Christoffel van Dijck

This detail of a map by Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode (1647) shows the Elandsstraat and the Hazenstraat in the middle; a little bit down is the location of two houses under one roof with a portal (to an inn), a barn and a garden.

Van Dijck was born in Dexheim, now in Germany, to a Dutch Protestant family.[5] They came from Breberen (in the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg), and settled near Frankfurt. His father Gilbert Breberenus van den Dijck was a Calvinist minister,[6] like his grandfather, uncle and his brother. Christoffel was trained as a goldsmith,[7] perhaps in Frankenthal, where Walloon and Flemish refugees (Calvinists) set up small manufacturies. By 1640 he moved to Amsterdam as a journeyman.[8]

Van Dijck changed career to become an engraver of steel punches, the masters used to stamp moulds, or matrices, used to cast metal type.[lower-alpha 2] How he began this career change is not documented; Lane speculates that he may have begun engraving types for other typefounders.[8] On 11 October 1642 he applied to marry Swaentje Harmens from Nordhorn, the widow of a former minister, giving his age as 36.[9] He lived at Jodenbreestraat but in 1645 he moved to an area for labourers and crafsmen called the Jordaan.

On 1 May 1647 he rented a house on the Bloemgracht in which he set up a type foundry.[5][8][10] This was a more prestigious address (although the house was in poor condition)[5] and close to the printing office of Joan Blaeu, who became a client.[8]

In 1664, a year of plague, he bought two houses in Elandsstraat, a former inn, barn and garden and borrowed money from two ministers.[11] He died in November 1669 and was buried in the nearby Westerkerk.

Van Dijck became the most prominent type-founder of his time in the Netherlands,[12] cutting type in roman, italic, blackletter,[13] Armenian,[7] music type[14] and probably printers' flowers.[15] In or shortly before 1655 he drew out lettering for rooms in the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, then the city hall.[16]

Yisus vordi (Jesus the son), a book printed by Van Dijck's client Matteos Tsaretsi in 1661. The body text uses van Dijck's Text bolorgir Armenian type.[17]

Van Dijck worked extensively for Armenian printers in Amsterdam. On 27 November 1658 he contracted with the Armenian Matteos Tsaretsi (Matheos van Tsar in Dutch) to make punches and matrices to print an Armenian bible, and continued to work on Armenian types for the rest of his life.[18]

On his death, his foundry was taken over by his son Abraham (1645-1672), who was also a punchcutter.[19] Abraham van Dijck sold matrices to Thomas Marshall on behalf of Bishop John Fell in Oxford for Oxford University Press, many of which survive, as does Marshall's correspondence.[20][21][22] Marshall wrote to Fell in April 1670 that "this last winter had sent van Dijck and [Bartholomeus] Voskens, the two best artists in this country, to their graves."[20]

Abraham van Dijck suffered from poor health, documented in his and Marshall's correspondence,[23] and died prematurely in February 1672.[24][9] The following April the foundry was auctioned,[19] and bought by Daniel Elzevir.[25] In 1681 it was bought by Joseph Athias, the printer of books in Hebrew and who cooperated with the widow of Jan Jacobsz. Schipper printing English bibles.[26][25][27][19] In 1702 his son Manuel Athias sold his part in the foundry to the heir Cornelia Schipper.[28] In 1755 the family closed the business at Nieuwe Herengracht; the foundry was bought by Jan Roman the younger (1709-1770), bookseller in the Kalverstraat.[29] In 1767 the foundry was auctioned again,[30] and materials bought by both the Enschedé foundry in Haarlem and the Ploos van Amstel brothers in Amsterdam, the latter bought by Enschedé in 1799.[30][31]

Blackletter types by van Dijck compared to those cut by Joan Michael Fleischman in the following century.

From a surviving 1681 specimen, historian Paul Shaw explains that van Dijck's aesthetic style is "closer in color and spirit to 16th-century French types such as those by Garamont than to those of his contemporaries, which tend to be darker, narrower, and have a taller x-height (a combination often described by type historians as le goût Hollandois)."[32] His blackletter types are ornate, with many teardrop terminals, especially on the capitals, apparently following the lead of types cut by Nicolaes Briot.[13]

Understanding of van Dijck's career has been limited by a lack of knowledge of what types he cut: as was common for pre-nineteenth century printing materials a large proportion of his punches and matrices were lost due to changing artistic tastes in favour of "modern face" typefaces, being destroyed from around 1808 by Enschedé at a time when it was also in financial difficulties, although some survive at Enschedé,[33] and others in the collection of Oxford University Press.[21] An impressive but jumbled specimen was issued by the widow of Daniel Elzevir in 1681 offering what had been his foundry for sale, of which a single copy survives in the Plantin-Moretus Museum of Antwerp.[34][35][12][25] Fragments of an earlier specimen are also extant at Cambridge University Library.[2] A specimen issued by van Dijck in 1668/1669 was found to exist in the National Archives in London by historian Justin Howes;[36] according to John A. Lane as of 2013 it had yet to be published.[16][37]

Besides van Dijck's own types, his foundry apparently owned some older types: by the year after his death Abraham van Dijck owned matrices for a Greek type cut by Robert Granjon in Garmond size.[38] Marshall bought matrices for this type which survive at Oxford University Press, probably from Abraham van Dijck, or possibly another source in the Netherlands; if they did come from van Dijck his foundry was apparently able to replace them with another set of matrices, since the type is advertised on the 1681 specimen.[38] On the 1681 specimen a number of other types are also by Granjon, with one titling and one roman by Claude Garamond and another titling by Hendrik van den Keere.[21] According to Marshall Amsterdam typefounders were able to buy earlier types from Frankfurt.[30][39]

Several digital fonts based on van Dijck's work have been published, including DTL Elzevir (1992) by Dutch Type Library.[40]