All About Auriol

"London's handwriting"

Some typefaces have become strongly identified with a particular geographical location. Edward Johnston’s eponymous railway alphabet has been called “London’s handwriting” and may be found across the capital’s transport networks.  

Created in collaboration with his student, Eric Gill, the face has undergone a couple of facelifts but remains faithful to the calligraphic origins of Johnston’s design, as the diamond-shaped tittles of the “i” and “j” testify. 

Across the square mile of the City of London, and in the London Borough of Lambeth, you will also find the ubiquitous use of German designer Berthold Wolpe’s Albertus, on street nameplates and public signage. Wolpe was a Lambeth resident, so it seems apt that his best-known face should be used in the London suburb which became his adopted home. 

On the other side of La Manche lies the land of Gauloises and garlic – and another typeface which has become the distinctive signature of a capital city. George Auriol’s Parisian typeface is to be found across the metropolis and its Gallic charm long ago established a unique graphic identity for the capital. 

Born Jean Georges Huyut, ‘George Auriol’ (1863-1938) was a French graphic artist who flourished as a typeface designer for just three years. The French writer André Billy described him as “modest, cordial and affable” and as “a designer of letters…whose taste marked the entire 1900 period as much as that of the Grassets and Mucha”. The Auriol typeface became the signature face of the Art Nouveau movement. 

George Auriol established such a strong graphic identity for the French capital that it still endures 125 years later. The typeface was the inspiration for the traditional lettering used at the entrances of the Paris Metro stations, designed by Hector Guimard. 

Auriol was acquired by the Sheffield typefoundry of Stephenson Blake and appeared in their specimen books from 1907. Some punches, unfinished types and “drives” (unjustified matrices) were purchased from the originating Peignot foundry in Paris, from which finished matrices were produced in Sheffield for casting on English bodies. Invoices for the sale of this material survive in the Stephenson Blake archives, held at Wroughton. 

An outline version of the Auriol face was also offered by the Adana company (Twickenham) by arrangement with Stephenson Blake, although only upper-case, numbers and punctuation were available. These types were cast in Sheffield by Stephenson Blake and re-packaged in small quantities by Adana for sale to hobby printers. 

By the time the Auriol typeface became available to British printers George Auriol’s anonymous work was already familiar to Britons with a sweet tooth. In 1905, William Cadbury, of the Quaker chocolate dynasty, had commissioned the first company logo from Auriol for his Bourneville cocoa and confectionery company. Although hand-drawn, there is no mistaking the stencil-like quality of the Auriol lettering. 

The Peignot foundry, and later Deberny & Peignot, adopted Auriol as their house-face, using it on letterheads, invoices and promotional materials for many decades. It was undoubtedly more popular in France than the UK, but Stephenson Blake would eventually offer around a dozen variants and sizes, which suggests a degree of popularity with British users. 

In 1979 Matthew Carter expanded the range of Auriol  variants for photosetting and later digital use. These Carter versions remain available through my.fonts.com. A dozen sets of casting matrices were held at the Type Archive until its closure and these are now at the National Collections Centre in Wroughton. All are in exceptionally good condition. 

As a metal typeface, Auriol is now very difficult to find. Letterpress printers who have managed to acquire it rarely offer it for sale. It has, by virtue of its rarity, become something of a treasure to be jealously guarded. If you see it on Ebay, do let us know!