page_title: Ehrhardt (typeface)
section_title: Historical background
hierarchical_section_title: Ehrhardt (typeface) / Historical background
caption_attribution_description: Miklós Misztótfalusi Kis: Apologia Bibliorum, 1697
context_page_description: Ehrhardt is an old-style serif typeface released by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1938. Ehrhardt is a modern adaptation of printing types of "stout Dutch character" from the Dutch Baroque tradition sold by the Ehrhardt foundry in Leipzig. These were cut by the Hungarian-Transylvanian pastor and punchcutter Miklós Tótfalusi Kis while in Amsterdam in the period from 1680 to 1689.
  From 1937 to 1938, Monotype re-cut the type for modern-day usage, and it has become a popular book typeface. Ehrhardt has a slightly condensed design, giving it a strongly vertical, crisp appearance.
context_section_description: Miklós Kis, a Transylvanian Protestant pastor and schoolteacher, became deeply interested in printing after being sent to Amsterdam to help print a Hungarian Protestant translation of the Bible. This was a period of considerable prosperity for the Netherlands and a time when its styles of printing were very influential across Europe, making it a centre for the creation of new typefaces. He developed a second career as a punchcutter, an engraver of the punches used as a master for making moulds for metal type, working on commission for printers and governments. Kis returned to Transylvania around 1689 and may have left matrices (the moulds used to cast type) in Leipzig on his way home. The Ehrhardt type foundry of Leipzig released a surviving specimen sheet of them around 1720.
  Kis's typefaces were in the tradition of Dutch and German printing developed over the previous century that would later be called the "Dutch taste" (goût hollandois), a term originating from the writings of Pierre Simon Fournier in the next century. This developed the influence of French typefounding such as the typefaces engraved by Claude Garamond with a smooth, even structure and 'e' with a level cross-stroke, by increasing the stroke width, boosting the x-height (height of lower-case letters) and reducing the length of the descenders to achieve a noticeably darker colour on the page.
  Kis's surviving matrices were first acquired by Stempel, and are now held in the collection of the Druckmuseum (Museum of Printing), Darmstadt. They were earlier often called the Janson designs, after the Dutch printer Anton Janson, based in Leipzig, who it was once believed might have created them, and Linotype's revival of the same designs in a less condensed form accordingly is named Janson. Kis's identity as the maker of the typefaces was rediscovered by comparison with type from Hungarian archive sources (including an autobiography) on which his name was identified.
caption: A book printed by Kis in Claudiopolis (modern name Cluj-Napoca) in 1697, after his return to Transylvania. It defends his somewhat contentious choices of editing and orthography in his Hungarian printing.
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