But on the night before the foundry was to debut the typeface at a Frankfurt book fair, a fire broke out in the storage room. The master punches—the very metal molds needed to cast the type—were reduced to slag. De Vries vanished. The project was declared cursed. Only a few paper proofs survived, buried in the Hausbuch .
I asked Klaus if I could scan the proofs. He shrugged. "For what? The ghost is dead." Ars Nova Regular Font Free Download
Klaus leaned over my shoulder, his pipe smoke curling around the page. "Ah. That one. My father’s folly." But on the night before the foundry was
was alive again. And because Otto Vogel believed that type belongs to the world of ideas, not the vaults of the wealthy, I have kept his spirit alive. It is free. Not a demo. Not a trial. Free. The project was declared cursed
I was knee-deep in the archives of a defunct Leipzig print shop, cataloging type specimens from the 1960s. Dust motes danced in the slivers of afternoon light. The shop’s owner, a gruff man named Klaus, had warned me that the basement held only "junk." But junk, to a typographer, is often buried treasure.
When I finally installed the beta font and typed the word "Resurrection" , I wept.
By Eleanor Vance, Typography Historian