Enschede-titlepage proofing print - portrait of Jacobus Franciscus Rosart natus Namurei 1714

Jacques François Rosart (1714,

Namur Namur (; ; ) is a city and municipality in Wallonia, Belgium. It is the capital both of the province of Namur and of Wallonia, hosting the Parliament of Wallonia, the Government of Wallonia and its administration. Namur stands at the confl ...

– 26 May 1777) was a

punchcutter Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould sh ...

, engraver and founder of

metal type In physical typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, used—when lined up with others—to print text. In movable-type printing, the sort or type is cast from a matrix mold and assembled by hand wit ...

from modern

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. Rosart operated a successful

type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and ...

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

after arriving in the city in 1759, and before that worked in

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English language, English) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the Provinces of the Nether ...

. His typefaces were in the "transitional" style, and he also made

script typeface Script typefaces are based on the varied and often fluid stroke created by handwriting. They are generally used for display or trade printing, rather than for extended body text in the Latin alphabet. Some Greek alphabet typefaces, especially ...

s, which he called a ''Financière'' style, music typefaces and shadowed capitals. Digital typefaces based on Rosart's work have been published.

References

Cited literature

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External links

Rosart's type specimens: *
Epreuve des caractères qui se gravent et fondent dans la nouvelle fonderie de Jacques François Rosart
'' 1761 *
Epreuve des caractères qui se gravent & fondent dans la nouvelle fonderie de Jacques François Rosart
'' 1768 *
Epreuves des caractères de la fonderie de la Veuve Decellier, successeur de J. F. Rosart
'' 1779 {{authority control 1714 births 1777 deaths People from Namur (city) Businesspeople from the Austrian Netherlands Typographers and type designers Businesspeople from Brussels