those by Garamont than to those of his contemporaries, which tend to be darker, narrower, and have a taller x-height (a combination often described by type historians as le goût Hollandois)."[8]

Understanding of van Dijck's career has been limited by a lack of knowledge of what types he cut: as was common for pre-nineteenth century printing materials a large proportion of his punches and matrices were lost due to changing artistic tastes in favour of "modern face" typefaces, being destroyed from around 1808 by the Enschedé foundry, which had come to own them, at a time when it was also in financial difficulties, although some survive at Enschedé and others in the collection of Oxford University Press.[4] An impressive but jumbled specimen was issued by the widow of Daniel Elsevier in 1681 offering what had been his foundry for sale, of which a copy survives in the Plantin-Moretus Museum of Antwerp,[9][8][5] and fragments of an earlier specimen are also extant at Cambridge University Library.[1] A specimen issued by van Dijck in 1668/1669 was found to exist in the National Archives in London by historian Justin Howes;[10] according to Lane as of 2013 it had yet to be published.[11]

References
  1. McKitterick, David J. (1977). "A Type Specimen of Christoffel van Dijck?". Quaerendo. 7 (1): 66–75. doi:10.1163/157006977X00062.
  2. Middendorp, Jan (2004). Dutch Type. 010 Publishers. pp. 23–25. ISBN 978-90-6450-460-0.
  3. Lane, John A. (2012). The Diaspora of Armenian Printing, 1512-2012. Amsterdam: Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam. pp. 70–86. ISBN 9789081926409.
  4. Enschedé, Johannes; Lane, John A. (1993). The Enschedé type specimens of 1768 and 1773: a facsimile ([Nachdr. d. Ausg.] 1768. ed.). Stichting Museum Enschedé, the Enschedé Font Foundry, Uitgeverij De Buitenkant. pp. 29–30 etc. ISBN 9070386585.
  5. Lane, John A. (2004). Early Type Specimens in the Plantin-Moretus Museum. Oak Knoll Press. pp. 45–9. ISBN 9781584561392.
  6. Lane, John A. (27 June 2013). "The Printing Office of Gerrit Harmansz van Riemsdijck, Israël Abrahamsz de Paull, Abraham Olofsz, Andries Pietersz, Jan Claesz Groenewoudt & Elizabeth Abrahams Wiaer c.1660-1709". Quaerendo. 43 (4): 311–439. doi:10.1163/15700690-12341283.
  7. Hoeflake, Netty (1973-06-07). "Van Dijck". A Tally of Types. CUP Archive. pp. 113–6. ISBN 978-0-521-09786-4.
  8. Shaw, Paul (2017). Revival Type: Digital Typefaces Inspired by the Past. Yale University Press. pp. 63–4. ISBN 978-0-300-21929-6.
  9. Mosley, James. "Elzevir Letter". Typefoundry (blog). Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  10. ""Proeven van alle de LETTEREN die Gesneden zijn van Christoffel van Dyck."". National Archives. Retrieved 4 July 2019.
  11. "John Lane & Mathieu Lommen: ATypI Amsterdam Presentation". YouTube. ATypI. Retrieved 12 July 2019.
  1. Technically in metal typesetting a distinction is made between the adjustable mould that casts the main body of the type, and the matrix, which is the mould only for the letter shape.
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