The company was founded in 1703, when Izaak Enschedé registered with the Printers Guild in Haarlem. Joh. Enschedé has long been associated with the printing of banknotes; the company printed the "Robin", the very first Dutch banknote, in 1814. Since then, Joh. Enschedé has printed the banknotes of the State of the Netherlands. In 1866, after the death of Johannes Enschedé III, Joh. Enschedé sold the family's book collection and began printing stamps.
Typefounding
Enschedé began manufacturing type in 1743 after purchasing the foundry of Hendrik Wetstein, and the foundry soon became the most important part of Enschedé’s business. The famous punch-cutter Joan Michael Fleischman was employed there in the eighteenth century. Its type business flourished throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in the twentieth century the foundry achieved widespread international acclaim through the design and production of types of Jan van Krimpen. During the foundry type era, Enschedé types were distributed in the United States by Continental Type Founders Association.
Foundry typefaces
These foundry types were produced by Enschedé: Enschedé produced many other typefaces with matrices from other typefoundries for handsetting: Many Monotype faces were cast on Monotype machines and delivered to the customers. Besides all this Enschedé offered in the 1968 character proof:
In 1893 for their 150th anniversary, a memorial book was commissioned called Enschedé gedenkschrift 1743-1893. The book was such a success that ten years later they decided to open a museum with artefacts from their archives, and in 1904 Museum Enschedé was founded in the old type foundry. In 1978, to celebrate their 275th anniversary, Enschedé commissioned Bram de Does, one of Holland’s leading typographers, to design a digital typeface specifically for phototypesetting. The result was Trinité, a face which clearly shows its provenance and which continues the tradition of type design established at Enschedé so many years before. During the celebrations for the company's 300th anniversary of Joh. Enschedé in 2003, the company received the designation "Royal" from Queen Beatrix.
Services
Today Joh. Enschedé specialises in security document design and printing, commercial print and online document publication. The company is a certifiedEuro banknotes printer, and produces euro notes for five EU countries. Joh. Enschedé prints stamps for more than sixty countries.
Controversies
In 2016 reports emerged of the theft of 'a significant sum' of 50 euro notes at Joh. Enschedé during the course of two years. According to Dutch police, the theft was committed by several employees of the company.
