Ten years or so after his unique treatment of Garalde design with Trump Mediaeval, Georg Trump took on the transitional genre with Mauritius, which was to be his last typeface. He started working on it in 1965. The Stuttgart-based Weber foundry published a pamphlet previewing it under the name Barock-Antiqua in 1967, then announced the availability of the metal types (a roman, a bold and an italic) a year later. The global printing industry was already in third gear with cold type technology, so there weren't that many takers, and Weber closed its doors after more than 140 years in business. Subsequently, Trump’s swan song was unfairly overlooked by typography historians and practitioners. It never made it to film technology or scalable fonts. Thus, one of the most original text faces ever made, done by one of the most influential German type designers of the 20th century, was buried under decades of multiple technology shifts and fading records. The metal cuts of Mauritius seem to have been rushed in Weber’s desperation to stay afloat. So the only impressions left of the metal type, the sole records remaining of this design, show substantial problems. Some can be attributed to technological limitations, but some issues in colour, precision and fitting are also quite apparent, particularly in Mauritius Kursiv, the italic metal cut. This digital version is the result of obsessing over a great designer’s final type design effort, and trying to understand the reasons behind its vanishing from typography’s collective mind. While that understanding remains for the most part elusive, the creative and technical work done on these fonts produced very concrete results. All the apparent issues in the metal types were resolved, the design was expanded into a larger family of three weights and two widths, and plenty of 21st century bells and whistles were added. For the full background story, design analysis, details, features, specimens and print tests, consult the PDF available in the Gallery section of this page.

Located in the Valencian Community, Spain, Manises is very famous for its pottery. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Manises was the most important production center for Spanish-Moresca ceramics, which was exported throughout Europe. At the beginning of the 16th century, Manises tiles were very commercially successful, especially of the heraldic type. Much appreciated by the Aragonese crown, Manises ceramics was also exported to France, Italy, and especially to Naples. As a big fan of Paterna and Manises ceramics, Naples influenced other Italian courts. Calixto III and Alejandro VI continuously commissioned Valencian pieces and tiles for the halls of the Vatican. The export also extended to Sicily, Venice, Turkey, Cyprus and even Flanders and the Baltic countries. The palaces of all the courts of Europe were enriched with this art. Many painters reproduced it in his paintings. It can be seen in the work of Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, and in the central panel of a triptych by Hugo Van der Goes (Uffizi Gallery, Florence). In this city there are also some frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio in which the Arabic-Valencian earthenware appears. Manises font is inspired by a text written on a 16th century tile, but adapting it to our times and giving it a very modern air. It is characterised by being able to combine uppercase and lowercase letters in a conventional manner, or use only capitals, or only lowercase letters, or, a random combination of both. It comes with an extra of many ligatures, stylistic alternates, and a set of very useful catchwords, to give more modernity to your text. This OpenType features may only be accessible via OpenType-aware applications, or the Character Map to view and copy any of the extra characters to paste into your favourite text editor/app. Manises looks lovely on wedding invitations, greeting cards, logos, posters, labels, t-shirt design, logos, children's material, in ink or water-colour based designs, fashion, magazines, food packaging and menus, book covers and whatever your imagination holds!