Mercure
Abyme · Charles Mazé · 2010
A serif typeface by Charles Mazé rooted in French and German epigraphic type history, drawing on Louis Perrin's Caractères Augustaux and Théophile Beaudoire's Elzévir for its forms.
About
Designed between 2010 and 2021, Mercure traces a line from the Roman capitalis monumentalis through the nineteenth-century epigraphic typefaces produced in Lyon, Paris and Berlin for transcribing classical inscriptions into print. The Regular and Italic take the French Renaissance lowercase and epigraphic uppercase as their models, while the accompanying Transcript style provides a fixed-width set of signs and symbols for scholarly transcription work, including fragmented, false, broken and missing letterforms. Transcript is included with any purchase of the Regular or Italic.
Classification
Rooted in French Renaissance models for the lowercase and Roman capitalis monumentalis for the uppercase, Mercure draws directly from epigraphic and elzevir typographic traditions, placing it firmly within the humanist serif category.