Mister Mandel
Le Guide de la Bretagne mystérieuse
and its Little-Known Signs by Ladislas Mandel
Authors Jacques André, former research director at the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, specializing in digital typography; Fañch Le Henaff, graphic designer and poster artist, founder of the Skritur type foundry; Yoann De Roeck, teacher, PhD in the history of writing.
Fig. 1 – Examples of publications from Jos Le Doaré publishers, mid-1950s.
Traveling in Brittany
Apart from the thematic publications of Jos Le Doaré, devoted to landscapes, religious festivals, and traditional costumes, etc. (Fig. 1), around 1960 there were hardly any tourist guides specifically covering Brittany (Fig. 2).
The Guide bleu to Brittany, part of the series of guides created by Hachette as early as 1841 (under the name Guides Joanne), is more of an encyclopedia of historical heritage written by academics than a tourist guide. Created a century earlier, in 1926, the Michelin Guides Verts (whose title dedicated to Brittany was their first regional title, in 1950) are intended for motorists, describing routes with places and monuments to see, and are lavishly illustrated. There are also more obscure publications, such as the one published by the MAIF insurance company in 1966.
Other guides, now famous, came later: the Guide du Routard (1973); the Petit Futé travel guide (1980).
Fig. 2 – The Guides Bleus – Brittany, Paris, Hachette, 1924; Michelin Guide du Pneu – Brittany, Paris, Michelin, 1950; Guide Touristique – Brittany, Paris, MAIF, 1966.
La Bretagne mystérieuse
It was then, in 1966, that the publisher Tchou released Mysterious Brittany, one of its first «Black Guides.» The allusion to a color is surely a nod to Hachette’s blue guides or Michelin’s red and green guides, but above all, this «black» should be associated with the chosen editorial line, highlighting all the dark and hidden aspects of a territory and a culture.
Fig. 3 – Some titles from the Black Guides collection, published by Tchou.
In the preface to the first volume of the collection, we read: «The authors resolutely side with the nonchalant dreamers rather than the scientists. Throughout France, thousands of enigmatic monuments, unusual pilgrimages, unique local festivals, secret traditions, haunted places, and lost treasures emerge from the shadows of mass tourism.» An opportunity to (re)discover our country, as it has – in reality – never ceased to exist.”.
La Bretagne mystérieuse quickly became the classic among unconventional guides to Brittany because it focused not on tourist sites or local cuisine, but on folklore, strange traditions, places steeped in unusual history, and unexplained phenomena, even Celtic culture.
Fig. 4 – Guide de la Bretagne mystérieuse, Paris, Tchou, 1966, cover and pages 278-279.
The author of La Bretagne mystérieuse, Gwenc’hlan le Scouëzec, had everything it took to fulfill these requirements. Son of the painter Maurice le Scouëzec, he studied history and then medicine and was a writer and publisher of books on Celtic Brittany. He is best known as the fifth Grand Druid of the Gorsedd of Brittany, from 1980 to 2008, the year of his death.
Colophon
But more than the book’s editorial line, it is the codicological aspects that interest us here: its oblong format with a black-bound and gold stamped cover, its numerous engravings, and its typography (Monotype’s Egyptian typeface) distinguish it from the competition, boasting high graphic standards and a decidedly 19th-century inspiration (figs. 3 and 4). One can easily imagine the meticulous artistic work carried out by the book professionals. But, while publishers generally only credit a few contributors in these colophons relegated to a footnote at the end of the book, Alain Meylan (the layout artist for Claude Tchou’s editions) draws inspiration from magazine mastheads (or even the interminable opening credits of films) and highlights—on a double-page spread, no less—right after the title page, an impressive list of contributors (fig. 5). We learn that the iconography is notably the work of the Bretons Jos Le Doaré, Martine Le Scouëzec, and Jean-Robert Masson.
Fig. 5 – Guide de la Bretagne mystérieuse, p. 6-7.
Such a colophon does not go unnoticed! A surprising contribution can be spotted there, in the «Acronyms» section: Ladislas Mandel.
Who’s this guy?
Ladislas Mandel was born in Romania in 1921. He arrived in France in 1936 and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rouen and then at the Académie Ranson. After the war, he joined Deberny & Peignot, where Adrian Frutiger introduced him to type design and new phototypesetting techniques. Mandel then devoted a large part of his work to objects often neglected by the history of typography: directories, small type, signage… But his work was not simply about the pursuit of functional efficiency. For him, writing was first and foremost a reflection of a culture and a society. This conviction permeates his work, from his typefaces to his research on the history of writing, and finds further expression in his role as founder of the Atelier national de création typographique (National Workshop for Typographic Creation) in 1985. (For a complete overview of Ladislas Mandel’s career, please refer to the bibliography.)
Sigles?
Let’s return to our Bretagne mystérieuse and this equally mysterious credit note saying «Sigles [acronyms] by Ladislas Mandel». What acronyms could this be?
Indeed, we see no «acronym» in this guide in the contemporary sense of the term, namely a set of initial letters giving the abbreviated version of a phrase (UN, NATO, etc.).
So perhaps it refers to those Gothic initials that adorn the chapter headings (fig. 4)? No, because these vignettes are the famous «gothqiues composées» taken from a book by Jean Midolle, a calligrapher and illuminator of the Romantic period (fig. 6).
Fig. 6 – Jean Midolle, Spécimen des Escritures Modernes, 1834–35, Simon Fils, Strasbourg, pl. 54. ©Letterform Archive
«Sigles» or signs ?
Actually, this book on Brittany is the third in the Black Guides series, and by leafing through the first (The Guide to Mysterious France, published in 1964), we find the explanation. On page XLV, the pictograms are listed under the heading «Conventional Symbols.» Symbols, acronyms… there we have it! Without dwelling on the origin of the confusion between these two terms, we understand that the «acronyms» attributed to Mandel consist of a series of 15 drawings, present throughout the collection.
Fig. 7 – Guide de la France mystérieuse, Paris, Tchou, 1964, p. XLV–XLVII.
Archives
Mysteriously , we find no information relating to this work in the archives of Ladislas Mandel, nor at the Printing Museum in Lyon, nor in the «Mandel collection» at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (BnF). Similarly, Éditions Sand, successors to Tchou, have no record of any contract with him…
One might therefore wonder if the Ladislas Mandel of the Black Guides is indeed the one we have just discussed! The guides began publication in 1964; however, at that time, Mandel had already been working for about ten years at Deberny & Peignot alongside Frutiger, positions that do not seem compatible with a commission to design pictograms for publishing. Of course, Mandel had an artistic background, and we know that after the war, he eked out a living with freelance graphic design work. Since no formal order is documented anywhere, we can also consider the possibility of a collaborative effort…
We know, in fact, that typographers and printers in France used to meet every summer at the Rencontres de Lure. Despite the closed-club aspect of the Compagnons de Lurs, their Rencontres welcomed various people somewhat on the fringes of printing in the strict sense: authors, booksellers, publishers, etc. This is how we read, in the words of Christian Bessigneul (professor at the École Estienne): «The “pillars” of the beginnings were Charles Peignot, Gérard Blanchard who came at 18, the Italians Aldo Novarese and Cesare Maletto, publisher, the Belgians Michel Olyff of the Cobra group, Fernand Baudin and De Roeck, the Englishman John Dreyfus; The historian René Ponot, Ladislas Mandel, then Christian Delorme, Yves Perrousseaux, and many others... All those who played a role in the creation of typefaces or books passed through Lurs: José Mendoza, Alessandrini, Roger Excoffon, Paul Gabor, Albert Hollenstein, Adrian Frutiger, Marcel Jacno, Ladislas Mandel, Massin, Mediavilla, José Mendoza, Albert Plécy, Herman Zapf, Peter Knapp, or publishers such as François Richaudeau, Hubert Nyssen, or Claude Tchou.»
And so, Mandel and Tchou were reunited in a summer setting conducive to exchanges, friendships, and... helping hands!
Pictograms
In the issue dedicated to Brittany, the publisher presents these 15 symbols under the heading «The Keys to Your Guide,» placing each one opposite a title and a short definition; they can now be called «pictograms» in that they are the schematic and allegorical representation of an idea.
Let us now analyze in detail the form of these pictograms to both try to trace the terms of the request and understand Mandel’s response. When Tchou proposes this series to the typographer, he necessarily formulates two directives: one concerning the content, expressing the essence of each category; the other concerning the form, entrusting Mandel with a set of technical constraints.
Even though we don’t know the progress of Alain Meylan’s mock-up when Mandel began his work, the technical brief is easy to find: the symbols must be designed for optimal reproduction using a single ink (black), in outline (no shades of gray), at a reduced scale on a difficult-to-print medium (uncoated paper). Furthermore, for obvious layout reasons, all the pictograms must have a relatively uniform overall size.
The 15 symbols are shown below at the different sizes of their reproduction in the guides (approximately 10 mm when included in the table of contents; 5 mm on each page in the margins of the text; and 3 mm for some, when placed on maps).
Picto. 1 «Castle» (Legendary History)
Picto. 2 «Dolmen» (Primitive Cults)
Picto. 3 «Menhir» (Prehistoric Enigmas)
Picto. 4 «Column» (Pagan Myths and Monuments)
Picto. 5 «Monstrance» (Sacred places and Christian miracles)
Picto. 6 «Amulet» (The Enlightened)
Picto. 7 «Jester» (Customs and traditions)
Picto. 8 «Dragon» (Fantastic bestiary)
Picto. 9 «Fairy» (Wonderful creatures)
Picto. 10 «Black cat» (Devils, sorcerers, ghosts)
Picto. 11 «Mountain» (Cursed places and deserts)
Picto. 12 «Fish» (Unusual landscapes)
Picto. 13 «Labyrinth» (Caves, underground passages, treasures)
Picto. 14 «Scissors» (Strange curiosities and collections)
Picto. 15 «Ogre» (Tragedies and bizarre events)
It becomes clear that Ladislas Mandel, a typographer accustomed to reducing printed forms (even though his work with minuscule fonts for directory layouts would begin later, in the 1970s and 80s), anticipated this scale for most of the symbols, but without neglecting the subtleties of design that would inevitably disappear during reproduction (counterforms of the leaves in the Fish, gaps in the rings of the Dragon or in the rays of the Monstrance, etc.).
The attentive reader will have noticed that some pictograms are reversed (mirrored) in their «Pages» version; this is the case with the Jester and the Amulet, two deceptively symmetrical silhouettes. This accidental use by the layout artist provides a valuable material clue: the symbols were scanned onto transparent film and cut out to be placed, manually, next to the phototypeset text. This also confirms that Mandel designed only one drawing for each pictogram and that, in our opinion, he was unaware of the extreme reductions some of them would undergo. If the author had known that his drawings would sometimes be reproduced at 33% of their intended size, he would have further simplified the forms.
Graphic Repertoire
It is not easy to define the drawing instruments chosen by Mandel to create this series, as the style varies so much from one pictogram to another: while some are strictly geometric, constructed with a ruler and compass (Castle and Labyrinth), others have a broken and jagged outline, as if produced by a burin (Dolmen, Menhir, Jester, Mountain, Ogre), and still others are drawn with great fluidity (Fairy, Cat, Fish). Since it is highly likely that the artist did not change tools during the project, we can rule out the laborious and costly techniques of engraving (linocut or woodcut); this leaves scratchboard and, more probably, freehand drawing in ink on paper.
Fig. 8 – Pictogram “Mountain” and Large Rock from the Vincennes Zoo, photo V. Descatoire / Atelier de l’Ile.
In addition to these stylistic differences, there is a diversity in the rhetoric itself: Mandel sometimes draws his sources from archetypal representations (Dolmen, Jester, Castle), sometimes bordering on abstraction (Labyrinth), sometimes from figurative objects (the sun monstrance of a church, the sign of a tailor, and even, with humor, this mountain which illustrates the «Cursed and deserted places» whose model is none other than the Great Rock of the Vincennes Zoo!). Furthermore, the illustrator demonstrates his inventiveness when it comes to translating less obvious themes: the symbol meant to encompass «The Illuminati: poets and dreamers, sects and secret societies, the Templars, symbolic monuments, alchemists and hermeticists, magicians and astrologers» is a pseudo-symbol that combines elements of the Eye of Providence, an ancient solar cult, and a talismanic pendant… As for the Fish perched in a tree («Unusual Landscapes: natural curiosities, strange fauna and flora») or the Ogre («Tragedy and bizarre events: bloody battles, great epidemics, singular occurrences, cataclysms and meteorological prodigies»), these are further eloquent examples of Mandel’s ability to create an evocative symbol without resorting to strict—and impossible—illustration.
Fig. 9 – The “Black Cat” pictogram by Mandel and the Industrial Workers of the World logo by the activist artist Ralph Chaplin.
Semiological analysis is not the purpose of this article, and the preceding interpretations are solely the authors’ own; each reader can draw, according to their visual background, more or less eloquent connections with objects from high or popular culture. Send us your comparisons!
For the sake of completeness, we should mention that the 1989 edition of La Bretagne mystérieuse, this time by Markale, adds two more pictograms (a lyre and an arch) which, according to the colophon, are attributed to Hélène Floret.
Être moderne, ou ne pas être…
This heterogeneity is perhaps not a lack of coherence: on the contrary, it constitutes an indication of Mandel’s particular place in the history of French typography. In a lecture, the historian Alice Savoie recalls how the typographer’s positions hardened over time with regard to the modernist movement that permeated Europe: his criticism of the «all purpose typefaces that are sans-serif, cold, rigorous, monotonous, geometric and aseptic» would go so far as to lead him to disown L’Univers, which he nevertheless helped to build alongside Frutiger.
Fig. 10 – L. Mandel, Du pouvoir de l’écriture, Atelier Perrousseaux, 2004.
This profound contradiction perhaps explains the draftsman’s versatility when it comes to representing the façade of a castle or a liturgical object: he seems as comfortable with the synthetic repertoire of the Swiss style as with the 19th-century French typographic tradition.
Fig. 10 – Mandel’s “Castle” pictogram and various signs for French highways, by Jean Widmer, 1972–78.
Fig. 11 – “Monstrance” pictogram and vignette from the Berthier foundry, 1885.
Conjectures, here again… These stylistic differences can also be attributed to the urgency of the project, to which is added the potentially voluntary dimension of the operation (cronyism, as mentioned, contract not found), or, second hypothesis, to a tighter brief than it appears: for convenience, could the iconographers of Tchou have provided Mandel with examples and ideas to produce the series, who knows?
Dingbat
Today we’re considering the best way to revive this mysterious material. Vectorizing the existing material as faithfully as possible is within anyone’s reach, see for yourself:
And we gladly share this stabilization with anyone who wants it, simply by writing to us at this address (please indicate «Mandel» in the subject line of your email).
But there’s undoubtedly a better way, firstly by harmonizing the style – disparate, as we’ve said – of these pictograms, and secondly by expanding the series into an ambitious typographic program: why not a complete typeface family to inventory and map this Bretagne mystérieuse?
A-greiz-kalon,
Jacques André, Fañch Le Henaff, Yoann De Roeck
Sources & bibliographic references
• Ladislas Mandel, Écritures, miroir des hommes et des sociétés, Perrousseaux/Adverbum, 1998.
• Ladislas Mandel, Du pouvoir de l’écriture, Perrousseaux/Adverbum, 2004.
• Christian Bessigneul, « Les rencontres internationales de Lure », La Lettre de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts, n° 77 (spécial « La typographie ou l’art de la lettre »), hiver 2014-2015, p. 21. [En ligne]
• Jean-Baptiste Levée, « Ladislas Mandel, 1921-2006 », Le Typographe, 23 oct. 2006. [En ligne]
• Olivier Nineuil, « Ladislas Mandel, explorateur de la typo française », Étapes graphiques, n°55, 1999.
• Alice Savoie, La frontière de la bière et du vin : les caractères pour annuaires de Ladislas Mandel, conférence aux Archives Municipale de Lyon, présentée le 10 mai 2021. [En ligne]
• Alice Savoie, Typographie ordinaire: recherche autour de Ladislas Mandel et de ses caractères pour annuaires, conférence donnée à l’EESAB Rennes le 29 mars 2018. [En ligne]