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Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World Online Jim6U [Read download] Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World Online [Jim6U.ebook] Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World Pdf Free Valerie Lester ePub | *DOC | audiobook | ebooks | Download PDF Download Now Free Download Here Download eBook #929797 in Books 2015-08-11Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 10.20 x 1.20 x 7.30l, .92 #File Name: 1567925286288 pages | File size: 77.Mb Valerie Lester : Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World: 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Valerie Lester has done a great service to the type community by writing Giambattista BodoniBy Cara Di EdwardoValerie Lester has done a great service to the type community by writing Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World. Until now there has been no biography of Bodoni in English, apart for T.M. Cleland’s short biographical sketch written nearly 100 years ago.However, this book can also be enjoyed by those who love biography, Italy, and food. Believe me! It shines light on the era in which Bodoni lived (1740-1813), the places in Italy where he thrived, the court of Parma, his worshipful admirers (including another printer, Benjamin Franklin, and an emperor, Napoleon), the food he ate, and the role of his wife who continued to run the press after Bodoni’s death and was responsible for the publication of his masterwork, the Manuale tipografico of 1818.Not only is this biography eminently readable, it is a beautiful example of book art at its finest. Bodoni himself would have been proud of it.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Just Your Type of Book!By Raymond S. Nelson Jr.While several books have dealt with the life of Giambattista Bodoni, they are all in Italian. To my knowledge none have been available in English. Recognizing that this gap needed filling, Valerie Lester has amassed a remarkable amount of information about one of the greatest typographers ever, as well as providing a good 'feel' for the world in which he lived and worked. Ms. Lester conducts this narrative with amazing detail -- the result of years of research, often with primary sources -- with a lively writing style that is a delight to read. Clearly a 'foodie', Ms. Lester even considers the cuisine placed upon Bodoni's table, especially relevant as, in the autumn years of his life, G.B. became 'Bodoni Ultra Bold Expanded'! We still see the work of Giambattista Bodoni in our everyday lives, through the widespread use of his types (now rendered digitally) and yet we (I) have known so little about him. There is so much to learn about this unbelievably prolific, work driven man and it's all in Valerie Lester's great new book, Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A Prince of PrintersBy Rob HardyLike many people, when I get a new book, I look toward the back pages. The acknowledgements are always interesting, and I browse the index, but what I look for first is the very back page, to see if there is a colophon. I like to learn about the type used in printing the book; I am no expert in picking out different fonts, but it is fun to read about the one I will be spending time with, where it came from, and how old it is. There was no surprise when I turned to the back of the current book: “Set in ITC Bodoni and Bauer Bodoni, both modern digital versions of the type designs of Giambattista Bodoni.” Why, of course; the book is _Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World_ (David R. Godine, Publisher) by Valerie Lester. These days, anyone with a laptop can select and adjust fonts, but it used to be that designing and arranging type to make the resultant words legible was only done by a few printers and designers. Bodoni was the master of such arts in a time when printers could be superstars. He was the creator of hundreds of typefaces, including the ones influenced by Roman carving, as turned into type by Baskerville and Didot, but Bodoni renewed them in elegance, upright design, and high contrast between thick and thin strokes. We are still using his letters today because they are still a model of legibility, and they are even stylish (the cover masthead of _Vanity Fair_ is Bodoni). As Lester says in her deeply appreciative and fascinating book, we will be using them a century from now, and thereon.Bodoni was the grandson and the son of printers, born in Saluzzo, Italy, in 1740. He showed skill at the trade, and got further training in Rome, but the Duke of Parma was interested in boosting the prestige of his city, and part of the plan was to have a grand royal press. Bodoni moved to Parma in 1768, and the royal press was to be his headquarters for the rest of his life. The court knew how important the press and Bodoni were, and he got generous funding, superb staff, and high quality materials. He also established his own foundry through which he sold his own productions. The presses issued a huge variety of material: a daily paper, posters, poems, the English gothic novel _The Castle of Otranto_, classics, plays, and royal proclamations. Bodoni’s work was valued all over the world. Visitors like Napoleon came calling, as did countless scholars and other printers. He had a wide circle of correspondents, and shrewdly sent out copies of the works of which he was most proud to those who could appreciate them. One of his fans was the printer Benjamin Franklin. His magnum opus was a huge specimen book with examples of type, his _Manuele tipografico_. The two volumes consist of page after page of examples of Roman letters, as well as alphabets of Hebrew, Arabic, Oriental languages, and others. There were ornaments and examples of the printing of music, and much more. The book was published by his wife Margherita five years after Bodoni died in 1813; they had a wonderfully supportive marriage and she had great enthusiasm for her husband’s work.Bodoni has a museum, of course in Parma. You can go there and even handle some of the punches Bodoni made; they have 22,618 of them, and every one is just as ready for use as the day Bodoni finished it. He has been gone for two hundred years, and his influence has not waned. It is here in this gorgeous book, not just in the shapes of the letters, but in design, layout, plates, and illustrations. It is simply a beautiful object, one that Bodoni would have appreciated. He had written about his four basic principles of typography: regularity, neatness and refinement, good taste, and grace. This appealing biography is mounted in a display of them all. A lively, lavishly illustrated biography of the great printer Bodoni, vividly describing his work, life, and times while justifying his reputation as the "prince of typographers." This is the first English-language biography of the relentlessly ambitious and incomparably talented printer Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813). Born to a printing family in the small foothill town of Saluzzo, he left his comfortable life to travel to Rome in 1758 where he served as an apprentice of Cardinal Spinelli at the Propaganda Fide press. There, under the sponsorship of Ruggieri, his close friend, mentor, and protector, he learned all aspects of the printing craft. Even then, his real talent, indeed his genius, lay in type design and punchcutting, especially of the exotic foreign alphabets needed by the papal office to spread the faith.His life changed when in 1768 at age 28 he was invited by the young Duke of Parma to abandon Rome for that very French city to establish and direct the ducal press. He remained in Parma, overseeing a vast variety of printing, some of it pedestrian, but much of it glorious. And all of it making use of the typefaces he personally designed and engraved.This fine book goes beyond Bodoni's capacity as a printer; it examines the life and times in which he lived, the turbulent and always fragile political climate, the fascinating cast of characters that enlivened the ducal court, the impressive list of visitors making the pilgrim- age to Parma, and the unique position Parma occupied, politically Italian but very much French in terms of taste and culture. Even the food gets its due (and in savory detail). The illustrations-of the city, of the press, of the types and matrices-are compelling enough, but most striking are the pages from the books he designed. And especially, pages from his typographic masterpiece, the Manuale Tipografico, painstakingly prepared by his wife Ghitta, posthumously published in two volumes, and displaying the myriad typefaces in multiple sizes that Bodoni had designed and engraved over a long and prolific career.Intriguing, scholarly, visually arresting, and designed and printed to Bodoni's standards, this title belongs on the shelf of any self-respecting bibliophile. It not only makes for compelling reading, it will be considered the biography of record of a great printer for years to come. Valerie Lester has produced a first-rate, lushly illustrated biography of the creative genius who came up with the [Bodoni] font.--Jan Gardener, The Boston GlobeThere has been no extended biography of Bodoni in English until now. Lester comes at it with freshness and enthusiasm....she has provided much about Bodoni's circles not previously available in English.
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