Dossier Scriptorium de Toulouse

A pedagogy of  the written and drawn letter.History, testimonies, transmission. By Juliette Flécheux, Manuel Sesma Prieto, Thomas Huot-Marchand, and Jan Middendorp The history, role, and influence of the Scriptorium de Toulouse, a French type design and calligraphy workshop that existed from 1967 to 2005, are little known. The 2019 passing of Bernard Arin, director of the workshop from 1982 to 2005, confirmed how urgent it was to document and share this educational and human story, with the workshop’s discontinuous activity, and the fact of it closing twenty years ago, leading to it being forgotten, and its archives scattered. The activity of the Scriptorium de Toulouse was critical for French type design, in an industry that was marked by major transformations and pushed to the brink of collapse. The Scriptorium de Toulouse reintroduced and defended the teaching of the written and drawn letter, playing a key role in the revival of type design that was initiated, in extremis, in 1982.