Alphabéte de üblichsten Sprachen ... Tableau de calligraphie ... Alphabets of languages the most customary

Munich: Anton Dreer, 1816. Large, beautiful broadside in fine condition, approx. 30½" x 23½" (775 x 590 mm.), engraved with 15 samples of various fonts intermingled with 5 engraved vignettes, printed on thick wove paper with deckled edge. A rare type specimen sheet with ornaments for the use of map-makers. The imprint notes in French and German that it was "composed, engraved, and published by J. B. Seitz (1786-1859), an engraver for the Royal Bavarian Bureau of Statistics and Topography (Königlichen Bayrischen Statisch-Topographischen Bureau), which was responsible for the manufacture of official maps, charts, and plans. He was one of the first technicians to work on prototypes of lithographic maps, and was considered a leader in the fields of cartographic design and printing. This specimen sheet was presumably printed for cartographic institutes, publishers, and mapmakers. The subtitle, Alphabets of languages the most customary, is in German, English, French, and Italian, and the remaining captions, all in different ornamental fonts, are in German and French, as is the imprint. Included are ornate alphabets in Fraktur, several different italics (dubbed English, Italian, and French Letters), gothic, roman, and Greek alphabets, and the German Currentschrift. Three of the engraved vignettes, arrayed down the center of the sheet are pictorial. At the top is a romantic landscape in which a plaque leaning against a tree bears the appropriate motto "Nihil est Simul et Inventum et Perfectum." The others show a funerary monument in a pastoral glade, and a military trophy with the emblematic initials of Rome (SPQR) and the motto "Et arevivitur patriae" below. Apparently unrecorded. No copies found in any of the German national library OPACs and none in OCLC or NUC. For information of Seitz see R. A. Winkler's Die Frühzeit der deutschen Lithographie (1975).