Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos (14 September 1877 – 3 April 1962), better known as S. H. de Roos, was a Dutch

type designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

book cover A book cover is any protective covering used to bind together the pages of a book. Beyond the familiar distinction between hardcovers and paperbacks, there are further alternatives and additions, such as dust jackets, ring-binding, and older f ...

designer and

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

Life and work

De Roos was born in

Drachten Drachten (, ) is a town in the northern Netherlands. It is located in the municipality of Smallingerland, Friesland. It had a population of around 56.098 in 2023 and is the Friesland#Urban areas, second largest town in the province of Friesland. ...

to a cobbler, but moved to

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

at an early age. It was here that, between the ages of twelve and fourteen, he trained to be a

lithographer Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German ...

. Later he studied at the ''Teekenschool voor Kunstambachten'' (The School of Drawing for the Arts and Crafts), part of the

Rijksakademie The Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) was founded in 1870 in Amsterdam. It is a classical academy, a place where philosophers, academics and artists meet to test and exchange ideas and knowledge. The school supports ...

.A. J. C. M. Gabriëls,
Roos, Sjoerd [Hendrik] de (1877-1962)
(in Dutch), ''

Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland The ''Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland 1880–2000'' (BWN) is a Dutch biographical dictionary, in which short biographies of well-known and less well-known but still notable Dutch people are listed. The BWN supplements the '' Nieuw Nederl ...

'', 2013. Retrieved 10 October 2022. In his early years De Roos was inspired by the

Arts and Crafts Movement The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...

. An example of this can be found in his edition of ''Kunst en Maatschappij'' (''Art and Society'' (1903)). As a supporter of

Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis Ferdinand Jacobus Domela Nieuwenhuis (31 December 1846 – 18 November 1919) was a Dutch socialist politician and later a social anarchist and anti-militarist. He was a Lutheran preacher who, after he lost his faith, started a political figh ...

, De Roos attempted to create the ideal of ‘Art to the People’. Between 1907 and 1941 he was employed by the Amsterdam Type foundry (known previously as ''N. Tetterode''), where he further developed his lithographic skills. During this period he designed, a new

type face A typeface (or font family) is a design of letters, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, bold), slope (e.g., italic), width ...

, the ''Hollandsche Mediæval'', the first Dutch made typeface for 150 years. In total De Roos designed twelve type faces, the most successful being the ''Hollandsche mediæval'', the ''Egmont'', the ''Libra'' and the ''De Roos Roman and Italic''. Archive material, as well as the ''Tetterode Collection'' both attributed to De Roos, are available at the Library of the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...

. Further archives are available at the City Library of

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English language, English) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the Provinces of the Nether ...

, the

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museumplein, Museum Square in the stadsdeel, borough of Amsterdam-Zuid, Amsterdam South, ...

, the

Frans Hals Museum The Frans Hals Museum (formerly ''Stedelijk Museum van Haarlem'') is a museum in the North Holland city of Haarlem, the Netherlands, founded in 1862, known as the Art Museum of Haarlem. Its collection is based on the city's own rich collection, b ...

in Haarlem and the ''Museum Smallingerland'' in Drachten.

Typefaces

* Nieuw Javaansch No. 1 (1909)

Luc Devroye Luc P. Devroye is a Belgian computer scientist and mathematician and a James McGill Professor in the School of Computer Science of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Devroye wrote around 300 mathematical articles, mostly on probabi ...

,
Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos
, Home Page Luc Devroye. Retrieved 10 October 2022. * Hollandse Mediaeval (1912) * Zilvertype (1914–1916, with Jean-François van Royen) * Ella Cursief (1916) * Erasmus Mediaeval (c. 1923) * Meidoorn (1928) * Nobel (1929) * Egmont (1933) * Simplex (1937) * Libra Uncial (1938) * De Roos Romein/Cursief (1947) * De Roos Inline

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Roos, S.H. de 1877 births 1962 deaths Dutch graphic designers Dutch typographers and type designers People from Drachten

Life and work

Typefaces

References

Further reading

External links