Joncheres Lexicon

This is from a French-Swedish dictionary from 1809 that I found in my family's storage space. It's format is 4"x4"x1.5" and is printed on very thin bible paper. Its now falling apart, so I thought I'd document a part of it for people to see. The title is set in what was the traditional way of setting headlines back then which is in a larger size and tracked out to a large degree. This was before bold faces took over as the primary way of showing something of importance. You also have a decorative ornament which is something you only see nowadays when someone is (perhaps) ironically referencing this period of typography.

I noticed immediately the crudeness of the typesetting, as it was obviously set by hand. The mechanical straightness of the machine isn't shown, but this makes it a more interesting thing to behold, because all the inconsistencies make it charming. Notice how the French words are set in a garaldic serif face and those in Swedish are set in a fraktur font. These days the gothic typeface would probably be replaced with a legible sans serif instead. But its also funny because it says something about the differing cultures. French, with its own Garamond, and Swedish with a more northern European style like the blackletter.

-Colin