Letters & Lettering: A Treatise with 200 Examples. Frank Chouteau Brown
href="#ulink_aacd0e4b-30b5-562f-9617-9662a8225ec4">7, which shows some interesting modern forms intended for cutting in granite, should be studied for the effect of the cast shadows; while 14, a redrawing of inscriptions on the Harvard Architectural Building, Cambridge, Mass., exhibits an excellent type of letter with widened thin lines for v-cutting in sandstone.
The special requirements of the stone-cut forms for either incised or raised inscriptions are, however, quite apart from the subject of this book, and are too various to be taken up in greater detail here. It is important, nevertheless, that the designer should be reminded always to make allowance for the material in which a letter was originally executed. Otherwise, if exactly copied in other materials, he may find the result annoyingly unsatisfactory.
The examples of letters taken from Roman and Renaissance Italian monuments, shown in the pages of this chapter, will illustrate the variety of individual letter forms used by the Classic and Renaissance designers. The shape of the same letter will often be found to vary in the same inscription and even in apparently analogous cases. The designers evidently had in mind more than the directly adjacent words, and sometimes even considered the relation of their lettering to objects outside the panel altogether. This is especially true in the work of the Italian Renaissance, which is almost invariably admirable in both composition and arrangement.
Figures 8 to 22 show examples, drawn from various sources, which exhibit different treatments of the classic Roman letter forms. The differentiation will be found to lie largely in the widths of the letters themselves, and in the treatment of the serifs, angles, and varying widths of line. Figures 11 to 13 and 16 to 22 are redrawn from rubbings of Roman incised inscriptions. Figures 16 and 17 show beautifully proportioned letters cut in marble with unusual care and refinement, considering the large size of the originals. A later Roman form of less refinement but of greater strength and carrying power, and for that reason better adapted to many modern uses, is shown in 18 and 19. In this case the original letters were cut about seven and one-half inches high. The letters in 20 are curiously modern in character. Part of the panel of Roman lettering shown in 21 exhibits the use of a form very like that shown in 18 and 19. Figure 11 shows a detail composed in a quite representative fashion; while on the other hand figure 12 depicts a Roman letter of quite unusual character, and of a form evidently adapted from pen work, in which the shapes are narrow and crowded, while the lines are thickened as though they were of the classical square outline. The bits of old Roman inscriptions shown in 8 to 10 and in 13 are included to exhibit various different forms and treatments of classic capitals.
After the fall of Rome and during the Dark Ages the practice of lettering, at least in so far as the Roman form was concerned, was distinctly retrograde. With the advent of the Renaissance, however, the purest classic forms were revived; and indeed the Italian Renaissance seems to have been the golden age of lettering. With the old Roman fragments of the best period constantly before their eyes the Renaissance artists of Italy seem to have grasped