Simon de Colines

Simon de Colines (c. 1480 – c. 1546), a Parisian printer, was one of the first printer type of the French Renaissance. He was active in Paris as a printer and worked exclusively for the university in Paris from 1520 to 1546.^[1] Colines used elegant roman and italic types and a Greek type, with accents, that were superior to its predecessors. His books usually were small in format and superbly crafted.

Colines was associated with the elder Henri Estienne and continued his work after his death in 1520. Colines married Estienne's widow, Guyonne Viart, and inherited charge of the press and her six children.^[2]:13 He continued working in Estienne's shop until Robert I (Estienne’s son) entered the business in 1526, by which time Colines had set up his own shop nearby at Soleil d'or and helped Robert become established as a printer without ties to the university.^[1] For the next thirteen years Colines would cut most of his common print types: romans, italics, and his two best greeks. ^[2]:15 In 1528 he began to use italic type. Colines was recognized for using rabbits near a tree as part of his pressmark, but after leaving Soleil d'or he would only occasionally put rabbits on his publications. He also used satyrs and philosophers on his books. ^{[2] :17-19}

Colines may not have been a major contributor of technical innovations relating to typography, but he certainly was an intellectual pioneer in his field. Many of the important written structural elements that we expect to find in books are components that he contributed: title page organization, chapter headings, page numbers, table of contents, bibliographies, etc. Most of the text that Colines printed were composed by men who shaped intellectual advancement: Cicero, Virgil, Euclid, etc.^{[2]:11, 52} Although he was not a scholar himself, he extended the range of the Estienne firm’s learned and scientific works to include the natural sciences, cosmology, and astrology. He is credited with the design of italic and Greek fonts and of a roman face for St. Augustine’s Sylvius (1531), from which the Garamond types were derived. In 1525 he published the notable Grandes Heures de Simon de Colines, with decorations by Geoffroy Tory.

Coline's types were well renowned among and often praised by authors and poets of the period including Hubert Sussaneau, Salmon Macrinus, Nicolas Bourbon, and Jean Visagier.^[2]:59

Near the end of his life and after moving to a new facility, Colines let his stepson-in-law, Chaudière take over his location at Soleil d'or and would send him projects either because Colines was ill or overloaded. Upon Coline's death it was Chaudière and not Robert who took over Colines' backlist. ^[2]

Bibliography

• Simon de Colines: An Annotated Catalogue of 230 Examples of his Press, 1520-1546. Salt Lake City: Brigham Young Univ Library, 1995. With an introduction by Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer. (based on the unique collection of the university Brigham Young University and collected by Fred Schreiber who represents 230 editions published by Simon de Colines). Books represented in this catalogue represent nearly a third of the production of Colines during the quarter of century of its career.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Simon de Colines.

• Typographic Exemplars
• Title page by Oronce Fine, from the print shop of Simon de Colines
• Kay Amert research notes on Simon de Colines and his typography, MSS 6804 Series 1 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University
• Simon de Colines, UA 5572 Series 2 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University