Joan Michael Fleischman

Biography He was born in Wöhrd, Nuremberg, Fleischman apparently somewhat concentrated on smaller typefaces; the Enschedé's display typefaces were mostly cut by Jacques-François Rosart. A short manuscript attributed to Fleischman, perhaps a draft of part of this work, was acquired by a Dutch bookseller and published in 1994 with English translation. He was also commemorated by the Ploos Van Amstel Brothers' type foundry in the introduction to their specimen following his death. Music font When Breitkopf developed the first typeface for music in 1755, Enschedé wanted to improve on the idea, and hired Fleischman to create a more flexible and accurate system. Soon after, the first Haarlem songbook Haerlemsche Zangen was published with this font. Previous songbooks had had their music engraved on copper plates by musicians. The new font was designed to be used by publishers in the same way that typeface could be used to print words, but this idea was not successful, as the musicians who wrote the music needed training in order to use the font. An innovative musician who used the Enschedé-Fleischman font was Leopold Mozart for his Dutch edition of his Instructions to play the violin in 1766. His son the wunderkind played the organ in the St. Bavochurch across the street from Enschedé's publishing company in the same year.

Posthumous reputation Flesichman's typefaces have a high x-height (large lower-case letters, following the "Dutch taste" style of the preceding century) and strong appearance on the page, and have not always been well-reviewed aesthetically. In 1777 Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf considered Fleischman one of the three greatest punchcutters of the eighteenth century alongside Fournier and John Baskerville (although in practice Baskerville's typefaces were probably cut for him by John Handy), although he was not impressed by every aspect of his aesthetic. They generally did not appeal to printers and type designers in the twentieth century, for instance receiving criticism from Daniel Berkeley Updike's influential Printing Types,

Interest in Fleischman's work has been greater in the digital type period, and numerous digital type designs have been influenced by Fleischman's work. Several contemporary designs influenced by Fleischman have been intended for newspapers, including Hoefler & Co.'s Mercury and Fenway by Matthew Carter, son of Harry Carter. Kris Sowersby comments that "for all their extroverted detailing, Fleischman’s text typefaces work extraordinarily well. Even colour and efficient forms make them interesting and readable." Matthew Carter, who interned at the Enschedé type foundry as a young man, comments "I’ve always liked Fleischmann’s faces for small sizes...I think Fleischmann was wonderful at doing those tiny faces that were very legible." DTL Fleischmann, published by Dutch Type Library, is a particularly faithful digital revival of his work with optical sizes.

Gallery