Coranto 2 in a letterpress edition of Acuña de Figueroa’s carajo’s poem

Francisco Acuña de Figueroa (1791–1862) was an Uruguayan poet and writer well known for writing the words of the national anthems of Uruguay and Paraguay.

Among many other texts, he wrote a satirical poem about male genitalia, Nomenclatura y apología del carajo (translated as Nomenclature and defense of the male sex) in the 1850s. For obvious reasons, it was not printed until later, in 1922, and only in some kind of private circulation.

Insula Editora, a publishing house from Argentina, has recently edited a double volume with the original text from Acuña de Figueroa, letterpress printed. The second volume includes the research by Eduardo Orenstein, an eclectic writer from Uruguay, regarding the origins of the Nomenclatura and the controversies of the later editions.

Gustavo Ibarra, type designer and typographer, designed Orenstein’s booklet, El carajo de Acuña de Figueroa. Inspired by Eric Gill’s Essay on typography (1930), he chose Gerard Unger’s Coranto 2 for the composition: “Coranto 2 matches perfectly with this approach, it brings a clear and compact line of text, and provides a classic and contemporary style at the same time”.