S.H. de Roos

Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos, he usually reffered to himself as "S.H. de Roos" (Drachten, September 14 1877 - Haarlem, April 3 1962) was a Dutch type designer, book cover designer and artist.

De Roos moved at a young age from Drachten, where his father was a cobbler, to Amsterdam where he was trained to be a lithographer from 1889 to 1891.After that he studied at the "Teekenschool voor Kunstambachten" (in English, the Drawingschool for the Arts and Crafts), part of the Rijksakademie.

In 1907 he was employed by the type foundry "Amsterdam", that was known before under the name of "N. Tetterode", where he developed his talent fully. His employment there ended in 1947. In this period he designed, as first Dutchman in 150 years, a new type face, the "Hollandsche Mediæval" in 1912. In total De Roos designed twelve type faces, the "Hollandsche mediæval", the "Egmont" (1932), the "Libra"(1938) and the "De Roos Roman and Italic" (1947) being the most successful.

In his earlier years De Roos was inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement where art and craftsmanship merged. A fine example of this was his edition of "Kunst en Maatschappij" (English: "Art and Society") (1903) of William Morris. Being supporter of Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis De Roos tried to create the ideal of ‘Art to the People’.

Archive material by De Roos is in the Library of the University of Amsterdam. Here can also be found De Roos’s "Tetterode Collection". Further archives are in the City Library of Haarlem, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem and the "Museum Smallingerland" in Drachten.

De Roos also lived in the towns of Krommenie, Amsterdam, Hilversum and Haarlem.His name remains connected to the bibliophilic publisher "Stichting De Roos".

Literature

* A.A.M. Stols, "Het werk van S. H. de Roos: een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de herleving der Nederlandsche boekdrukkunst" (1942)
* Dick Dooijes, "Sjoerd H. de Roos zoals ik mij hem herinner" (1976)
* Sjoerd H. de Roos, "Typografische geschriften 1907-1920" (1989)
* Mathieu Lommen, "De grote vijf: S.H. de Roos, J.F. van Royen, J. van Krimpen, C. Nypels en A.A.M. Stols" (1991)
* Sari de Haan ... [et al.] , "typiScH de Roos: oeuvre-overzicht" (2004)

External links

*nl [http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn4/roos Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland] Biografie S.H. de Roos
*nl [http://www.cultuurwijzer.nl/cultuurwijzer.nl/cultuurwijzer.nl/i000367.html Cultuurwijzer.nl] Over S.H. de Roos
*nl [http://www.uba.uva.nl/ Bibliotheek van de Universiteit van Amsterdam] Catalogus (o.a. letterproeven)
*nl [http://www.kb.nl/galerie/100hoogtepunten/085.html Koninklijke Bibliotheek] Honderd hoogtepunten (Over S.H. de Roos)
*nl [http://www.typ.nl/TYP03/woud/libra/libra01.html Koosje Sierman] : De Libra van S.H. de Roos: een Uitmiddelpuntige
*nl [http://www.rug.nl/Corporate/nieuws/adamsAppel/archief2004/afl08 Rijksuniversiteit Groningen] : Typograaf Sjoerd de Roos maakte zijn kunst dienstbaar aan het volk