Antiqua?
Antiqua is a term used in German to denote serif typefaces, many of them oldstyles (Garamond-Antiqua, Palatino-Antiqua, etc.). The word is used in very much the same way as “roman” in English-speaking typography to differentiate between upright and italic typefaces in a family.
Historical basis
Influenced by broad pen writing, and the designer’s own hand, Paul Renner’s original concept for this family included a regular, italic, bold, and bold condensed. However, only the regular and italic faces were put into production and sold. The roman capitals are “modern” in style, like late-18th and early 19th-century typefaces. Although this means that they have a different feeling and structure than the lowercase, they each work together well. It is this kind of variation that one expects from a master such as Renner. Even in Futura, Renner drew uppercase forms that remind of ancient Roman capitals, while the lowercase would be more geometric, and not based on historical models. In his
1998 monograph on Paul Renner, Christopher Burke writes that Renner Antiqua may even be inspired by the work of the 18th-century Dutch punchcutter Johann Michael Fleischmann.
Renner Antiqua’s italic was originally named Renner Kursiv, again not an atypical naming change for early-20th-entury German typefaces.
