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Garamond Old-Style French Serif

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Garamond is the archetypal French humanist Old-Style serif, cut by Claude Garamont in Paris in the 1530s and codified in the 1592 Egenolff-Berner specimen. Its structure is calligraphic and pen-drawn — inclined oblique stress, a small aperture, letters that read as written before they were cut. This system dresses those forms in their authentic ground: aged laid rag book paper, a muted foxed warm-grey sheet darker than fresh cream, printed in dense black ink with rubricated red for initials and section marks. The page is a single justified column with wide margins, drop initials and running heads — a Renaissance leaf, not a webpage pretending to be one.

Learn more about the Garamond Old-Style French Serif style

  • OriginParis, France (French Renaissance printing)
  • Periodromans cut mid-1530s–1540s; definitive Berner specimen composed 1592
  • DesignerClaude Garamont · Egenolff-Berner foundry
  • MovementsFrench humanist Old-Style serif · Renaissance red-and-black printing

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