Aura Antikva is a reimagination of some of the earliest Finnish printing types for contemporary use at the Letterpress House in Turku, continuing the lineage of the first Finnish press established in the same city in 1642. The typeface is produced as wood type for exclusive use by resident letterpress printer Sakari Männistö.

Around 1704, a set of crude capital letters were carved in wood by Lübeck printer Johan Nicolaus Thun and subsequently transferred to matrices for casting by the local type founder Jobst Rüdemann. Thun’s typeface saw modest success in Germany, but found a market among Scandinavian printers. Its use can be traced in printer’s specimens and output throughout Scandinavia. It spread through Denmark, and Sweden, and eventually arrived in Turku in 1729.

Aura Antikva is produced as wood type in sizes 24 and 12 Cicero. The 12 Cicero Roman is equipped with miniscules.

The typeface was widely used in the printed dissertations produced at the Academiæ Aboensis until around 1770, when it fell out of style. About half a decade later, the academy printing press and all its material was lost in the Great Fire of Turku. The last printer’s specimens, produced just a few years before the fire, still list Thun’s type, marking its last trace in Finnish printing. After the fire, the Finnish capital was relocated to Helsinki, ceasing all print production in Turku.

The revival distills a number of discordant sizes down to a manageable set of three: titling needs are covered by sizes twenty-four and twelve cicero (the latter with lowercase and italic caps), and a sixteen point roman for running text rounds out the set. The lowercase, which is missing in Thun’s types, was developed for the two smallest roman sizes, referencing a set of minuscules by Hermann Berg – a contemporary of Thun.

Thun’s design is marked by Baroque mannerisms: The letters are equipped with double-sided serifs, split endings, and ornate detailing. The most dramatic and recognizable detail is the decorative leaf-like serif found in the largest sizes. The occasional need for even larger headlines saw printers carve one-off woodcuts with even more elaborate detailing.

Aura Antikva embraces the Turku vernacular as an amalgamation of external influences and local penchant, resisting a homogeneous modern curation of visual features, and insisting that the wood types should be well-worn before any digital fonts are distributed.

The new typeface is infused with playful experimentation and defiant attitude. It is named after the river Aura that runs through Turku, connecting paper mills and print shops, and also providing the trade route to Europe.