Figure 78
Types used by Hentzsken, Berlin
From Druckschriften des XV bis XVIII Jahrhunderts (facsimile), Historia vnnd Beschreibung influentischer, elementischer vnd natürlicher Wirckungen, aller fremden vnnd heimischen Erdgewechssen (scan)
1578
In Leonhardt Thurneysser zum Thurn’s Historia…aller…Erdgeweschssen, printed at Berlin by Michael Hentzsken, a schwabacher type is used. This last book shows the rate at which both type and composition went downhill after the middle of the sixteenth century—very far from the simplicity of a hundred years before. Pages composed in schwabacher have head-lines set in tortured forms of fraktur, and words in italic capitals are introduced into lines of black-letter. Then again, italic is employed for Latin terms and names in the midst of black-letter text, and the notes are a muddle of roman and black-letter characters. Paragraphs are indented, and yet paragraph marks are used. Even the hands and asterisks which mark the paragraphs are ugly in form. Everything about the composition is bad!