I have come across samples that seem to be the same historical blackletter font, in scans of German books from the 1700s. I at first thought it was the font “Renaissance Kanzlei” by Bauer & Co but when putting individual caps side by side it is definitely different though stylistically similar.

 

I am asking just out of curiosity and would be interested to know any info about who designed and/or cast the font, and a name if it ever had one. Or was naming fonts a later practice? Historical typography is a pretty new interest for me so there's still a lot I don't know about it.

Source 1

Gesammelte Nachrichten von dem Erdbeben der Stadt Lissabon (1756)

 

Source 2

Gedanken von den Eigenschaften, Wirkungen und Ursachen der Electricität by Johann Winkler (1744)

 

Source 3

Beyträge zur Naturgeschichte der kleinsten Wasserthiere by Johann Conrad Eichhorn (1718)

 

Source 4

Fvneralia der weyland durchlauchtigsten Fürstin und Frau.... (1742)

 

2 hours ago, SophieWoods said:

Or was naming fonts a later practice?

Yes. Also, foundries ofter shared their matrices, so different foundries offered the same designs. 

One of your sources is from the Breitkopf publishing house, which was also a famous foundry. If I would had to start somewhere, I would try to find specimens of their typefaces from that time. 

Thanks for the info! I looked at this Breitkopf type specimen catalogue and it has the font in question. It also says it was cut in brass by Johann Peter Art-, though the name is cut off, but with a little more searching I found this page about Johann Peter Artopaeus which also has samples of the font. This has satisfied my curiosity, thankyou 🙂