Hendrik van den Keere

Hendrik van den Keere (c. 1540/2 – 1580) was a punchcutter, or cutter of punches to make metal type, who lived in Ghent in modern Belgium.

This style remained popular in the Low Countries after his death; the standard term for it is "Dutch taste" or goût Hollandois, the description used by Pierre-Simon Fournier for it.

[23][24][25][3][26][27][28] Hendrik Vervliet has suggested that the goal was to create roman type "comparable for weight with Gothic letters"[29] at a time when blackletter was still very popular for continuous reading in body text.

[31] Smeijers noted that van den Keere's style could not be an accident as he "could work perfectly in the French tradition" when he wanted to, when cutting smaller types.

[50] There in 1587 at the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, Colette van den Keere married Jodocus Hondius,[51][52] a mapmaker who was probably also a punchcutter.

[11] Plantin's successors preserved the sixteenth-century materials and records of his printing office, which became the Plantin-Moretus Museum, and a large amount of van den Keere's work survives intact there.

[55][13] Thomas de Vechter, van den Keere's foreman, also acquired many of his materials from his widow, documented in a surviving inventory.

[58][62] In 2016 Blokland received a doctorate on the spacing and proportions of early metal type, including van den Keere's, from Leiden University.

[30] Hoefler & Co.'s release notes for its Quarto typeface describe van den Keere's Two-Line Double Pica display-sized roman (shown above; size is around 42pt)[65] as "an arresting design marked by striking dramatic tensions";[66][26][27] designer Sara Soskolne has said that she was attracted to "its crispness, its drama" but noted that they removed details such as the wide horizontal of the centre bar of the 'E' which she felt did not work.