I

ANATOMY
OF A

TYPEFACE

ALEXANDER LAWSON

HAMISH HAMILTON · LONDON

 HAMISH HAMILTON LTD
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd. 27 W righcs Lane, London w8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street. New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victona, Ausrralia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario. Canada M4v JB2
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Hannondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published in the United States of America by David R. Godine 1990

First published in hardback in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton Ltd 1990
First published in paperback in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton Ltd 1992
I 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright© Alexander Lawson, 1990

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All nghts reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no
part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
syStem, or transmitted, in any form -or by any means (electronic, mechanic·al,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both
the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

PHOTO CREDITS

p. 46: reprinted by permission of Carolyn Hammer; p. 109: reprinted by permission

of Martino Mardersteig; p. 128: reprinted by permission of Hermann Zapf; p. 228:
reprinted by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; p. 336:
reprinted by courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library; pp. 119, 348, 404:
reprinted by permission from the Melbert B. Carey, Jr., Graphic Arts Collection,
Rochester Institute of Technology.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Bueler & Tanner Ltd, Frome and London
 CONTENTS

Preface 7

I. Goudy Text and the Black-letter Types 13

2. Hammer Uncial 35

3- Cloister Old Style 47

4- Centaur 62

5- Bembo 74

6. Arrighi 84

7- Dante 98
8. Goudy Old Style 110

9. Palatino 120

IO. Garamond 129

II. Galliard. 141

·12. Granjon 147

13. Sabon 151

14. Janson 158

15. Caslon 169

16. Baskerville 184

17. Bodoni 196

18. Bulmer 209

19. Bell 218

20. Oxford 229

21. Caledonia 243

22. Cheltenham 253

23. Bookman 262

24. Times Roman 270

25. Newspaper Types 277

26. Franklin Gothic and the Twentieth-century Gothics 295

27. Clarendon and the Square -serif Revival 308

28. Optima and the Humanist Sans-serif Types 324

29. Futura and the Geometric Sans-serif Types 337

30. Script, Cursive, and Decorated Types 349

31. Type Making from Punch to Computer 381

Bibliography 405
Index 413
 PREFACE

It may seem presumptuous to select for this book only thirty contem-
porary printing types from the many thousands that have appeared
since the fifteenth century, but I propos~ through the discussion of
these thirty designs to present an overview of all the rest. As the
typographic hist0rian Harry Carter wrote so felicitously, 'Printer's
types have gener.µly been studied for the love of them; and, indeed,
most of the books about type have been written from-that viewpoint.
Of course, every printer harboring a fondness for types tries to
justify this inter~st by citing practical considerations of use, but in
most instances th~ printer is really seduced by the beauty of the letter
forms themselves; The more such a printer becomes involved in the
exciting history of typographic development, the more likely it is that
he or she will continue to seek that perfection of form that represents
the ideal.
This book, th<rn, is not written for the printer convinced that there
are already far too; many typefaces. It is, rather, addressed to the person
who believes the 1opposite - that the subtleties of refinement as ap-
plied to roman l~tters have yet to be fully investigated and that the
production of th~ perfect printing type remains a goal to be desired
as much by conte~porary as by future type designers.
The reader will note that the specific types Ifsted herein are placed,
insofar as the roman forms are concerned, in the sequence of their
classification, an~ that in many cases I have included other typefaces
contemporary wi~h those discussed. In two instances - those of script
types and decorated letters...:. I have not singled out a particular face,
as both designations contain so many individualized designs.
It must be admitted that the classification of printing types is a
controversial subject and one upon which little amicable agreement
may be expected.,In my short study, Printing Types: An Introduction
(Beacon Press, 1971), I compared some of the current systems that

7
 have evolved internationally during the past forty years, and then I
attempted to rationalize a nomenclature that would help to simplify
the study of types. It is this method that I have followed in arranging
the sequence of types for this book.
The system begins with Black.letter ('Gothic' in European termi-
nology) and continues into the romans with Oldstyle, subdivided
into Venetian, Aldine-French, and Dutch-English. The romans con-
clude with Transitional and Modem, followed by Square Serif and
Sans Serif. The listing is completed with Script-Cursive and Display-
Decorative. After using this system in the teaching of typography
over a thirty-year period, I know that it is reasonably effective in
the initial study of printing types. I am not disposed to consider it
faultless by any means. A classification system, after all, is simply a
tool, extremely useful in sorting out the myriad forms already avail-
able, but not an end in itself. Its primary purpose is to help people
become familiar with these forms preparatory to putting them to
effective and constructive typographic use.
This book has been written during a period of tremendous tech-
nological change in the field of typography. Since about 1950, when
the first simplified procedure was evolved for the composing of type
by photographic methods, printing from metal types has been in
decline. This metamorphosis, continuing from simple mechanical
typesetting through various stages to high-speed computer-oriented
composition, has brought with it a transformation that promises to
abrogate ~ve centuries of traditional craftsmanship in the assembling
of the printed word.
The typesetting machine is now available in such multitudinous
variety that the conventional methods of composing-room apprentice-
ship are no longer valid. In addition, small firms are increasingly at-
tracted to what is primarily a new industry using 'word processing'
techniques. Since all of the new devices are equipped-with typewriter
keyboards, little is required of an operator except basic typing skills.
Such shifts in customary typographic practice inevitably have
resulted in a decline of quality. This is particularly noticeable in book
typography. Any comparison of contemporary trade books with
those produced twenty or more years ago will reveal a retrogression
in the standards of production, affecting such details as the proper
selection of type style and size, the use of italics and small capitals,
legible spacing between words and lines, and the like. Formerly the
responsibility of skilled craftsmen, these aspects of design are now

8
 too often disregarded. Frequently, these niceties of typographic de-
sign are not even available.
Some of these difficulties, which are to be expected in a transitory
situation, may be alleviated through the efforts of trade associations
to. evolve and sponsor training procedures and promote standards of
quality. To this end, there is an increasing need for the study of the
history of printing types .. Certainly, the current technology of type-
setting has resulted in the manufacture of composing machines capable
of maintaining all that is best in traditional typography.
One other concern remains to be mentioned in this introductory
note: the current lack of copyright protection for contemporary type
designers and manufacturers of composing devices, who are under-
standably reluctant to underwrite and produce new designs, fearing
the immediate pirating of their more popular offerings. Such diffi-
culties have been faced by designers over the past hundred years, but
they have been intensified by the mushrooming of equiprhent manu-
facturers during the past two decades and the mechanical ease with
which such copying can be done. Once again, this is an industry-wide
problem, requiring the most intensive effort on the part of all prac-
titioners to s;eek reasonably ethical standards. The alternative is clear:
a serious decline in the number of new designs and, even more im-·
portant, a reluctance on the part of designers to attempt the creation
of new letter forms .
Since 1966 I have conducted a department, 'Typographically Speak-
ing,' in the periodical Printing Impressions, in which the content of
much of the present book appeared in greatly abbreviated form. I am
most grateful to Irving Borowsky, publisher of Printing Impressions,
for his kind permission to reprint these articles. I am also appreciative
of the support of James F. Burns, Jr., the magazine's former editor.
Archie Provan, associate professor in the School of Printing at
the Rochester Institute of Technology, and long my colleague there,
has been very helpful with suggestions for improving the original
articles. I have also been singularly fortunate in having for my pub-
lisher David R. Godine, who, almost unique among his contempo-
raries, is most knowledgeable about typographic matters and in
addition maintains a personal involvement in the format and design
of his books. I am also grateful for the support-provided by my editor,
Hilary Douglass Horton, who has humanized my journalistic prose.
David Pankow, librarian of the Melbert B. Cary, Jr., Graphic Arts
Collection at R.I.T., has been most helpful with the bibliography and

9
in the selection of illustrations. Finally, my wife, Evelyn T. Lawson,
has struggled valiantly in the preparation of the manuscript to over-
come the numerous inconsistencies, particularly between American and
British usage, that exist in typographic nomenclature.

ALEXANDERS. LAWSON
Jekyll Island, Georgia

IO
ANATOMY
OF A
TYPEFACE
 GOUDY TEXT
AND THE BLACK-LETTER TYPES

Frederic W., Goudy, prolific type designer though he was, came rather
late to the design of a black-letter. type, just about midway, in fact, in
his prodigi9us output of approximately 123 type designs. Goudy's
late arrival at such a basic type style was undoubtedly affected by the
rather low esteem in which black-letter types, except as display, were
held by the fraternity of printers in the United States during much of
his active career as a type designer (1895-1945). But once his Village
Letter Foundery was reasonably well established in Marlborough,
New York, in 1927, Goudy came to realize that he possessed 'no
black-letter type among my stock of designs.'
Although there was in the 1920s no lack of black-letter types gen-
erally available to the trade, Goudy's inclination was to provide one
that followed the tradition established by Johann Gutenberg about
1440, which had since been much deviated from, particularly during
the nineteenth century. And though the use of black letter had
declined, most American printers recognized that for general com-
mercial printing they required at least one such style. It was Goudy's
intention td provide the perfect example of it.
A glance, at some of the types of the genre then being displayed in
printers' specimen books indicates the astonishing variety of black-
letter styles, obtainable from typefounders and composing-machine
manufacturers early in the century. The two American foundries
then in operation, American Type Founders Company and Barnhart
Brothers & Spindler, offered respectively five and six different models,
and the composing-machine firms each had three or more.
Several 0f these faces were reasonably sound interpretations of
the historic black letters, but too many were hangovers from the
nineteenth century, in which typefounders had apparently lost sight
of the traditional forms and become possessed with the need to add
superfluous embellishments for the sake of novelty.

13
 <13oudy 1tr1t
2lJS~3B~j'<5iRij1Jij[fflJ\0f
(El1R~1tti~irnl~!!~
abcdrfghijkl~nopqrstu\1\lll~Z
& fffiffiflffl
Goudy Text

Goudy, however, was anchored to typographic tradition and con-

sistently sought to honor its precepts. And since he had earned his
living at hand-lettering and had become a teacher in the subject
(about 1900), he was of course completely familiar with every style of
letter· form. As a type designer he favored the romans, but his skill
with the pen along with his knowledge of historic letter structure
assured the felicity of his approach to a black letter.
In his textbook Elements of Lettering, published in 1922, Goudy
had drawn a black letter that he called Goudy Black. He returned to
this virile alphabet for the foundation of the type that was completed
in 1928. While Goudy Black had originally been cut for distribution
through the designer's own small foundry, its use in a Christmas card
prompted the president of the Lanston Monotype Machine Company,
Harvey Best, to request Goudy's cooperation in making it available
as a Monotype face, thus giving the new type distribution far beyond
the con.fines of the tiny shop in Marlborough. In the intervening
years Goudy Text, the name suggested by the Monotype firm, has
become the most widely used type of its kind in the United States.
To modern readers black-letter types are difficult to read. The
illegibility stems primarily from unfamiliarity- the types are infre-

14
quently used today- but in addition the form has certain peculiarities,
particularly in tJ;le construction of the capitals. During its long period
of developmen~, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, the dual
alphabet- the c;ombination of majuscule (capitals) and minuscule
(lowercase) characters- became fully established in manuscripts.
Because capitals were frequently used for decorative initials, the
scribes chose to' embellish them; they also added lines and flourishes
to fill in the cdunters (enclosed white spaces) of the capitals that
appeared to be excessively open in relation to the narrower and
heavier lowercase characters. This practice, although creating an art
form, reduced the cohesiveness of the letters as units of an alphabet
and made them pifficult to distinguish.
A study of the manuscripts produced in the late-medieval period
discloses the enormous range ·of decoration in the construction of
black-letter capitals-;- resulting in almost no consistency of style. In
the age of typography, the designers of printing types based on the
scribal hands were thus faced with a problem, and their inability to
come up with a 1uniform style meant that many of the contradictions
of the copyists f!eisisted.
Goudy approached the problem by creating a second series of
capitals, based on the roman scripts common to book hands of the
eighth to the eleventh century. These he named Lombardic Capitals,
and they were made available as an alternate for the standard Goudy
Text capitals. Their romanized style permits greater legibility and at
the same time they add a decorative touch otherwise lacking. Most

tJ::SOD~Jm:lIJJK
L~flOl)Q'.ftBTQ
vUIE-rz~
Lombardic Capitals

15
 printers who purchased Goudy Text also acquired the Lombardic
Capitals, which are useful both as initials and also for the occasional
headings for which a standard black letter would be inappropriate.
Goudy Text adheres quite closely in overall appearance to the true
textura letter of mid-fifteenth-century Italy. Textura is an Italian term
derived from the 'woven' appearance of a page of black letter; it is
quite condensed and avoids the excessive ornamentation that was later
applied to the black-letter types. Goudy was evidently also influenced
by French models, however, as he refrained from using the traditional
diamond at the foot of the perpendiculars, except for the lowercase i
and/. Here again, the result is increased legibility.
In his autobiography,A Ha/,f-Century ofTypeDesign and Typography,
I89S-I94S, published in 1946, just a year before his death, Goudy con-
fessed to a typographic faux pas in the addition of a tiny pointed
projection at the left side of the stems of the letters h, h, k, and /; this
spur belongs properly only to the letter l, to differentiate it from the
figure 1. He noted that no one had mentioned the historic error to
him since the type had been produced in 1928.
Goudy need not have been overly concerned, as the recognition
and proper identification of black-letter types has always been a sub-
ject of great confusion among printers and even typographers. The
classification of printing types is at best an imprecise subject, and in
the area of black-letter types it can be chaotic, requiring an intensive
study of sources not readily accessible to most typographers. As even
paleographers and bibliographers have always found themselves at
odds on the matter, it is unlikely that ordinary printers of the present
era - when such types are rarely seen -will ever be able to arrive at
satisfactory conclusions regarding black-letter nomenclature. Neither
has there been agreement concerning the numerous appellations given
to the letter form; in addition to black letter, it has been called gothic,
text letter, textur, texrura, English, and Old English.
Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to trace in outline the development
of black letter, since at least there is general agreement among printing
historians on the essential facts.
The northern-European gothic manuscript hand that in the mid-
fifteenth century became the inspiration for the first printing types
was the product of some four hundred years of change in the structure
of letters. It is not necessary to go back further than the ninth-century
reforms in writing promulgated by Charlemagne, for black letter
evolved from this early book hand, now called Carolingian minuscule.

16
The 42-line Bible of Johann Gutenberg, Mainz, 1455

Carolingian writing was round and open, and indeed was the funda-
mental inspiration for the style formulated by the humanist Italian
scribes in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Eventually
this humanist style resulted in the roman types of the closing decades
of the fifteenth century.

17
Letter of Indulgence, Mainz, 1455

North of the Alps, in the twelfth century, the roundness of the

Carolingian script was giving way to letters considerably more con-
densed and far heavier in stroke. This was because the monasteries,
long dominant in the making of books, were at that time being
displaced by the universities, which had different requirements, par-
ticularly the production of textbooks. By the thirteenth century it
had become customary for the university scribes, in the interest of
conserving space and materials, to invent contractions, or joined
letters, a practice that also decreased the time spent on lettering an
entire text; in the letters themselves stub endings began to replace·
tapering strokes. By the fourteenth century the terminals of many
lowercase characters were being ended in a compact diamond.
Further standardization of the alphabet occurred when craftsmen
outside the university writing rooms employed the written word.
These were the architects and artisans, such as goldsmiths and medal-
lists, who produced inscriptions in stone, wood, and metal. Economy

IS
 of letter production was essential to these crafts, and the resultant
systematization affected the styles of the scribes. Architectural fetish
in letter forms~ rigidly adhered to, made the textura character so
narrow as to be, almost illegible. It was believed, for example, that the
letter i could be employed as the unit of width on which to build
almost the entii'.e minuscule alphabet.
Thus, by 1440-the date upon which most historians agree that
Gutenberg began the experiments that resulted in the invention of
movable type - the accepted form of writing had become reasonably
standardized. ~oreover, Gutenberg realized the importance, in print-
ing the Bible a~d other liturgical works with which he initiated his
art, of employi1:1g the particular textura of his own time and place,
fifteenth-century Germany. When it became the punchcuners' task to
reproduce his letters in metal, they quickly recognized the standardized
forms he had used.
In addition,: during this long period of the development of the
gothic forms, there were a number of other variations that affected
the construction of black letter. Depending on the text to be copied,
for example, scrjbes had been using different scripts: works of law,
writings of the church fathers, commentaries of all kinds, and litera-
ture in the vernacular, each requiring its own style. It soon became
apparent to the printers that they too would be expected to supply
different styles for particular applications.
Evidence of this influence on type was almost immediate. In fact,
during the periqd of the production of Gutenberg's first Bible, he
printed two indulgences that were set in slightly different types,
though both had a textura for headings. (These Mainz Indulgences,
incidentally, represent the first dated printing, 1454-55.) The types
followed two variants of the style used by law clerks, and were excellent
renderings of this I
almost cursive script; the letters are much more
open and free of the conventions of the textura. The English typo-
graphic historian Harry Carter has called them bastardas, another
term used in the classification of gothics, which will be discussed
below. Carter h~ high praise for the Mainz Indulgence types.
The earliest attempt to create what might be called a book type -
that is, a type mote useful for classical (Greek and Roman) as opposed
to liturgical works-was the letter cut by Peter Schaeffer for use in
the Rationale of Ourandus, printed in 1459. Now termed the Durandus
type, this was th~ first gothic to be cast in a small size, a large pica. It
tlas the rounded (orm of roman but lacks the serifs of that style. The

19
ut co11folarent"ea& ~ mitre fuo.Martba «F'aciesilliu& fudano er.srligau. t,i,;ircif_
ugo ur audiuitqtiafus'Witoccurritilli: ibfus. ~oluitveum:ttfmitvabire. Muhi
mana aiittornl f@rbar. t,i~ ergo martba ergoirxilbtsq111wnmradmari.i«mar$
ad iblii.6ominr.li fuil'fes btc fummeue tbaJ'J'Vider.anr que fuJttafus: credideir
no fuilTer mozwus.,..!!,ed,i nuc: lao:qi.que-, in eum,Ouida, au\ e~ ipis abieir ad pba~
cii~ p,p>rcens a bro uabit ribi h-us. b1C1t rireos:etbi~irut eis que &at 1brfus. CoUe,
ilh mua.Murp fum IUU6 • t,iar et mar, geriir ergo p:,11rmcnt1pbanf<11 a>nciliii:a
tb:a. ~oqtnfur~-tnNfurredoeinno. oiaba11t.Ouid fa011111s iOuiabic b,mo
wffimo t,;e J)iaui,1,e .{;go Iii Nfurmto mulra fignafaar. ~uimini11111seumlic:
«-..ita. Ow cttdirin me eriam Ii mozcuus omes cm:lirm 11U.tt'1fflict romam:'JIDllet
liumn,,uer :a omnis qw"iuittt credit in loainollrii<tgenci~1111eautvJ ~ij,1& cai,
me:nomonee'in-ri.Credis b,c! Ait pbas nonrinc :cii Qfl"er p>nri&,: iniillius tJi;
illi~ri~ biie. tgo mdid1 qt III ee cMflus ~t ets ~oa nelatis cjcq;n«aigirMis:qt

A a e, C 6 E JF ID bl R t .M OJ 12 0 JO~ 0 a q <l....
I\ ,..!!, ~ ~ 'l:> "C' <i> :X: V 3
a a! b blli b:, b., cc c ca ri cc ci a a> co a a-cu cu b d 6 te b> ei i et et
F' lidfli ,;, fr fut fia g- S' g- Ii s ff gt' b 6 Ix bi b, i i t1 ii ij im in w uil rum

mmi n n1i ni o ;; ooz oi P i> P P"' pr P JO p; "' wJP JP q ci ci q ci .f'fii

cu q} qt r r H 13 ta tu l'U ! rn; Ii IT ffi ~ fu ru F 6 t { t"' tui ti ti ID tu Iii ·u
i;

iiuui tii"V*"WWJ:irJ<t'1•~ f o~Cf

Blacldetter of Peter Schoeffcr in his 1462 Bible

lowercase g with an upper and lower bowl and an 'ear' makes its first
appearance in a printing type in this font.
Schoeffer apparently wished to break away from the fprmal texrura
and return to the later book letters of the preceding century. Historians
still differ about the provenance of the Durandus type and its classi-
fication, but it is most frequently referred to as gotica-antiqua, or
gothic-antique, with antique here used in its European sense, meaning
'roman': hence, a type with both gothic and roman characteristics.
Harry Carter, however, is of the opinion that since the Durandus
type was a re-creation of a fourteenth-century northern-European
book hand, it was not influenced by the roman forms, and thus he
prefers to usegothic-antique only for those faces in which the designer
definitely leaned to the roman models.
Schaeffer later improved upon this type and used it for the edition
of the Bible he printed in 1462. Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Schaeffer's
biographer, has called this Bible type Schoeffer's masterpiece. It was

20
 widely copied during Schaeffer's time by such printers as Ulrich Zell
and Gunther Zainer, but by the end of the century the style had given
way to the rorundas, or round gothics. Nevertheless, its influence as a
gothic book type persisted: four centuries later William Morris in
England used it as the inspiration for his Troy and Chaucer types at
the Kelmscott Press.
Another group of gothics to sanction a breakaway from the formal
texturas came under the heading southern gothic, also called rotunda,
or round gothic. As a letter form, emerging about the thirteenth
century, rotunda had been favored by the Italian and Spanish scribes.
Based like the textura on the Carolingian minuscule, the rotunda,
however, took a different direction south of the Alps, retaining the
openness of its progenitor but affirming the strength of the gothic
stroke.
When printing came to the Italian peninsula, in 1465, and quickly
spread to numerous locations, rotundas were cut by many of the
printers. The Venetian Nicolas °Jenson, particularly-known in our
time for his roman type- was highly praised by his contemporaries
. for his fine rorunda, which he used for law texts. His fellow Venetian
Wendelin diJ. Spira, along with several other Italian printers, also cut
rotundas for books on canon law, making it difficult to determine
which printer was actually responsible for e~tablishing the rotunda
for such texts.

).\n& boc opufculuJ finici ac: ropletu•l't ad

nifd'1aJ ta indullne inauita~ OJasuntij
ptlob3nni fuf} ciui•• ~ fd:o1ffbr ~
sern~,m dmcii biocw eiufdq t'il- co11fu:::
ma,ui.Anno incarnami& t>ii1cc-M-cccc.b:1J•
1n"ligilia afTumpcois gfofe'\'irgnn& manl'.

Coiophon of Scpoeffer's 1462 Bible

21
 Almost immediately the rotundas found favor with the northern
printers, quite possibly owing to the general admiration for Italian
humanism. The style was adopted for a great variety of printing uses,
particularly for works in Latin, and by the end of the fifteenth century
it was being employed in Germany, the Low Countries, and France,
as well as in Italy and Spain.
The final development of the gothic hand as a printing type oc-
curred with its adaptation to the cursive, or written, form, although
this was restricted ro northern Europe. During the last three decades
of the fifteenth century, when the market for printing had been much
enlarged, the printers turned-to the vernacular hands that abounded,
especially in Germany, as a source for types that departed from the
formal gothics and semiformal rotundas. The great demand for in-
expensive books - almanacs, dream books ( interpreting dreams as
omens), household books, and other popular literature-prompted
the cutting of these easily recognized types, which had broad appeal
among the increasing numbers of people who could read.
The classifiers of type place all the informal gothics under the
French heading lettre btitarde. However, numerous authorities believe
that this term should be used only in reference to the French national
hand of the fifteenth century, which was converted to type soon after
printing came to France, in 1470, and spread to the Low Countries
and England when William Caxton began printing at Westminster,
in 1476. A.F. Johnson, the English expert on early types, prefers
simply to use the term bastard, although the Latinized bastarda is
more generally employed by historians.
The 1454-55 Mainz Indulgences exhibit the first types of this group.
Nothing is known of these particular faces beyond that rime, but by
1490 batardes were in wide use in Germany, where the name applied

t{)etefote j, ~iffiam Cc.rton, a .&1?mpfe l)ersonne, 6c.t,t

en~t,o~teb me to w~te f~t.&t ot,et aff t6e sc.ib ~ooft of
(Pof~cton~con, o.nb sommew6c.t ijc.t,t cl)<lungeb tije ru~e
anb o~ cl;ngfiol)e t6o.t is to wife, Certain wotbs w6ic6
in t6ese bo.~6 6e neit6et us~b ne un~tsfan~.

Flemish Blackletter types used by William Caxton

22
 to them, apparently arbitrarily, was Schwabacher (there is no evident
reason why the ~avarian town of Schwabach was thus memorialized,
as there was no typefounding or even printing at that location).
Until almost: the middle of the sixteenth century the Schwabacher
style was what was most used for German-language printing; it was
saliently used at ;Basel in Switzerland, then a center of scholarly print-
ing. The next it11portant batarde to be developed in Germany was the
Fraktur design, t,vhich for the following four centuries served as the
German nationai type.
Fraktur is a more condensed letter than the Schwabacher, and
varies from the, earlier type in being more pointed, with sharply
capered ascender;s; printers naturally had a fondness for this narrower
form, which made the type more economical in book work. The
design of Frakttir is credited to the Nuremberg calligrapher Johann
Neudorfer, and at the request of Emperor Maximilian it was cut in
metal for type i~ 1513. Within the next decade a number of other
Frakturs were prbduced, and by the 1540s it was beginning to replace
Schwabacher as the preferred letter for German printing.
At the same time that the Schwabacher types were emerging for
vernacular printipg in Germany, a French batarde was corning into
popularity in w~stern Europe. It remained a little closer than the
Schwabacher to the textura, but with the rounder features of the
batarde letters. Its first appearance dates from about 1475, and within
the next few years it came into wide use in Paris and Lyons and also
spread to SwitZt1land and the Low Countries. It was this design,
originally employed at Bruges by William Caxton, that became the
first type to be u~ed in England, when Caxton established his press
there in 1476. For; about sixty years it was almost the English national
type, but by the ijniddle of the sixteenth century the influence of the
roman designs h'.ad begun to dominate English as well as French
printing.
One other French innovation in the design of black letter, occurring
during the last de~ade of the fifteenth century, had a strong influence
in England, and ~t remains up to the present a basic contribution to
the style of texnura types. This design forgoes the narrowness of the
original German models, and substitutes curves for the rather inflexible
vertical strokes o( the first texturas. One of the finest examples of this
French textura waj, used by the Paris.printer-publisher Antoine Verard.
Caxton had acquired the rype by 1490, and Wynkyn de Worde, who
took over Caxtonls business after his death, used a similar textura, as

23
 did the English printer Richard Pynson. It was employed in the first
printing of the Book of Common Prayer, in 1549, and in 16n for the
Bible printed at the comm_and of King James.
Joseph Moxon, in his Mechanick Exercises of 1683 - the first English
manual of printing - called this type the Black English Letter; his
reproduction of it closely follows the Verard textura. In the eighteenth
cencury William Caslon's classic Black Letter was almost identical to
that of Moxon, thus continuing the tradition of the fifteenth-century
French textura into the standardized black letter of our own times.
In the long run it was the classical. influence of the Renaissance
that spelled the end of the prevalence that the gothic hands had
maintained in northern Europe since the twelfth century. ·Only in
Germany did it remain a convention, where it survived as a text
type even into the twentieth cencury. Elsewhere, by the close of the
eighteenth century black letter was being used primarily for headings
and for specialized liturgical printing. In every other instance the
roman letter forms had taken over the world of printing.
Even in .Germany, where Fraktur was for so long the national type,
the black letter has had a curious history. During the middle years
of the nineteenth century, a great period of European nationalism,
the use of Fraktur was inevitably strengthened-sufficiently, in fact,
to offset the modernizing influence of the Industrial Revolution,
particularly through the dominance of German technical and scientific
literature. With the growth of international advertising in the early
years of the present century, the use of roman type in Germany
increased, but even as late as 1930 almost sixty percent of the new
books being published were still composed in the German black letter
(also called Deutsche Schriften), and almost every newspaper stayed
with the Fraktur.
When Adolf Hitler came to power, his National Socialist Party
decreed that the Fraktur be considered the only appropriate letter
form for the German language. This resulted in a wider use ofFraktur
in the twentieth century than in earlier times. In 1940, however, it
was officially determined that Fraktur interfered with the German
plan of world domination, since outside Germany the roman forms
prevailed. Thus, the Nazis _then issued a proclamation that roman
would henceforth be the German standard type, the explanation given
being that Fraktur was a 'Schwabacher-Jewish type.'
In postwar Germany roman has become the standard type, al-
though with some difficulty, as the schoolbooks through which all

24
Fraktur type in ,the Prayr;r Book ofMa.ri11JUian I, Augsburg, 1513

adults had learned their alphabet were composed in black letter. But
there is little likelihood that Fraktur will ever again be the national
type; now less than one percent of German books appear in that
hand. As a display letter, however, the face has been revived.
The King James Bible princc:d by Robc:rc. Barker, London, 1611

- 26
 trapitblfi Otiartnm.
mum ad Id ad qii o!dlnatur:no <fdi ntecffitar~
coacroie:fed infslhbilirans:qt inunrio ro ddid
no poc:fm qiioiar.b.llui;.oe pddlinacocfcrD¥
g, pa-bmcfidaodboa-irur ccrtilf1111e qutCiiqJ
libmnmr. Oii Ii ,:i:iuunrioncdci mcllQlriei;q,
bo cwusca,moll(t srsdiconf£quatur.mfsill1Ji
liar11Luncofe4rur: fmilludJo.vi.Oiaq audic
apatre ,z dididtucnitad me.O.ii at oidt glo.ad
"f{o.11.bt!' r«ipitaiqui cofi1g:radfcalircrcil:i
eo iniQuime:icllligiturdcillo quiconful!lf adai
pa-aaum libm arbi!rij: illm pcrsfsmifozmali
quern finonr«ipau:cffer? wlliai qui ipfe ft11
ruit:.E:tfcitndum q,0decmesraric prims cai q:
110bia.S<dcollllroiaprimacaufaeft,:i: 0£0:fct>J
i11ud Ofu.,:iij.1>cnfuiosuaifrl' nilq;re:q;mc
auJ;tlium ruum.
®natfi ad guartfi_&!II•
•f.g,non ht 1n oibuecqu..Ura-SNtia:manifdlaf
c,: bocqii oieapfusad epbe.iiiJ.Onicuiq3 ucftui
damrgnuiafmmair11r1111don11roie1:jiLS3qo
lltffll"urarur:noncquahur damr1c.J:t bocftco
d.Jffl.b.'.D>o.pma luunde.q.cµj.arr.iiti. babf
rusduplican babirudinanbabepot.Onum ~
parufinlem obieai:fmqodidmr 'Pllallll1U8
nobiboi eltrra:qz ad maiue bonum oulinarur.
2Uiomodo~p11rrdttbi.cai:q6magieul"nun119
pa,cu:ipatbabirum inbemnan.5<cundti erso
pnam babitudinan:1J111ria nonpo1dtcrfema
ioz 1minoi:qzgr,11Ufm(uirslioncm:coniagu:
bomintmfummobonoquod dtdcua.Stdc;t
partc(ubieaiJ)Otfufdpcrrmagie-zmlnuspzout
.f.min•m pcrf«tiua illullrarurs lumine srarie
"'1118qali118..Cuiusdiuerfiwisrstio i:c,:aliq1111
pam:pzcpsranria feadgrsriam.Uuimi3fema
sis ad sramprq,aratplm10Z£3gr.im rrop11.S3
ci; bac pure nonpouft acdp1 primararo ditler
f!caasb111'.q1 pzepsraiio nonm boismfi iquan
Nm libaum erburiam riuapiq,ararur a dto
Undepiimacaufabuiusdillafua=· cite,: rte
dci:qziliuerfamodcfoegraricdona · ar:ad
boc g,~ diuerf111 {!11dib11Sgraricp · ·do
mldkcanfurg11t -zpafulio. Siroraiamadf
uafoegradue rcrum inll:iruit utcfferpafrnum
,miu(r(om.Cndellj>WSadepbc.iiij.tnumerarie
puribuegraajafubdil:ad confomaciatan fanc
rorum tdificationanco:porie):jil.06autr; di
ruurfap. \1i. .Equalitcripfidl cura:deomnibue:
non intdligimrg,dcrdona grali£ ri:jualircr:ficur
nee naruregradue:fcdqaia unico aC1111 f1mplici
meiora-zminorsdifpcnfar• .Cyprianue:dccofc.
d1f.iiij.f1Cait. ,Planccad.m gratiafpinh191ill:ij
abaptifmo cqualirer s crcdcnribue fvmif:i;,ucr
fatoear'I! acru noftro poftmodii ucl minwl ud
ausmir:uti mi¢1,>diiico•.Cum fcmtn cqua(&f
fcmialtlr:fcd,puarictau tQTc::Sliudubflllllirur

'
Rotunda of Nicolas Jcilson in the Summa Theolcgian, Venice, 1480

27
 To return to Goudy Text, in the half century since its initial
appearance it has become the sl!andard for the use of black letter in
the United States. One other type, however, has also been extremely
popular, and this is Cloister Black, cut by Morris Benton and Joseph
W. Phinney for the American Type Founders Company in 1904.
Cloister Black is a true English black letter, deriving from the
late-fifteenth-century French style that was taken to England before
1500 and became so well established that it was used for the first setting
of the King James Bible. Then through the later influence of William
Caslon it continued in popularity. This is the type most frequently
called Old English, a term more widely employed in the United States
than in any other country. Like Goudy Text, Cloister is frequently
used for newspaper titles, diplomas, certificates, and the like.
In addition to Goudy Text and Cloister Black the most commonly
seen black letter is Wedding Text, another Benton design (1906). It
may be said of Wedding Text that in its time it was the best-selling
black letter of all, and absolutely no printing shop would have done
without it. If the definition of embellish is 'to enhance with fictitious
additions; then truly Wedding Text is a black letter with embellish-
ment to spare. Its use was de rigueur for well over a generation of_
printers until it was superseded in the twenties by Park Avenue Script.
Returning to the purer black letters, there are two that have re-
ceived wide critical acclaim on the part of discerning typographers,
and no account of black-letter types would be complete without
them. Both are batardes but contain individual anachronisms that
make it difficult to pinpoint their classification.
The first of the pair, and undoubtedly the most admired all over
the world, is Jessen Schrift, the design of which was begun in 1924 by
Rudolf Koch. Originally named Koch Bibel Gotisch ('Bible gothic')-
for its first use in a magnificent edition of The Four Gospels, printed
privately at the Klingspor Foundry in Offenbach, Germany-Jessen
is an individualistic black letter that follows no particular historic
model. A feature that has probably contributed much to its popularity
is the romanized capital alphabet: these letters may be used indepen-
dently as capitals, giving the font a strong utilitarian value, yet they
blend so well with the lowercase that their roman form is not dis-
tracting.
The initial use of Bibel Gotisch in the United States was by the
Grabhorn Press in San Francisco. The Grabhorn brothers, Edwin
and Robert, may also claim this as the first commercial use of the type
 winded closewithout, and thereafter came the clatter
of arms about the door, and o;ceedingtallweaponed
mm came in, one score and five, & strode two by two
,up to the foot of the dais, and stood there in a row.
p F.lnd liallblithe deem!d ~heir war1gear_ o:~eeding
'good; tmy were all clad m nng1loclted bym1es, and
hadeted helms on thcirheadewith garlands of gold
wrought about tbm, and th£y bore e~are in tbcir
bands, and white ehidde bung at tbar bache. :r,low
camethewomm to them and unarmed them; & undu
rt,eir armour their raiment was blach; but they had
gold rings on their arms, and golden collars about
their neclte. So they strode up to the dais and took
thcirplacee on the bigh1eeat, not heeding flallblithe
m}' more than if be were an image of wood. :r,fever-
thdess that man wasno:t to him who was the cbief-
h.6~:nA tain of all and sat in the midmost high1seat; and he
' bore hie sheathed sword in hie band and laid it on
the board before him, and be wae th£ only man of
~......-...~.. ~ those chieftains who ltept a weapon. Sutwbm these
,::,.,.~'N were set down, there was again a noise without, and
11>1,~~~ there came in a throng of mm armed and unarmed
"'7ho tooh their places on the mdlong bmcbee up &
down the ball;witb tbesecamewomm also, who moat
Qf them eat amongetthemm, buteome busied them
~ith the serving: all these mm were great of stature,
but none eobi astmchieftaineon the high10eat.
,:q~~;;;g."'" camethewommin from thehitcb-
~\\l,..J m bearing the meat, whereof no little
~ was fleshimeat, and all was of the best
.9 flallblitbe was duly served lihe the
others, but still none epahe to him or
1111e:::;;:;.....,...::a;1.1 t'1m loohed on him; though amongst

The Chaucer type of William Morris, 1891

outside the Klingspor Foundry. It was selected for The Voiage and
Tra-vaile of Sir John Maundrnle, Kt., a medieval text printed in 1928,
which was illustrated by Valenti Angelo, who also hand-illuminated
the initials. It is an altogether beautiful book. The artist tells an amusing

29
 cccd
mm• 'IDonatnetf;x,biaa "on b.t
gallen ~s fifd)eG•tt falt\!t bit au
gm fehtes -oatus•'Onb et g-ebul
~ es fd)ia: ein t.ulh? ftunb• \?tl\)
£in weplfe als ein J;eubtlein dns
epe6•~gunt:e au~en "o femm
aug-etM,nb 3ii\xtnbt emp(img ec
bit gefid)t..'Onb f:v loh?tm got er
wb fein iuu~ftau,. "nb aUe bie
bit jn ttkantten-'Onb tl),')biaG fp
tad)•O l)etze got ifral)et.:id) [te"
fegne bid)• wan bu ~ft mid) ge
keftjgt:t• wb tuft mid) ~t.utten•
6itl;e.fd) fiel)e tl)>blam mcincn
fune-'Onb nod) fi~n tug£n• far,1
~ wepb fem es funs gie.ngtin
gefunbt•\?nb aUro jngtfin~- ~n
and) \?Vbt•'\?nb bit hdmeltl)Ptt•
\?nb gar \?ii giite ~ ~bs•-cri
and) ~ g-elt ~G tt l)et ernpfhn
gen \?O gah?lo-'Onb tt fagetfein
em \?llttt \?nb miittt aae giittat
gotes•bit et l;et geton ~ jm•bu
rd) ~n man~ in })eta? g-efuret•
'Onb ad)102•Wb nalxttl)-bit fdv
woftttfiine tl),')bie•'hamm fteii::
wenb 3ii tl)>bialti•.f:>jj fteiierenb
fic:b mit jm \?On aUm giitm bfn,-
~n bit got f)et geton ~ jm•'Oii
fj, wirtfd)affttm mit fteiitffl bu
tdJ fil.-en tuge•wb .w111:Nttfceii
wet nrit gtofftt ftei~•

Schwabacher type of Hans Schonspcrger, Augsburg, 1490

 Cap Fonts

; ~BCDEFGHIJKLMNO
PORSTUVWXYZ &.,=' :;()!?
Lowercdse Fonts

abcb e!f g hijlilmnop qretu o

mxyz.,=':;()!?
Fi9ure Fonts

1234567890
EXTRA CHARACTERS

IDEflK
Rudolf Koch's Jessen type
I

~~~~4!t~l<Elf 8Sq54J~QJi
~J~ff.ti.lRff llff ®V1)J~~~~
,,~11: t1U 13!1 ~W~~~I JJ
na 6C6a ttlf gij i jfIm nOpQtt f118 tUll W
~ uss dJ lilJ d"" n" mfit r~ ro ~ tu fd ro fil rrP
PfP~~Jo~ Jo IP lit Iii Jo Iii es ott
Rudolf Koch's Wilhelni Klingsporschrift

-
31
 Jncoming <!&ffictrs
~lebge Jmprobtb <aualitp
anb i!\tsign -C!Cbangt
Cloister Black ( ATF)

story involving this book, indicative of the whimsical existence of

Edwin and Robert Grabhorn: 'Ed had a Stutz car, which he had
bought to drive to California, selling his Kelmscott Chaucer to get
the money. I bought it from him for $6oo. Bob used some of that
money to go to Indiana for a visit. Later I sold the car to Bill Wheeler
for $100 and a copy of the Maundevile.'
Finally there is Goudy Thirty, so named to represent the final
Goudy type (the figure -30- on newspaper copy designates the end
of a story). Requesting this last type design, Harvey Best, President
of the Lanston Monotype Machine Company, wrote Goudy on March
31, 1941: 'This face of course would not be used in your lifetime, but
would be used by Monorype as a tribute to you.' Goudy accepted the
commission, although even at the age of 76 he was in no hurry to do
a 'last' rype.
During the next few years Goudy worked up his ideas and by 1945
he had delivered his drawings to the Lanston office in Philadelphia.
His design was for a rotunda, or southern gothic, with romanized
capitals, such as in Koch's Jessen but lacking the 'gothic' weight.
The type could thus lend itself to a broader application in book
work. Of it, the designer wrote, 'The _type pleases me; it will please
some readers; it may be execrated by others; I wish that I might
know how it will be received- and maybe I shall!'
But at Goudy's death on May II, 1947, the type had still not been
produced, the primary reason being that it didn't even come close to
what the Monotype firm had wanted-a book type in the spirit of
W. A. Dwiggins's Caledonia, an extremely popular type patterned on

32
THl.5 TYpe, .so fAR UNOeR coveR ANO IN COURSe
Of ReVl.5lON TO ADAPT lT TO THe MONOTYpe me
CA.Se, PATTeRN MAKING, eTc., WAS BeGUN A YeAR
or two ago to ,submit to a college in the West which wa.s then
,eeekihg a type for it.a pre,s.a; but due to war restriction,e the
commi.5,eion fell through. When Mr Best of the Monotype Com.,
pany .auggefted that the Company might bring out a type a~er
l had pa.s.aed on, to be called "Goudy Thirty," thi.5 de.eign, which
l had been working on at odd time.e, struck me a.e particularly
adapted for the purpo.ae. A.a I worked on it I had determined to
make it, a.s far a.s l wa.s able, my last word in type de.eign, a type
in which I would give my imagination full rein, and a type by
which a.s a de.aigner of type.e I would be willing to stand or fall,
even though'not here in the ~e.eh to defend it.6 po.a.aible vagarie,s
or idio.eyncra.sie.e.
The type plea.ae.a me; it will plea.ee ,some reader»; it may
be execrated by ocher.a; I wi.5h that I might know
how it will be received; and
maybe I .ehall!
f·W·G

ABCDefGHIJ KLM NppQR.STUVWXYZ

( Thi.5 in.eert, which tell.5 in Mr Goudy'.6 own word.s the origin of
Mono type G0udy Thirty, wa.s printed e.epecially for the Graphic
Art.6 Review ·on mould-made Nideggen paper furnwhed through
the cooperatibn of Steveru;,Nel.son Paper Company, New York.
l2345 abcdefghijklmnopqr.acuvwxyz 67890

Goudy Thirty

33
 iolb~in,BZ
jilkI&tnzic~

Wedding Text (ATF)

Scotch Roman. The Thirty drawings remained in the firm's files until
Joho Anderson, proprietor of the Pickering Press and consultant to
Monotype, decided to act as Goudy's advocate. This effort resulted in
the issuing of the design in 1953.
That Goudy Thirty was not a financial success for Lanston was
owing to several factors: it was cut in only two sizes, 18- and 60-point
(the latter for initial letters), the times were not right for a round
gothic, and Monotype use in the United States was in a serious decline.
Nevertheless, the face did attract the attention of many fine printers,
particularly those who still occasionally hand-set books. The Grabhorn
Press bought it, as did Dorothy and Lewis Allen for their California
press. Bruce Rogers in his last years admired it and purchased fonts
for a series of books he planned to produce; although only one of .
these (The Life of St. Ge01;ge) was printed before his death in 1957,
Rogers stated that he believed Thirty to be one of Goudy's best types.

34
 HAMMER UNCIAL

'With this uncial type face, I am aiming at a letter form which evenrually
may fuse roman and black letter, those two national letter forms, into
a new unity. The impulse leading to this attempt came from a strong
recognition of the difference between old and modern languages, as a
fact which becomes obvious to anyone who tries, as I did, to write
modern languag~ in an antique hand, acquired from the srudy of old
manuscripts.'
So wrote Victor Hammer in 1943. Painter, sculptor, calligrapher,
wood engraver, P,unchcutter, and printer, Hammer was in all these
activities first of all a craftsman, and he preferred to be so described.
The type that Hammer was discussing was American Uncial, the
design of which he had completed at Wells College in Aurora, New
York. An Austriai;i, he had come to the United States in 1939, fleeing
the Nazi tyranny.
The American! Uncial of Vicror Hammer was his fourth type in
this form, emergipg twenty-three years after his initial tentative ap-
proach to type de~ign. Its first appearance was in 1946 in A Dialogue
on the Uncial Betw~en a Paleographer and a Printer, written by Hammer
and printed on hi~ hai,;rd press for Chicago's Society of Typographic
Arts. This Dialogue is essential to an understanding of Hammer's
philosophy, both 1as a printer and as a type designer. One sentence
from it perhaps Sli1ffiS up the essence of his thought: 'It is my con-
viction that the type designer should do his work in the service of the
language.' '
Such an ideal t? Hammer was represented by a single letter form-
the uncial, which stems from the medieval writing hands of the fourth
to ninth centuri~. A transition from the early rigid inscriptional
majuscules to the informal hand of the Carolingian minuscule (created
in response to Ch:j.rlemagne's writing reforms and revived by the hu-
manists in the ~nth cenrury, resulting finally in the roman printing
types), the uncial had a rounder, more open appearance than the

35
The ant·of book-pno<)ucing was on the highest
Level at the time of the invention Of pr:zinting.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabc<)efghijk
LmnopqnstuvwX3"'Zl.234S6789O.J:1=8u$.-:;H'

ascne_,:Gb1flaklrn
nopqQRst:avw
x~z
Hammer American Uncial

Half..uncial manuscript hand, 7th-8th century

~ .vn ,-,,o,-rn-Lac« 11.1711or' ~ r r w . c:t..b01m~
ouncm qu.of"gr-ec,t anaQt.nf'fiTnOrpU1:£cm:;. n,,, 1 ~
d~.,,,~~hOJ'l'lerofb1~. d'd>etiodo
---T}lDJa.nOqJ bell.a •d..CTnuhof"uper,ar heroule,-ffluR:o-
bno- ch1ron ~- hm.,:eo. ~ - polluce-< c:efbulap1o
l,il,~o-·tner-cur-to- apolLne·. &'.c«.oJuf" d11~"QU-,
rACJUrqu~ ud.ua:ubur- ,pOuf"quocp 1oun gefh"f
quern wee• Jnarcc cf11.nnnzu1f"c;onlo0:1.7UITTu,
horlnqu~ OTnnef° qu.of"enunt erw,.u-ntur "'6coni
Pofl::c1crope-m cf,·f,--en- pyum-trrn a:c-ct~e, e~r,,,,
p..t1~conumc1TT1u~ CJ1cr-opem a u ~
h~41Tnarli· CO~Tle-t.lTn ofl;endo:,- ~ c ,
rt'"-vj-otcrpumbetluTn ,"\.TTno.,.-cccL-. qu?dnrcu1
du"1uTn u1d.ttt:c;Ut-<· requemr~o tic proba.lne;
_JCL1-Cl711'1o 'Imp ern d.U:~fl;1-xprn.:u::ur:-. lC\I - aben1
~•~ruref-l:-:: S1qu.1r1~niY-~mn
<~-nnorurn fi.rppun:.cnrnµi-neru-rn a.h::erum dAT11
~rpie-r;.,rtu:,--i qu.C:"T"=C annurn-rub9uo-ce,,n-plu
h1erc:"1c.•lin1<,ru-tn q-i.tpc.·ldb~"-!.,.. lon11rdeflru,-hr, n

Uncial manuscript hand, 9th century

black-letter forms, which were developed after the eleventh century

in northern Europe. As a young man Hammer had adopted a broad
pen for his personal writing, and his fondness for this period in history
had influenced his desire to duplicate the manuscript hand of the era.
The term uncial is somewhat obscure, having no precise definition
helpful to its description as a letter form. The Latin derivation is
'ounce' or 'inc,h,' the latter of which has been suggested as the amount
of space an uncial character originally occupied, but no such specifi-
cation exists. The letter was the principal book hand of the scribes in
the period me,mioned above. By the seventh century, in its evolution
toward the Carolingian minuscule, the form was called half-uncial, in
which the development of ascenders and descenders appears. The
most notable extant example is the ninth-century Book ofKells, high-
light of the golden age of Irish monasticism.
Early in his life Hammer had been guided by the example of
William Morris, and this influence was to be important in his develop-
ment as a printer. Hammer's first approach to type design was the

37
 puccR 1u:cob1 <>-::1oscph ruudue · ~-snnoms
1101 n1e-· SORORCSl.'lllS h1c ll001SUllnSlll.lC(X-
SUlllclUII7.5u:buuu1R.lUlllo !•

C1~a::!:xmU1mlill qmuu011=-1F ·
,pheursri1ehou0Rc ·u1s11upul:R.lcrsuq, cnu
UJU~lllOOlJCSUQ_ tt]ud01nusua: fi:l.]OUPO

UlillD011.ITRO.m.-in ullu:tn J:(tceRC-JllSI p<rU

ms 1UpR1TIOS lKPOSS'I -us 1n UlllOUS a.JR((_
u1L-run1RUbunni pRof.JITR.1uCRedullar,..
..,,:~;!i'
t:C~l CORUl~ ~~ooo:1-Js---i. _
-(~ ORru1n1rntvcun:tllm fl CJRUJ1Ill
·, 't,:'>
-.:~ -~- D.nnuoounc-duobc.."ltn o:coq.1~
cos 1rna:CRd)n1os fl=dubcrc;-eis
poa:fum:In spin 1urnuudoRUm o.:::p'R{IC-
OPTU'lS llOJU1dt:oli.cFcJlG7nm~~WII

., ,iJ:.UllUJTn 1101)1.)CRWn tlOTipoJ.letnlleque-- _,.

71u:oou~cdatloarosscuudcd.Js tme--
The Book of Kells, c. lare 8th-early 9th century

drawing of an uncial letter that was cut for him in 1921 by a Viennese
punchcutter, A. Schuricht, and later produced by the Klingspor
Foundry in Offenbach, which named it Hammer Unziale. But al-
though the type was successful for the foundry, Hammer never liked
or used it. The collaboration with Schuricht was fruitful, however,
 OF viscoa 12se--
pme- in -Che-i12 viscoa12se-ve--
isi12e-12a-ct1e-12 comme-nva-cion
/oFwi-cin ee-ing asLe--co t10Lve-
iaLLa12game-ncsrchen o.,:
11avge-me-n-c1n
1- -
v1sce-12n1ng
- -

;wna-c is-cuae-/as if i-C we-12e-a

p12aise--co ~nowwha-c migh'C
JJGSOIV/OPV no-cwhacshoalve- se-e-
-Choagh'C•lSOme-tJaae-ce-12-Cai ne- com-
mon pla(j:e-s anv-cne-ame-swne-ue-in
-ct1e-ga12e-goov/anvwancva12ie--cie-/
w:tli ch ~inve OF poae-12cie- is f012 'Che-
mos-c pa 12'C-Ce-vfoas/a nv nowe-a nv
-cne-n 12ivfcaLoas•~-Che-honoa12aste-s-c
pa12-Cof-CaL~e/iscogaive--ct1eoccasion/
anv agaibe--co move-12aceanv posse-
-co some--wna-c e-Lse--~ i-Cfs goov co vauie-
a nv m f.~e. spe-e-ctJ Of Che- p12e-se-n-c oc-
casion wft:h a 12game-n-C/-Ca Le-s wi'Ch
12e-asons✓Qs~f ng oFqae-scioos/wiCh
ce-LUng OFOpinions/anv ie-scwicn e-012-
nes-c-~sal;'.:some-cninges a12e-p12iai-
Le-vge-v F12om ie-SC/name-Lg 12e-Ligion/
ma-cce-12s0,r:s-ca-ce-/g12e-acpe-12sons/
ang mans pue-senc sasinesse-of im-
po12-cancJ/anv ang case--cna-cvese-12-
ue-Ch pfttie--~ne-cnacque-scionecn
much shci LL Le-a 12ne- mactJ/a nv con-
ce-n-c mocJJ/spe-ciaLLg if"tle-e-applie-his
Samson

i
for Hammer obse,;ved with great interest the punchcutter's techniques
and determined td acquire his own skill in the cutting of type.
During the 1920s Hammer resolved to add the craft of printing to
his artistic endeavors. He set up his first printing pr:ess in his home
in Florence, ltaly, beginning what evenrually became his paramount
1

39
 A5C~efghijKLmnopq
R.s'tuvwxyz
.&OClch.tf 12.14-,67890
pAR.SifAL 'CAnnh.&useR. meis'CeR.SingeR.
Unziale

interest, and one that was to bring him considerable renown. In 1929
he moved to a larger house, the Villa Santuccio, which gave its name
to his press - Stamperia dd Santuccio, an imprint Hammer retained
for all his books- in which he used only uncial types. The first work
produced under this imprint - the first of thirty that Hammer de-
signed and published-was Milton's Samson Agonistes, composed in
Hammer's second uncial type, which received the name Samson.
Samson was cut by Paul Koch, son of the famous German type
designer Rudolf Koch, who was to become a longtime friend of
Hammer's. fu in 1921, Hammer chose to be the observer. He made
his initial effort as a punchcutter in the production of several Greek
characters for use in the Milton volume, and finally he put his punch-
cutting apprenticeship to the test in the production of a third uncial,
named Pindar, for the book in which it was first used, the Fragmente
des Pindar of Holderlin. Hammer later wrote that he had cut the
letters without any previous attempt at drawing them and made only
slight corrections after smoke proofs of the punches indicated necessary
changes.
Before his arrival in the United States in 1939, Hammer had been
appointed to teach art and lettering at Wells College in upstate New
York. There he turned again to the design of an uncial type, producing
a set of punches that he took to the American Type Founders Com-
pany. The foundry was not at all prepared to market an uncial type,
but it did cast a font from which the designer printed a s.pecimen
showing.· Although this uncial was never to be produced, Hammer
was already at work on the design for another one, his American
Uncial.
Hammer first cut the American Uncial steel punches by hand and
then sought a founder who could prepare the matrices and cast

40
uec wa12ueruuor:zn bor:zueLC es sicb am mef:112 a Ls
Ur:zboLuebaawet:112 ar:zu Bar:zr:zzaaae12 wie uer:z

ganzer:z Tag aae12 0012 uen Sipper:z-Bebaasar:zgen.t

aei s0Lcb i:eie12Licbscem ar:zv v12ir:zglict:iscem Ar:z-

1

1:2at=e aLLefZ gacer:z Geisce12 ues Wocbscams.10LLe12

segr:zenuer:z ann spenner:znen K12ot=ce ues Las-

sir:zgs gewinr:zc vas mecapbysiscbe Beua12t=r:zis ue12

scammesgemeir:zsctlot=e Aasn12ack: im U12symaoL

a12isct:ie12 Ansctlaaar:zg ues WeL'CW'e12ver:zs•

Do wi12aeLc aoce12 ('12oscg12aaem Wir:zCe12bim-

meL in ea~r:zso g1206012Cfge12 a Ls aaweiseouer.z Um-

geaar:zg v'.uaaer:zver:z Scbneegeai12gs anu r:zact:ic-

van1de12 Wolueu nos a120Lce Sir:zr:zailv ves Sor:zr:zen-

uones vie12t=act:i gescblar:zger:z seir:zen ror:zer:zueo

K12eis.1nie mar:zr:zlictle Gewatc nes Gesciunes ae-

Pindar

fu pil::J2.0/ COME 9- E oer:.::01 f nic5ioftfsf.u.o oill' a,rz:1::& E S1, E(Et2.d-r:o

a,fSa,i N€:JJ..a, p12.ofptrova,1 tO BJ& 6UONifsfMa_ C05Nt:z,toNE
o' Eudio& iN T;a,N-CO chE -r;urn i gIZi tit2.a,rl N€ COJ2.pi 12.€501.arzi!
Es,(.i MEs,lio chE a,,lnzo 5EoMEt:12.a, iNT:ef& en uasgo12
i !UMi chE
Oi -r;a,,l cofa, dfia,NO foNO oifua, Ma-NOi

Andromaque

the type. His search ended with the Society of Typographic Arts in
Chicago, which with the help of type designer R. Hunter Middleton
raised funds for the project and suggested a founder, Charles Nuss·
baumer, of the Dearborn Type Foundry. Another American who was

41
 A -CVPOGRAPfilC SOLECISM

*
*"tfilS 'tYP€ FAC€ has Been be1
signet> BY Frtet> W. Cjouby fort his own
amusement.* It is, in a. mannert of
speaking, a cypogrtaphic solecism.
* Fort his lowert case lerrerts he has
brtawn on the half,uncials of the
fouRth, fifth, sixth ant> seventh cen,
rurties, eighth cennmy uncials, sug,
gestions frtom cypes of Vid:ort fiam,
meR, Rubolf Koch anb otherts. With
these he has attempteb to comeine
maJuscules Baseb on squarte capi,
tals of the fouRth cennm.y, ant> the
rmstichanbsofthescriBes,towhich
he has abbeb his own conceits.* If

Goudy Friar

most helpful to Hammer's subsequent career in the United States was

Joseph Graves of Lexington, Kentucky. Sufficient type was thus cast
for the press at Wells College. It was in appreciation of the Society's
help that Hammer produced as a keepsake his Dialoguf mentioned
earlier, set in American Uncial, in the 12-point size on a 14-point
body.
No American firm, however, was interested in marketing the new
uncial, so Hammer returned to Klingspor, which produced it for sale
in both Europe and the United States. In 1955 a 16-point size was
added, along with a set of 30-point initials. Much of Hammer's
magnificent printing has been produced from this cutting, which for
the first time gave American printers the opportunity to use a type
with an authentic medieval feeling. Although mostly employed by
private presses, Hammer's uncial has also been frequently selected
by commercial designers whenever an uncial is required. When the

42
A WAYTO ETERNiTY ,

GOtis Of EGYPt:
Solemnis

ABC0€f(jh1Jklmn
opqQstuvwxyz '

1234567890
Libra

German Stempd foundry took over the operation of Klingspor the

type was dubbed Neue ('new') Hammer Unziale, as the very first
Hammer Unziale of1921 was still available.
Finally, in the: 1950s Victor Hammer began work on his fifth uncial
type. Called An~romaque (after the Greek legend), it is the first of
the Hammer typ¢s to depart from the strong medieval letter forms
with which the d<:signer had been experimenting for more than thirty
years. Andromaque is reminiscent of Greek cursive characters. It
is also a truly minuscule form and may very well have been what
Hammer had al~ays been striving toward. It was cut in 1959 by the
Paris foundry Dc;berny et Peignot in a 10-point size, and was first
shown in specimen in Hammer's Digression on the Roman Letter,
printed the same year.
Before H~~r's death in 1967, a 14-point cutting was begun, but
it was only partia:tly completed. Since then Dr. Middleton, working

43
SAPIENTIA FILIIS SUISVITAM IN-
Wisoom b12eathes Life into her:z chilor:zen
spin.at: et: sascipit: inqainent:es se
ano shelte12s those who seek ber:z ano she
et: pnreibit: in via jast:it:ire: et: qai
will 90 befor:ze them in the wa<Y of justice: ano be
HLam oiligit: oiligit: vit:arn: et: qai
who loves herz loves Life: ano those
vigilavenint: ao iLLam complec-
who watch forz her:z will embr:zace
t:ent:an placonem ejas. Qai t:ena-
ber:z oelight. Tbe<Y that bolo
en.int: ilLam vit:arn heneoit:abant::
ber:z fast shall inher:zit life
et: qao int:noibit: beneoicet: Deas.
ano wberze she enter:zs Goo will bless.
Qai sen.vi ant: ei 01:;>seqaent:es en-
The<Y that ser:zve be12 shall se12ve
ant: sanct:o: et: eos qai oiligant:
the Hol<Y one: ano Goo Loves those
earn oHigit: Deas. lnvest:iga ilLam
who love he 12. Stao<Y he12
et: manifest:abit:an t:ibi et: confin-
ano she shall be 12evealeo to thee ano

American Uncial, from Victor Hammer's Chapter, on Writing and Printing, Lexington,
1963

44
. with Hammer's wife, Carolyn Reading Hammer, has completed the
font. Mrs. Hammer plans to use the type for work that she continues
to produce in her husband's tradition.
The anachronism of American Uncial as a representative of the
eighth-century style may be readily noticed by students of letter
forms. The historical uncial alphabet was chiefly a minuscule, that
is, there W3.fi no distinction between capitals and lowercase letters.
Hammer's uncial, however, has both forms for each letter, embodying
his attempt- fundamental to his dedication to legibility- to bring
about the fusion of the black-letter and roman alphabets.
The need' for this fusion, Hammer said, derives from the fact that
a language such as German makes abundant use of consonants, letters
that often have ascenders and descenders. In printing this kind of
language an open type with short strokes makes it easier to read than
does, for example, the narrow, tight black letter (Fraktur) that evolved
from the 'vertical' German. Latin languages, by contrast, make greater
use of vowel letters, which are rounded, so that the more open roman
form was the ,natural outcome. In being combined with the constricted
black letter, the roman serves as a relaxer.
The majuscule alphabet that Hammer thus devised for his American
Uncial is very close to the humanist sans seri£ It combines well with
the rest of hi~ font - so much so, in fact, that the reader is hard put to
. notice the in~ongruity of standard capitals in an uncial alphabet.
Frederic W. Goudy designed an uncial font similar to Hammer's,
named FriarJ in 1937. Goudy, however, considered the mixing of
capitals and l0wercase in an uncial alphabet a 'typographical solecism;
and so attempted a 'pure' version. Nevertheless, he credited the
Hammer unc~als as the inspiration for his design. Unfortunately, but
few fonts of Friar were cast before the fire that in 1939 destroyed the
contents of Ooudy's workshop.
In addition, there are two other uncial types seen in contemporary
printing. Libra, designed by S. H. de Roos for the Typefoundry
Amsterdam i~ 1939, is probably the most widely used of all uncials.
A minuscule :alphabet with no accompanying set of capitals, Libra
gives the effect of pure lowercase. The other uncial is Solemnis,
designed by G. G. Lange in 1953 for the Berlin foundry Berthold. Also
a twenty-six-letter alphabet, Solemnis differs from Libra in that most
of the charact¢rs favor the majuscule form.
The Hammer type has become the first choice among the available
uncials for book printing, since it seems to represent the uncial char-·

45
acter at its best. It has been used by numerous private-press printers
for short works that call for a medieval appearance. Although it is
obvious that today the uncial letter is a distinct departure from the
standards by which we measure typographic legibility, we can none-
theless admire the vigorous character of Hammer's interpretation. It
has provided modern bookmakers with the opportunity to produce
period printing of authentically orthodox flavor but more legible-
hence accessible - than its prototype. ·
And Victor Hammer himself led the way, by virtue of a lifetime
of devotion to standards of craftsmanship that, alas, seem to be, like
his type, anachronistic in the world of contemporary printing.

Victor Hammer
 CJLOISTER OLD STYLE

When printing qecame established on the Italian peninsula in about

1465, the first types to emerge were transitional between the black-
letter (gothic) n6rthem-European manuscript hands and those forms
now called roman. It was owing to the humanist influence early in
the fifteenth century that the scribes who were engaged in copying
the ancient Greek and Roman texts turned to the letter stVles that had
' '
emerged as earl)I as the eighth century in the writing reforms insti-
gated by Charlemagne (from which developed the writing style now
known as Carolingian minuscule).
By the mid-qfteenth century the tradition had been set for the
later printed editions of the classics to appear in this transitional
form: the early printers, naturally enough, were guided by readers'
familiarity with dertain letter styles in the development of their types.
It was thus logical for the Italian printers to tum to the humanist
manuscripts as models, and to use these models to continue the
manuscript tradiµon via typography.
lt is rarely ppssible for modern observers to determine which
manuscript models were used by the first fifteenth-century punch-
cutters; those printers who entered the craft after it had been estab-
lished simply copied the type that had already proved successful. By
contrast, the tas~ of identifying more recent sources is much simpli-
fied, for types, rather than manuscript hands, serve as the inspiration
for later revivals.
1

The creator of such a revival - the first step in the evolution of

Cloister Old Styli:-was William Morris. Writing in 1895, a year before
his death, he sruvmed up his ideals as a printer in A Note by William
Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press, in which he dis-
cusses the rationale behind his first choice of a type for his printing
venture:
By instinct rather than by conscious thinking it over, I began by getting
myself a font of R:oman type. And here what I wanted was a letter pure in

47
 CLOISTER LIGHTFACE IS THE LATEST
ADDITIONTOTHE CLOISTER FAMILY
AND IS AN HISTORIC TYPE DESIGN
~MMMMMMMMMMb-
Lo1sTER LIGHTFACE is formed after the
original type model of Nicolas Jenson
of France, created and used by him in
his printing house inVenice in the year
1470, whom it made celebrated in his
own time and famous for all time. Now, in this year
1925, it has been conscientiously adapted to twenti-
eth century uses and for many kinds of papers un-
known to the said illustrious Nicolas Jenson by the
chief type designer of the American Type Founders
Company, Morris F. Benton. Cloister Lightface
will be acclaimed by many authorities as being the
ideal Jenson type face. It is incomparable for rich
beauty combined with great dignity. Mr. Benton
has very faithfully adhered to the Jenson model,
maintaining its original purity insofar as possible.
~MMMMMMMMMMb-
Cloister Oldstyle (AT F)

form; severe, without needless excrescences; solid, without the thickening

and thinning of the line, which is the essential fault of the ordinary modern
type, and which makes it difficult to read; and not compressed laterally, as all
later type has grown to be, owing to commercial exigencies. There was only
one source from which to take examples of this perfected Roman type, to
wit, the works of the great Venetian printers of the 15th century, of "!'horn
Nicolas Jenson produced the completest and the most Roman characters
from 1470 to 1476.

It may be observed that Morris had an extreme dislike for the

roman types of his own era, types that indeed lacked individuality
 KINGDOM
Encounters Soldier
OBNOXIOUS
Question Announced
Lining Jenson <;)ldstyle No. 2 (ATF)

and character, and resulted from the diminished aesthetic standards

of type design that accompanied the inexorable demand for cheap,
fast printing engendered by the Industrial Revolution. These late-
nineteenth-century types, generally referred to in our time as 'modem
romans,' were the product of the newly industrialized atmosphere of
the printer's craft, representing decades of deterioration in the print-
ing process.
Morris named the design that resulted from his study of fifteenth-
century typographic letter forms _the Golden type. The name is asso-
ciated with the three-volume edition of the medieval manual The
Golden Legend, which had been planned as the first production ofhis
Kelmscott Pr~ss (although its ambitious length delayed its publication).
For the model of his design, Morris turned to a pair of Venetian
books, the Historia naturalis of Pliny, printed by Nicolas Jenson in
1476, and Atetino's Historia Florentina, printed by Jacobius Rubens
in the same year.· Morris has stated, however, that his inspiration
stemmed from the types of several Italian printers of the same period.
The cutting of the type was turned over to the English punchcutter
Edward Prince. It may also be noted that Morris depended for tech-
nical advice on his friend, the commercial engraver Emery Walker.

49
 ·. · · What sprang from this Follaboration was not, as Morris remarked,
a 'servile' copy of Jenson, but one that suited the concept Morris had
evolved for the individualized printing he planned to produce. The
Golden type and that of Nicolas Jenson are alike only in generalized
details; the Golden is noticeably heavier. So successful, however, was
this use of the Jenson-inspired type in the magnificently printed
Kelmscott editions that it stimulated other private-press printers to
embark on similar efforts. More important, it aroused an interest on
the part of type designers in general in reexamining fifteenth-century
sources for modds upon which to base new typefaces.
The commercial typefounders, for example, took note of the wide-
spread appeal of the Golden type and began to produce, not versions
of the original Jenson, but undeviating imitations of Morris's type.
But whereas William Morris required only one size of the Golden
type, the founders, to meet the demands of their printer customers,
had to cut a complete range of sizes, and it is here that the eccen-
tricities inherent in this type - the slanted serifs, for instance - became
most noticeable. These copies, obtainable under a variety of names
(Jenson, Kelmscott, Ancient Roman, and others), were nevertheless
purchased in great quantity. The Golden design also influenced
numerous similar styles cut for printers, mostly amateur, who wished
to produce books in the Morris manner, but none of these types
(Vale, Essex, Merrymount, Village, and so forth) had any lasting
effect on the typefounders.
The next step in the process that eventually resulted in the cutting
of Cloister Old Style came about with the establishment in 1900 of
the Doves Press in London by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, who was also
animated by the Morrisonian ideal. The Doves type began, like the
Kelmscott, with Jenson, and was cut by the same punchcutter, Edward
Prince. It should be noted that a partner in this press was Emery
Walker, who had earlier advised Morris on the selection of a type.
But Cobden-Sanderson eschewed the strongly decorated Kelmscott
pattern and turned instead to pure typography. This breakaway from
the medievalism of Morris better suited the requirements of the
nascent twentieth-century art of the book.
Still another development leading to the more modern aesthetic
judgment of the types of Nicolas Jenson occurred about the same
period. The American typographer Bruce Rogers - then designing
books for the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts-had
examined in the Boston Public Library a copy of the great Jenson

50
Fifteenth-century humanist manuscript hand
poffem dicere.Porro cii duce fint cofuerudines quz uirruti
fubicidunr:alia 4dem quidquod~ entiii fie ifpicic:alia ue
ro quid uocetur:atcp in~hunc modu de roali ph1lofophiz I?
te di«erunc. Enimuero morale philofophia: pte ifubiecros
diuidunt locos:uidelicet de appetitione:de bonis & malis:
de }?turbationibus:de uirrure:de fine:dccp prima extimato
ne:& de actibus ac de off1ciis:de adhortationibus & hortati
onibus :in hunc autem modii fubdi!l:ingiic Chryfippus ar ·
chedemus Zeno tarfenfis Apollodorus Diogenes Antipa"
ter & Poffidonius.Na cittieus Zeno & cleanthes ut anri<:r
ores fimplicius ita tradarunt.At hi & ronale naturalemq1
philofophi;£ Fte diuiferunt. Prima aure hanc aiantis appe
titione fuiffe d.icunt feipfum tuendi atqi feruandi : natura
fibi ipfii ab initio ita cociliate:ut chry!i:ppus ait i prio de fi..-
nibus:primii,pprium cuiq; aianti dices Cui ipfius fuiffe co..,
mendatione huiufcp notione. Neq; eni fas crat aial ipfum
ud ab fe alienu fieri:uel oio id fieri:uel non fibi maxie ,ppi
quii fieri.Refiat ut dicamus hanc ipfum fibi maxia concor
dia & caritate deuixiffe.Ita eni & noxia propdlit:& qua: ad
f ui con!l:a.ntia funt utilia fufcipic.QE.od aure dicunt q uida
prima appetitione animatibus ad uolu ptate fieri fa.lfum .p
fecl:o efl:.Acce!fione enim dicunt fi quid fit uoluptate effe :
cu ipfam p fe natura in'=l:!i:erit:& qua: comendacoi fux fut
accomodata pceric : queadmodii exhilarefc.i,.mc aialia uire
fcuntq; arbor~: Nihilcp aiunt differt natura irr arbotibus
& aialibus quado de illis abfq1 motu uoluntatis ac fefu di(
ponit:& in nobis quaxla ead.e ratoe fiunc.Gi uero ex fuper
fl.uo appetitio animanribus accefTerit: qua uteutes l?agant
qu.£ fua funt:in eis quidenaturali ca!l:atia appetinone illa
difponi.Ca:terii cii roalibus 1?fectiore pacepco data fie ro
fecundu ea uiuere.f. recl:e fieri his qua: fecundu nacura fut
ea '=3,ppe artifex accidit moderatrixq; appetitois • QEocirca.
Roman type of Nicolas Jenson, Venice, 1475

52
in her bely, and remayned vyrgyn after the chyldyng. And when he
had so sa_rd, hewasanone all hoole parflghtely.And thenne saidepcter
to hym Cl. T,ake that palme of the honde of oure broder Johan, and
Ieye it on the peple that be blyndc, and who that wylle bilcue shalle
receyue his sight agcyne. And they that wylle not byleue shall neuer
see. And thenne thappostles bare marye vnto the monument, and
satte by it, Iyke as our lord had commaunded, and at thethyrdde day
Jhesu crist cam with a grcte multytude of Angels and salcwed them
and saide pees be with yow. And they answerd, god, glory be to the
whiche onlymakestthe_g_rete myraclcs and merueyles,And oure lord
sayd to thappostles {[ What is nowyoure aduys that I ought now to
doo to my m~der, of honour and of grace? Syrc, itsemcth to vs thyser.-
uauntes that,lyke as thou hast vanquysshyd thedcth & regnest world
withoute en4e, that thou rcyse also the body of thy moder, & sette her
on thy rygh~ side in perdurabylyte. And he graunted it. And thenne
M ychael the angel cam & presented the sowle of Marye to oure lord.
And the saueour spacke and sayde fIAryse vp, haste the my culuer
or douue, tabernacle of glorye, vessel oflyf, Temple celestyal, and Iyke
as thou neuer feltest conccyuing by none atouchemcnt, thou shalt not
suffre in the sepulcre no corrupcion of body. And anon the sowle cam
agcyne to the body of maryeand yssued gloryously outeof the tombe,
and thus was receyued in the heuenlychambre, and a grete companye
of angels with her. And saynt Thomas was not there, and whan he
cam lie wold~ not bylcue this. And anone the gyrdell with whiche her
body was gyrde cam to hym fro the ayer, whiche he r(:(:1:rued, and
therby he v11:derstode that she was assumpt in to hcuen. CI. And alle
this here to fore issayd &calledAepocriphum. Whereof saynt Jerom
sayth in a sermon to paula and Eustochium her daughter {[ That
book is said to be apocryfum, sauf that somme wordes whiche hen
worthyoffeyth & hen approued of seyntes as touchyng nyne thynges,
that is to wcte, that the comforte of thappostles was promysed and

The Golden type of William Morris, 1892

book, Euseb~us'sDe PraeparationeEvangelica, printed in 1470. Excited

by the desire to re-create this beautiful design, Rogers then sought
out other Jenson books. He reproduced their pages in what he later
described as ~the search for what I fondly thought would be the ideally
perfect type;: not knowing then that it was something like the quest
of the Holy Grail.'
In 1901 Rogers had progressed to the point of having the Riverside
Press authorize the cutting of his designs, which was done by John
Cumming, a punchcutter working in Worcester, Massachusetts. Origi-

53
 oxen. So the service was prepared, and che priests stood in their place, and
the Levites in their courses, according co the king's commandment. And they
killed the passover, & the priests sprinkled the blood from their hands, and the
Levites flayed them. And they removed the burnt offerings, that they might
· give according co che divisions of the families of the people, co offer unto the
Lord, as it is written in the book of Moses. And so did they with the oxen. And
they roasted the passover wich fire according co the ordinance: but the other
holy offerings sod they in pots, and in caldrons, and in pans, & divided them
speedily among all che people. And afterward chey made ready for themselves,
& for the priests; because the priests the sons of Aaron were busied in offering
of burnt offerings and the fat until night; therefore the Levites prepared for
themselves, and for the priests the sons of Aaron. And the singers the sons of
Asaph were in their place, according co the commandment of David, and
Asaph, and Heman, and Jeduthun the king's seer; and the porters waited
at every gate; they might not depart from their service; for their brethren
the Levites prepared for them. So all the service of the Lord was prepared the
same day, to keep the passover, and to offer burnt offerings upon the altar of
the Lord, according to the commandment of king Josiah. And the children
of Israel that were present kept the passover at that time, and the feast of
unleavened bread seven days. And there was no passover like to that, kept in
Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did all the kings of Israel
keep such a passover asJosiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and all
Judah and Israel chat were present,. and che inhabitants of Jerusalem. In the
eighteenth year of the reign qf Josiah was this passover kept. ([ After all this,
when Josiah had prepared the temple, N echo king of Egypt came up to fight
against Carchemish by Euphrates: and Josiah went out against him. Bue he
sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, thou king of
Judah( I come not against thee chis day, but against the house wherewith I
have war: for God commanded me to make haste: forbear thee from meddling

The Doves type, in the English Bible of the Doves Press, 1903-os

nally intended for a notable edition of the Essays of Montaigne, and

thus named Montaigne, the Rogers type was actually used for the
first time in another book designed by Rogers, Sir Walter Raleigh's
Last Sea Fight of the Revenge, published in 1902. Rogers, however,
was not satisfied with the face and some years later improved on it in
a new design named Centaur, which will be discussed in the next
chapter.
The activities of the numerous private presses of the period
1900-1910 aroused the interest of both commercial printers and
typefounders - William Morris's concept of returning to the historic
typefaces had begun to take effect. The earliest big venture in type

54
 IN PRINCliPIO CREAVIT DEUS CCELUM.. ET
terram. Terra:autem erat inanis etvacua,et tenebr~ erant
super faciem ~byssi; et Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas.
Dixitque Detjs: Fiat lux. Et fa& est lux. Et vidit Deus
lucem quod esset bona; et divisit lucema tenebris. Appel,
lavitque luceiµ Diem et tenebras Nodem; fadumque est
vespere et mane, dies unus..Dixit quoque Deus: Fiat fir,
marnentum i1' medio aquarurn, etdividataquas ab aquis.
Et fecit Deus !firrnarnentum.. divisitque aquas, quz erant
sub firrnarnento, ab his, qu.e erant super flrrnamentum.
Et fadum est ita. V ocavitque Deus firrnarnentum, Cce,
lum; et fadllf:Il est vespere et mane, dies secundus. Dixit
vero Deus: Cqngregentur aqu.e.. qu.e sub crelo sunt, in lo,.
cum unum, et appareat arida. Et fadum est ita. Et voca-
vit Deus arid.am.. Terram.. congregationesque aquarum
appellavit M~ria. Et vidit Deus quod esset bonum. Et
ait: Germinet terra herbarn virentem, et facientem semen,
et lignum porniferum faciens frudum juxta genus suum,
cujus semen Ht semetipso sit super terram. Et fadum est
ita. Et pronilit terra herham virentem, et facientem se,
men juxta gerius suum,lignumque faciens frudum,et ha,

i
Ma:rymount design of Bertram Grosvener Goodhue
i
'

revivalism, the rec(itting ofBodoni by Morris Benton for the American

Type Founders Opmpany, occurred in 19ro, and it proved such a suc-
cess that the foundry planned further such projects. One of these was
Benton's Cloister Old Styie, first produced in 1913. This face fulfilled
the broad demands of the trade for a type employing the same historic
sources as those of the esteemed private presses.
Morris Fuller ~enton had become a type designer through the
circumstance of hiving for a father Linn Boyd Benton, a typefounder
and the inventor, µo less, of the pantograph device, patented in r885,
which had mechartized the craft of punchcutting. It was this machine
that freed typefounding from the laborious procedure of cutting by

55
 BOOKE IL CHAPTER XL 97
•the world knoweth, and especially such things as have drawne,on
• publike effects, and of such consequence, it is an inexcusable defect,
•or as I may say unpardonable oversight.'1 To conclude, whosoever
•desireth to have perfect information and knowledge of King Fran,
•cis the first, and of che things hapned in his time, let him addresse
•himselfe elsewhere, ifhe will give anycredit unto me. The profit he
•may reap here, is by the particular deduction of the battels and ex,
•ploits of warre, wherein these Gentlemen were present ; some privie
•conferences, speeches or secret actions of some Princes that then
•lived, and the practices managed, or negotiations directed by the
• Lord of La.ngeay, in whom doubtlesse are verie many things well,
•worthie co be knowne, and diverse discourses not vulgare.'

THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER.

Of Crueltie.

E thinks vercue is another manner of thing,

and much more noble, chan the inclina,
tions unto goodnessewhich in us are ingen,
dered. Mindes well borne and directed by
themselves follow one same path, and in
their actions repr~sent the same visage that
the vertuous doe. But vercueimportethand
soundeth somewhat, I wot not what, greater
and more active, thaf.l by an happy com,
plexion, gently and peaceably, to suffer it selfe to be led or drawne
to follow reason. He that through a nacurall facilitie and genuine
mildnesse should neglect or concenme injuries received, should no
doubt performe a rare action and worthy commendation; but he who,
being touchr and stung co the quicke with any wrong or offence re,
ceived, should arme himselfe with reason against this furiously ,blind
desire of revenge, and in the end, after a great conflict, yeeld himselfe
master over,it. should doubtlesse doe much more. The first should
doe well, the ocher vercuously; the one action might be termed good,
nesse, the other venue. For it seemeth that the verie name of vertue
presupposeth difficultie and inferreth resistance, and cannot well ex,
ercise it selfe without an enemie. It is peradventure the reason why
we call God good, mightie, liberall and just, but we terme him not

Montaigne type designed by Bruce Rogers in Essays rifMontaigne, 1902

 hand every letter in a font of type, a practice that had not changed
since Johann Gutenberg invented· it in 1440. Before Benton, the only
other procedure used for the production of matrices was dectrotyping,
which was developed about 1840. Electrotyping, howeve~, was em-
ployed primarily for the copying of existing typefaces rather than for
original desikns; the method in fact encouraged the pirating of type
designs (a custom common in our own time when phototypesetting
machines were being devdoped).
When the younger Benton graduated from Cornell in 1896 as a
mechanical tjlgineer, he went to work for the American Type Founders
Company as assistant to his father. The senior Benton had been given
the responsil1,ility of organizing the type-production facilities of that
recently formed combine, put together in 1892-despite loud protests
in the printing trade- by the merging of some two dozen separate
typefoundri~s. Morris Benton's duties were rdated to the mechanical
aspects of typefounding, particularly the adaptation of the American
Point Syste111 of typographic measurement, which had been instigated
in 1886. But I as the chaos and pressures that resulted from the vast
amalgamation subsided, the young engineer began to develop an
interest in lep:er forms themselves. &; early as 1898 he produced the
first of what ultimately became a list of more than 186 types, making
him the most prolific type designer who has ever lived. This first type
was originally named Buddy, but when it was employed by Eiben
Hubbard it was renamed Roycroft, after Hubbard's craft center and
printing establishment in upstate New York.
Benton n,exc became involved in the development of the various
· additions to i the Century family of types, on which ~is father had
collaborated with the great scholar-printer Theodore L. De Vinne.
By 1904 Benton was fully established in type design with the
production 9f the Cheltenham family of typefaces, based on the
original face drawn by the architect Benrarn Goodhue, which became
the most widely known of all American types. In 1909 Benton turned
to his first imponant revival of a classic type, that of Bodoni. Then,
attracted to the Venetian letter forms favored by the private presses,
he came to an appreciation of the work of the fifteenth-century Italian
printers.
Cloister Old Style became the hallmark design in the revival of
the Venetian1old-style types in the present century. The face followed
the spirit of its Jenson original in the blunt, solidly constructed serifs,
but it had fu.ller bracketing than is apparent in the earlier letter. In

57
 Cloister Italic, available in fourteen sizes
ranging from six up to seYenty-two point,
sounded a new note in italic design. As no
italic types were made in the firfl century
ofprinting which would harmonize with
the roman type ofJenson, it was necessary
in designing this series to follow the shapes
of the earlier sixteenth century italics of
Aldus ofVenice andcertain French italics
ofa third ofa century later. The resulting
design is a 'Vigorous italic that harmonizes
excellently with the CloisterOldstyleand
is an admirable series on its own account
Qoister Oldstyle Italic (AFT)

this respect Stanley Morison, the English typographic historian, has

discussed the lack of brackets (often called fillets) in all Venetian types
before 1495; he wonders whether the craftsmen lacked the proper tools
with which to refine serifs. More recently another English typographic
historian, Harry Carter, has suggested that the invention in the r47os
of the jeweler's eyeglass provided the means of more exact seeing and
therefore cutting.
Another feature of the Venetian types captured in Cloister Old Style
is the avoidance of strong contrast between thick and thin strokes.
Some authorities believe this shows that the Italian punchcutters
during the first thirty years of printing were attempting to reproduce
exactly the pen-drawn humanistic roman, rather than striving to cut
original type letters.
The most distinctive of Jenson's lowercase letters is e, with its
angled crossbar, a style followed by practically every Italian designer
of the period until the appearance of the types of Francesco Griffo,
cut for the press of Aldus Manurius in 1495.

58
67 And both~ and my Sages grew aware
of sunset, by my shadowvanisht thence,
when w~ had made brief trial of the stair.
70 And ere w{thin one dim circumference

the wide :horizon mingled sea and shore,

and Nigp.t held sway with all her influence,
73 Each of us:on a stair was bedded; for

the moup.tain-lawdeprived us of the will

and of the power of there ascending more.
76 Just as, while ruminating, goats grow still,

however lbold and nimble they had run

over the µeights before they browsed their fill,
79 Husht in the shade while blazes hot the sun,
watcht by the herdsman leaning on his rod,
who, leatjling thus, attends them every one;
B And as the shepherd, stretcht upon the sod,
2

watches py night his quiet flock beside,

that no wild beast may scatter it abroad:
85 Even so di~ we at such an hour abide,

I like the goat, they shepherdlike, all three

hemmed! in by lofty rock on either side.
Cloister Lightface, in the edition of Dante printed by John Henry Nash,
San Francisco, 19:29

The capitals of Cloister retain the fuff height of the Jenson font, a
factor criticized by Morison as detracting from the legibility of the
face. Both M and f'l have the slab serifs typical of the Venetian types;
that is, the upper serifs center on the stems of the letter. In many of

59
 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP
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abcdefghijklwnopqrstu
vwxyz 1234567890
Eusebius (Ludlow)

the types favored by the Italian printers this feature was also carried
over to the A.
In his design of the italic for Cloister Old Style, Benton encoun-
tered the problem faced by all modern type designers who return to
the Venetian letter forms: there is no model to follow. Italic type was
not cut until 1500, and when it finally did appear, in the Viwil of
Aldus printed in rsm, itwas used as a type completely independent of
roman. It was not until the 1540s in France that italic was cut in a
form that was complementary to the roman, and a good deal later
before the two styles became, as they are today, inseparable.
Thus, type designers have had to invent and design italics to go
with any roman that appeared berween 1470 and 1500. Benton was
among the first to confront this difficulty, the early private-press printers
having ignored it by employing roman alone. He elected to create a
cursive form that he believed to be in the spirit of the roman. Other
type designers, by contrast and as will be discussed later, have pre-
ferred an italic with a strictly historic relationship to the upright form.
This has resulted in the italics called chancery, based on Renaissance
calligraphic sources, in which the letters are narrow and spiky. Cloister
italic, by comparison, is a pleasantly rounded and sloped letter,
certainly retaining the feeling of the roman.
Although lacking the aesthetic impact ofsome of the later Venetian
revivals, Cloister has proved to be a most successful cutting, and has
found its way into printing offices the world over, either in its foundry

6o
 (ATF) version or in the adaptations produced for the various type-
setting machines. Those cut for the slug-casting machines (Linotype
and Intertype) are identical to the Benton version except for the
inevitable lack of kerning- not obtainable in a slug-casting machine
matrix- whicll. is most noticeable with the lowercase f
The Ludlo;w Typograph Company, manufacturer of a slug-casting
device used for display typography, brought out a type drawn by
Ernst Detterer in 1923 that is quite close in spirit to Cloister Old
Style. This fa~e was first called Nicolas Jenson, but later changed to
Eusebius. (The name has historic analogy, for Pamphili Eusebius was
the author of the book that Jenson so splendidly printed in 1470,
thereby establishing the printer's reputation for the design of the ro-
man type that has come to be the standard for all those that followed.)
The italic of Eusebius differs from that of Cloister in that it follows
the chancery style. It was drawn by R. Hunter Middleton, who, after
Morris Bentop. and Frederic W. Goudy, has been one of the most
prolific American type designers.
Although most American printers were enthusiastic about Clois-
ter when it filf5t appeared, the redoubtable printer-historian Daniel
Berkeley Updike treated it somewhat condescendingly in his great
work Printing Types (1922): 'Cloister Old Style Roman was based on
a study of Nicolas fenson's long-suffering and as yet unrivalled font,
and its italic is of an interesting early form. It is a practical type;
not very insp~red, perhaps, yet quiet and satisfactory because not
attempting too much .... '
At present, Cloister Old Style as a book type has lost ground to
some of the later Venetian old styles. But in commercial printing and
for advertising display it continues to be popular, particularly in its
boldface version encountered daily in the consumer periodicals.
For examples of its use in distinguished book making, the reader
is urged to examine the work of the San Francisco printer John Henry
Nash, who was very fond of the type and employed it frequently. The
. great book from his press, the four-volume Dante published in 1929,
is completely ~and-set in Cloister Light, one of the weights produced
by the American Type Founders Company.

61
 CENTAUR

In 1915 there was issue~ from the Montague Press at the Dyke Mill in
Montague, Massachttsetts, a slim quarto volume printed in an edi-
tion of 135 copies. The designer of this book was Bruce Rogers and·
the printer was Carl Purington Rollins. For bibliophiles who collect
the work of Rogers, The Centaur, by Maurice de Guerin, is one of
the most desirable items. The little volume seldom appears in the
booksellers' catalogues, though, as most of the copies are held by
institutional libraries.
The reason for the book's demand, aside from being designed by
Rogers, is that it represents the first appearance of a type esteemed
the world over as one of the finest ever produced in this century.
Named for the book, Centaur was its designer's third and final ap-
proach to the design of a printing type (the first was the Montaigne
of 1901, followed by the remodeling of a Caslon for a book published
in 1909). Thereafter Rogers restricted himself primarily to book
typography, although from time to time he did alter various charac-
ters of the fonts that he had selected for some of his important works.
The reputation of Bruce Rogers is secure as the most accomplished
book designer that America has yet produced, and this high regard
has spread far beyond our shores. The English typographic authority
Sir Francis MeyneU has stated unequivocally that Rogers 'was the
greatest artificer of the book who ever lived.'
He was born on May 14, 1870, in Linnwood, Indiana. As a boy,
Rogers had ambitions to be an artist and enrolled at the age of fifteen
at Purdue, then a twelve-year-old land-grant college located just a
few miles from his home. Entering with him was his friend John T.
McCutcheon, who was later to be a prominent cartoonist. The two
boys were the only males in the art course. Although the art curriculum
of Purdue at that time was not particularly distinguished, Rogers did
manage to become aware of fine books, arid he contributed co the
design of the publications of the school- the first Purdue yearbook

62
 ABCDEFGHIJKLMN I

OPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghi jklmnopqrstu
vwxyz 1234567890
fiffflffi ffi
Cencaur (English Morn:icype)

was produced in 11889, with Rogers and McCutcheon providing

decorations, headings, and illustrations. After several jobs of no
consequence follo':Ving his graduation, in 1890, Rogers became in-
volved in commercp.al design in 1894, when he was asked by Joseph
M. Bowles, publis,her of the periodical Modern Art, to contribute
artwork to that publication. Bowles showed him several books pro-
duced by William, Morris's Kelmscott Press and like other young
designers of this ~ra, Rogers was animated by exposure to these
works. For a bookjpublished by Bowles, Rogers created an alphabet
of initials that, with sundry headbands and tailpieces, was reflective
of Morris's work. 1

Rogers's careelf began to cake direction when the Bosmn lith-

ographer Louis Pr~g offered to publish Modern Art, a proposal that
Bowles accepted, prompting his removal to Boston. At Bowles's
suggestion Rogersi also went East in 1895. Not long after his arrival
. in Boston he met Daniel Berkeley Updike, who had recently estab-
lished his Merrymqunt Press after having spent a number of years at
the Riverside Pre5$ of the publishing house Houghton, Mifflin &
Company. Updike: introduced Rogers to George H. Mifflin, who
offered him emplor,ment as a designer at Riverside. Rogers remained
Drawings of Centaur type by Bruce Rogers

there until 1912, a seventeen-year stint during which he fully estab-

lished himself as a book designer ofrernarkable ability.
About 1900 Houghton, Mifflin engaged in an ambitious publish-
ing program of fine books and placed Rogers in charge of their
production. The first opportunity to design a printing type came
quickly. As described in chapter three, at an exhibition in the Boston
Public Library Rogers had examined a copy of the De Praeparatione
Evangelica of Eusebius, printed at Venice in 1470 by Nicolas Jenson.
Fascinated by the type in which the book was composed, he sought
 out its owner and received permission to photograph a page. (Rogers
eventually acquired a copy of the book, which can be found in the
Newberry Library in Chicago, along with the photographs of the
type.) He th~reupon began work on what he thought would be the
ideal type, haying no idea that the endeavor would be so difficult.
Rogers sqon persuaded his employer to let him proceed with
drawings for I a new type to be used for an important forthcoming
publication, a folio edition of Montaigne's Essays. Using the Jenson
letter as his model, Rogers completed his design and- at the sugges-
tion of Joseph W. Phinney, manager of the Boston branch of the
American Ty;pe Founders Company- he secured the assistance of
John Cummipg of Worcester, Massachusetts, for the cutting of the
punches. Rogers was not particularly happy with the outcome of this
initial venture into type design, feeling that the punchcutter, though
highly skilled~ had not quite preserved the flavor of either the Jenson
original or hi~ own drawings. But the publisher was most enthusiastic
about the new type and Rogers agreed to use it for the Montaigne
edition, from which it took its name. Privately, however, Rogers
decided that pis search for the perfect type would be continued at a
later date.
It was to be a dozen years before the opportunity arose to pro-
duce another •typeface. Midway in his Riverside employment Rogers
had come to a decision concerning his career, turning full time to
typography at the expense of illustration and painting, fields which
had also always attracted him. The decision was doubtless owing
largely to the acclaim his Riverside books had brought him, along
with numeroµs new friends who were to influence his subsequent
career.
Among these was Emery Walker, whom Rogers finally met in 1912
when, having left Riverside, he made his first visit to England.
Walker was the engraver who had been a strong force in the design
of the Golden type of William Morris and of die Doves Press type
of T.J. Cobd'en-Sanderson. Rogers had also previously established
a friendship with Henry Watson Kent, the Bostonian who in 1903
had become librarian of New York's Grolier Club and two years later
was made assistant secretary of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker and Kent were to prove instrumental in the development of
Centaur type; Walker for his experience in adapting Jenson's design
for Morris and Cobden-Sanderson, and Kent for the support he pro-
vided in his capacity at the Metropolitan.

65
 THE CENTAUR. WRITTEN BY MAURICE DE
GUERIN AND NOW TRANSLATED FROM THE
FRENCH BY GEORGE B. IYI;§
n
Was born in~ cavern of these mountains.
Like the river in yonder valley,whose first
drops flow from some cliff that weeps in a
deep grotto, the first moments of my life
sped amidst the shadows ofa secluded re,
treat, nor vexed its silence.As our mothers
l\t-s;,~Y_r,c\H>drawneartheircerm,theyretiretothecav,
erns, and in the innermost recesses of the
wild.c;st of chem all, where the darkness is
most dense, they bring forth, uncomplainmg, offspring as silent as
themselves. Their strengch,giving milk enables us to endure with,
out weakness or dubious struggles the first difficulties of life; yet
we leave our caverns later than you your cradles. The reason is that
there is a tradition amongst us chat the early days of life must be
secluded and guarded, as days engrossed by the gods.
My growth ran almost its entire course in the darkness where I
was born. The innermost depths of my home were so far within
the bowels of the mountain, chat I should not l;iave known in
which direction the opening lay, had it not been that the winds at
times blew in and caused a sudden coolness and confusion. Some,
times, too, my mother returned, bringing with her the perfume of
chevalleys,or dripping wet from che screams to which she resorted.
Now, these her home,comings, although they told me naught of
the valleys or the streams, yec. being attended by emanations there,
from, disturbed my thoughts. and I wandered about, a.II agitated,
amidst my darkness. 'What.' I would say co myself. 'are these places
to which my m~ther goes and what power reigns there which sum,
mons her so frequently? To what influences is one there exposed,

Page from The Centaur, The Montague Press, 1916

66
 While at the Grolier Club, Kent had developed a keen interest in
typography that prompted him, after his move to the Metropolitan,
to become personfllY involved in the operation of the museum's small
printing plant, which actively produced exhibition labels, posters,
announcements, ahd the like. During his long tenure there, Kent built
this little shop int9 the Museum Press, which achieved renown for the
high quality of i~s productions-many of which were designed by
Kent himself. One of the projects that particularly interested Kent
was improving the quality of the exhibition labels, and with this in
mind he asked Rogers to consider the design of a type exclusively for
the use of the M~tropolitan. Thus encouraged, Rogers rerurned to
his interpretation ,of the Jenson type, trying to provide the suitable
model he believed had not been accomplished with the Montaigne
delineation.
In a letter to Daniel Berkeley Updike written later, in 1922, Rogers
explained the reason for his seeming dependence on a single original
rype:
So much has already been written about Jenson's Roman and its derivations
that nothing more !seems necessary or even perhaps, advisable - but it is,
I believe, much neru;er to its MS prototype than most people suspect. When
I made the Centaur1type I enlarged Jenson's and wrote over the prints with
a flat pen - just as rapidly as I could - then I selected the best (?) of my
characters and toucped them up with a brush and white - ( no black) just
about as much as a punch-cutter would do with a graver-and the type was
cut from these patterns. It proved to my own satisfaction, at least, that the
lower-case (with th~ exception of the s) of Jenson, was cut directly from
a MS hand-and not drawn-as the caps of course were. I enclose a bit
of the writing and ~he 'trued-up' letters - I wish now I hadn't 'trued' them
so much - Will one eper learn?
Rogers now discussed with Frederic W. Goudy the transfer of his
drawings to matrices for the casting of type. Goudy recommended
commissioning t~e Chicago matrix engraver Robert Wiebking for
this purpose; Wieb.king had cut several of Goudy's earlier types most
successfully, using the matrix-engraving machine. Rogers agreed,
and when the wot;k was completed in 1914, he felt that the new type
was a good deal d<;>ser to the original Jenson than was the Montaigne
for which the punfhes had been cut freehand. He was also convinced
that it came clost;r to his own ideals of a reconstructed Venetian
roman type.
The original size chosen for casting was 14-point, this being the
only size fur whicp a lowercase alphabet was required. In addition,
the Metropolitan required several sizes of caps for display purposes;
these were cut in 12-, 14-, 20-, 24-, 30-, 48-, and 60-point, and were
named Museum Press Capitals. Rogers agreed to· sell his design to
the Museum for $500, the type to become its property except that he
would retain the privilege of ordering for his own use (not for sale)
such quantities as he required of the 14-point, the only size for which
the lowercase had been cut.
Rogers was delighted when in April 1914 the Metropolitan im-
mediately accepted his offer and assented to his terms. He wrote to
Kent expressing his pleasure that the trustees liked his type well
enough to want to own it. In another letf~ Kent, written in May
1914, Rogers mentioned that
the name 'Centaur was associated with this type only in my own mind; so
far and inasmuch as the type and the design is now yours I would be glad to ·
have you label it as you will and not accept 'Centaur unless you care to.
The only point in calling it 'Centaur' would be to print that little piece as its
first showing, and as that may have to be indefinitely postponed there is no
reason why it should not be called anything you prefer. Why not call it
'Kent,' which is a splendid name for a type and never used to my knowledge.
Pll take the responsibility of re-christening it if you have no objections.
Kent apparently did not reply co this suggestion, and the typefoundry
that held the matrices for casting dubbed the design Bruce Rogers.
When Wiebking had completed the cutting of the matrices they were
shipped to the Western Type Foundry in St. Louis, a firm established
in 1901 to compete with the American Type Founders conglomerate.
In 1919 Western went out of business, transferring all of its equip-
ment and holdings to Barnhart Brothers & Spindler of Chicago.
When Kent received word of the sale of the St. Louis foundry, he
became concerned about the Centaur matrices. Officials at BB&S,
not at all awed by the prestige of the Metropolitan Mu.sewn of Art,
replied that they would require proof of ownership and payment for
the matrices. They also suggested that the foundry keep them in
storage for further casting as required. Following an exchange of
letters, all parties agreed to the matrices' remaining in the BB&S
vault, although a year and a half later a nervous Kent wrote to Rogers
asking him whether he felt it safe to leave the matrices with the
foundry. Rogers reassured him on the matter.
However, early in 1925 Rogers received a letter from the well-
known Baltimore printer Norman T.A. Munder, stating that he had
been asked by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler to write to Rogers on

68
 FRA~LUCA ~
DE+PACIOLI ~
_,.., orBORGO+S• -
____,_ SEPOLCRO~
--- BY STANLEY ---
MO RISON
·~,-- ~THE·GRO~ ~~
LIER· CLUB
i
--llr.:o.~

. . . .""" NEW·YORK---
~• MCMXXX1 f -~

A Centaur title page by Bruce Rogers, 1933

-
69
 II Maccabees Chapter 4
chat it was manifest co chem char looked upon to grant him his life. who lay ready co give up
him, what sorrow he had now in his heart. the ghost. ([32 So the high priest, suspecting Iese
([18 Others ran flocking out of their houses to the king should misconceive chat some treach-
the general supplication, because the place was ery had been done to Heliodorus br the Jews,
like to come incocontempt. ([19 Arxl the women, offered a sacrifice for the health of the man
girt with sackcloth under their breasts, abounded ([33 Now as the high priest was making an
in the streets, and the virgins char were kept in atonement, the same young men in the same
ran, some to the gaces, and some to the walls, clothing appeared and stood beside Heliodorus,
and ochers looked our of the windows. ([ 20 And saying, Give Onias the high priest great thanks,
all, holding their hands toward heaven, made insomuch as for his sake the Lord hath granted
supplication. ([21 Then it would have pitied a thee life: ([ 34 And seeing chat thou hast been
man to see the falling down of the multitude of scourged from heaven, declare unro all men
all sons, and the fear of the high pries~ being che mighty power of God. And when they had
in such an agony. ([22 They then called upon spoken these words, they appeared oo more.
the Almighty Lord to keep the things com- ([35 So Heliodorus, after he had offered sacri-
mitted of trust safe and sure for those char had fice unto the Lord. and made great vows unto
committed chem. ([23 Nevertheless Heliodo- him that had saved his life, and saluted Onias,
rus executed chat which was decreed. ([24 Now returned with his hose co the king. ([36 Then
as he was there present himself with his guard testified he to all men the works of the great
about the tteasury, the Lord of spirits, and the God, which he had seen with his eyes. ([37 And
Prince of all power, caused a great apparition, so when the king asked Heliodorus, who might be
chat all chat presumed to come in with him were a fie man to be sent yet once again co Jerusalern,
astonished at the power of God, and fainced, and he said. ([38 If thou hast any enemy or traitor,
were sore afraid. ([25 For there appeared unto send him thither, and thou shalt receive him
them an hocse with a terrible rider upon him, well scourged. ifhe escape with his life: for in
and adorned with a very fair covering, and he ran chat place, no doubt, there is an especial power
fiercely. and smoce at Heliodorus with his fore- of God. ([39 For he that dwellech in heaven hath
feet, and it seemed chat he char sac upon the horse his eye on chat _place, and defendeth ic; and he
had complete harness of gold. ([26 Moreover beacech and destroyeth chem that come to hurt
two other young men appeared before him, not- it. { 40 And the things concerning Heliodorus,
able in strength, excellenr in beauty, and comely and the keeping of the treasury, fell out on this
in apparel, who stood by him on either side, and sort.
scourged him continually, and gave him many
sore stripes. ([27 And Heliodorus fell suddenly CHAPTER 4
unto the ground, and was compassed with great
darkness: buc they char were with him took him
up, and put him inco a litter. ([28 Thus him, chat
T HIS Simon now, of whom we spake
afoce. having been a bewrayer of the
money, and of his country, slandered
lately came with a great train and with all his Onias, as if he had terrified Heliodorus, and
guard inco the said treasury, they carried out, been che worker of these evils. ([2 Thus .;.,.as
being unable to help himself with his weapons: he bold to call him a traitor, chat had deserved
and manifestly they ackoowledged the power well ofthe cicy, and tendered his own nation, and
of God: ([29 For he by the hand of God was was so zealous of the laws. ([3 Bue when their
cast down, and lay speechless without all hope hatred went so far, thac by one of Simon's fac-
of life. ([30 But chey praised che Locd, that had tion murders were committed, ([4 Onias seeing
miraculously honoured his own place: for the· the danger of chis contention, and char Apollo-
cemple, which a little afore was full of fear and nius, as being rhe governor of Celosyria and
trouble. when the Almighty Locd appeared, was Phenice, did rage. and increase Simon's malice,
filled with joy and gladness. ([31 Then straight- ([5 He went to the king. not to be an accuser of
ways cenain of Hdiodorus' friends prayed his countrymen, buc seeking the good ofall, both
Onias, char he would call upon the most High publick and privat~: ([6 For he saw chat ic was
965

The Oxford Lectern Bible, 1935

70
 the company's behalf, although 'I am almost afraid to do so.' Munder
was to find out if Rogers would be willing 'to give the printers of the
country approvaLto use your Centaur.' He said that the foundry,
hoping to supply 'it nationally, wished to begin immediately adver-
tising the type and hoped that Rogers would accept the commission
to design such materials. Alarmed, Rogers sent the letter to Kent,
saying, 'It looks very much as though Barnhart Brothers & Spindler
were planning toi "seize" the Centaur type - by right of eminent
domain, if not by :my other.'
Rogers added,, 'If they decide to do it, I don't know any way of
preventing it. Valu.able as such a· design is in the market, there has
never been any satisfactory way of preventing its being stolen.' He
recommended cha£ the Metropolitan ask for the return of the matrices,
and that in the future it hire a private typecaster to produce the type
when required; he pointed out that Fred Goudy might be willing to
do this, as he had iecently set up his own foundry. Kent was not at all
enthusiastic about, Centaur's being used by ordinary printers for run-
of-the-mill printing, and said .so in reply. He immediately requested
BB&S to return the matrices to the Museum, and also wrote to
Robert Wiebking I to send pattern plates to either the Museum or
Bruce Rogers. By the end of January 1925 the Centaur matrices were
in storage at the ~useurn Press.
During the n~xt few years there were so many requests that
Centaur be made ~ailable to the printing trade that Rogers seriously
began to consider' such a project. So when the Lanston Monotype
Machine Company, in Philadelphia, asked permission to cut the letter
for machine compJsition, Rogers decided to allow the transfer, Kent's
disapproval notwi~standing. But because Rogers was returning to
England for a protracted stay, the decision was made that the Lanston
Monotype Corporiation of London would undertake the task. This
English firm had at one time been fully connected with the American
Monotype comp3.ljly, bur later became independent of it. The firms
had agreed to wor~ together in the matters of machine development
and the exchange tjf types.
When Rogers krived in England in 1928, the work of adapting
Centaur began and was completed the following year. As Rogers had
not supplied an it~ic for his original design, it now became necessary
to provide one. Tµe designer, however-referring to himself as· 'an
indifferent calligr-1-pher' - felt that a proper italic was beyond his
ability. He therefore persuaded his fellow American Frederic Warde,

71
 who a year or two earlier had produced a very fine chancery italic
named Arrighi, to permit its use as the italic for Centaur. Warde
acceded and offered his privately cut type to the Monotype firm for
this purpose.
Centaur thus entered the domain of the 'ordinary printer,' enabling
that person to produce typography that, if not always up to the stan-
dards of a Bruce Rogers, did provide a distinguished addition to the
type cases. Certainly in the past half cenrury the letter has been used
in the production of a good deal of distinctive printing, not the least
being some beautiful machine-set books designed by Bruce Rogers
himself.
Without doubt the most exalted commercial use of Centaur has
been in the magnificent folio Bible produced by Oxford University
Press, by all accounts the masterpiece design of Rogers and one of
the monumental books in five centuries of English printing. This
lectern Bible, begun in 1929 and six years in production, is composed
in 22-point, and since it is entirely without decoration there is nothing
to interfere with its acceptance as an outstanding example of pure
typography. Before the Oxford Bible was completed two other Rogers
works were produced, each using Monotype Centaur and each also
high on the list of his accomplishments as a designer of books: The
Odyssey of Homer, in the translation ofT.E. Shaw, completed in 1932,
and Fra Luca de Pacioli, printed at Cambridge University Press for
the Grolier Club of New York in 1933. The eminent American printer
Joseph Blumenthal, in his chapter on Bruce Rogers in The Printed
Book inAmerica (1977), wrote of these three books as 'imperishable.'
Centaur has been one of the most widely praised roman types of
our time. Even so conservative an observer as D.B. Updike said of it,
in Printing Types, 'It appears to me one of the best roman fonts yet
designed in America - and, of its kind, the best anywhere.' And at the
level of that 'ordinary' printer, Centaur has been advertised for many
years in the trade periodicals by the San Francisco typesetting firm
Mackenzie & Harris as 'The Noblest Roman of Them All.' Happily,
although considered the finest recutting of Jenson's type, it has never
been subjected to the type-family idea so beloved by suppliers. And it
is to be hopeq that in the transfer to film its grand proportions will
not be the victim of the distortions of weight and. width manipulation
that accompany the concept of the type family.
In 1930 Rogers was beginning to be plagued by financial prob-
lems. After his eight-year stay at the plant of William Edwin Rudge

72
 in Mount Vernon, New York- which constituted his most active
period.of book making, with almost a hundred titles designed-he
was back to free-lancing. But the books that he was working on in
England were; lengthy projects, and this kept his income at a minimum.
(Such financial strictures were what had, in the end, prompted him
to release his Centaur design to the English Monotype firm.) His
wife then became very ill, requiring expensive medical care, and so
he sought further relief by offering the original matrices for sale.
Writing to tl;ie San Francisco printer John Henry Nash, he inquired
if Nash was i!nterested in buying them, provided that Henry Watson
Kent and the:Metropolitan Museum agreed to the sale.
Nash replied to Rogers that the matrices would no longer com-
mand a high price, since the machine version _was now available.
Rogers diffe~ed, stating that the matrices represented the real Centaur
and were the,:efore more valuable than before; he then remarked that
after consultation with Fred Goudy he had decided to fix the price at
$2,500. But riothing came of this attempt to dispose of the matrices,
and thus th~y remained in storage at the Metropolitan Museum
printing ofli.qe.
Henry W~tson Kent retired from the secretaryship of the Metro-
politan in 1J,40, and died in 1948. The Museum Press languished
without his guidance, closing its doors in the 1950s. Exactly what
became of the Centaur patterJ?S is not known, but the matrices for
12-, 20-, 24-, 30-, 48-, and 60-point are now in the Melbert B. Cary,
Jr., Graphic Arts Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology.
The drawings are in the Newberry Library in Chicago.
In 1948 Rogers was prevailed upon to modify Centaur for the
Justowriter machine, one of the strike-on devices that came into
prominence in the immediate post-World War II period. More ad-
vanced than other typewriters of the period, this instrument provided
three character widths instead of the single unit. Centaur's design
refused such strangulation, however, and though key bars were
manufactured and the style was renamed Rogers, it is doubtful that
many machines were ordered with this particular arrangement.
But Cent;mr type itself, by virtue of its cutting by the Monotype
Corporation, will continue to provide printers with what is probably
the most admirable of the numerous revivals of the fifteenth-century
type ofNicol;as Jenson.

73
 BEMBO

During the 1920s the English Monotype company-Lanston Monotype

Corporation-under the direction of Stanley Morison, embarked upon
a program that was the most ambitious of any composing-machine
manufacturer to date: the recutting of numerous historic typefaces.
From this enlightened undertaking came such revivals as Bodoni,
Garamond, Poliphilus, Baskerville, Fournier, and Bembo. All of
these types have since become part of the repertoire of book printers
throughout the world.
The last design of this group, Bembo, appeared in 1929 and has
proved to be one of the most popular types of our time for the com-
position of books. In Europe, where Monotype composition has been
the principal method of book typesetting, Bembo quickly became
a dominant letter form. In the important Exhibition of British Book
Production it continues to be seen in a remarkably high percentage
of the books chosen each year. Since well over a hundred titles are
selected for each show, it is evident that Bembo receives prime con-
sideration from British designers.
In the United States in a similar exhibition-the Fifty Books of
the Year, established in 1923 and sponsored by the American Institute
of Graphic Arts -some eighty books composed in Bembo have been
chosen since 1938, when the type first appeared in this country. And
this despite the great majority of books exhibited having been set
on slug-casting machines (Linotype, lntertype), as opposed to the
Monotype (single-type) method of composition, from which Bembo
is set.
Of the two Italian Renaissance types selected for his typographic
revivals, Morison favored Poliphilus (cut in 1923) over Bembo. But
he later acknowledged that this opinion was due principally to the
then relative obscurity of the types of Aldus Manutius, the Venetian
publisher-printer, and the absence of 'critical approval of Aldus's
typographic merits.'

74
 The great historic typography resurgence engendered by William
Morris and the ptj.vate-press movement early in the twentieth century
had placed such emphasis on the types of the mid-fifteenth-century
Venetian Nicolas Jenson that the contributions of other Italian punch-
cutters were beink ignored. It was not until the quickening interest
in printing schol~ship during the 192os-prompted in part by the
publication of such books as Daniel Berkeley Updike's superb Printing
Types: Their History, Fmms, and Use (1922) and the seven volumes of
the periodical Thi Fleuron (1923-30)-that,typographers became more
aware of the later Venetian types and especially those of Aldus.
Aldus Manuti1,1s (1450-1515) was a scholar of Greek and Latin who
had taught at the University of Ferrara before becoming tutor to
the Pio family at Carpi. (He had changed his name from Teobaldo

ABGDEFGHIJKL
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abcdefghijklmnop
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Bembo

75
 explicabo; 11011 tan~ ~ecenfci.n1r. Igi-
tlir·aun illu1n n1 ulca 111 umbra fedencem
'
con1periffem ; ica 1niciu1n intcrpdlandi
emnfeci. PETRVS BEMBVS Fill
VS. Diuqu!de1n picerhicfedcs:& ccrtc
ri pa haec uuens; q uain p9puli tuac ifiac
de11fiffi1naeinu1nbrant;&ftuuiusalit;ali
quanco frigidiordlforcaffe,~ficfat1s·~
BERNARDVS.BEMBVSPATER.
Ego uerofili nufpiamdfelibentiusfoleo;
-~ in haccu1n ripae, ruin arborum , nun.
etiatn ff u111inis a111oenicace:neq; efr,q uod
uereare,nequid nobisfi-igus hoc noceac,
praeferti111 in canto aeft:atis ardore: Sed
fecifii cu quiden1 perhene;qui meab iis
cogicacionibusreuocafii;quas& lihencif-
fi1uefe1nperabiicio, cu1n in Nonianum
uenicur;ecniicqu1de1nnobisnefcio quo
paclo fi.1rcin1 irrepferanc n0111nodo 11011
uocantibus, fed ecia1u inu.itis .
.BEMBVS FlLIVS. Derep.fci
licet cogicabasaliquid,autcertedetriwn
Page from De ./Etna, Venice, 1495

Manucci to Aldo Manuzio, later Latinized to Aldus Manutius, a

common practice among classical scholars of the time.) His great
love for Greek literature inspired him to print the important Greek
texts, which he planned to salvage, edit, publish in Greek, translate
 into Latin, and make available to the growing audience for the classics.
The wealthy Pio family agreed to finance the project, which proved
to be most cqstly, since it was necessary to assemble a staff of editors
and translators, in addition to commissioning the cutting of Greek
types.
Aldus chose Venice as the location of this major venture in Italian
publishing, t6 be called the Aldine Press. The city, the great center of
trade betweei;i Europe and ~e East, provided a cosmopolitan market
for the books., Another essential factor in this choice was the availability
of craftsmen with the skills required to ,establish a complete printing
office in a period when every item required for production had to
exist on the premises ( as opposed to today's diversified printing
operations). 9f vital importance, too, was the large Greek colony in
Venice from which editors and proofreaders were obtained.
Aldus arrived in Venice in 1490 and began his labors, first assembling
a staff that ev,entually included some of the great scholars of the age,
one of them ·being Erasmus of Rotterdam. It took five years before
the first book, a Latin and Greek grammar, issued from the press. But
though devored to the classics, Aldus had no intention of neglecting
current literature, and in the same year, 1495, he published De /Etna,
an acoount of a visit to Mount Etna written by Pietro Bembo, then
but twenty-fiye years of age. Bembo was destined to become one of
the most pophlar of the Renaissance writers (he later took holy orders
and became a:cardinal).
Aldus expressed his philosophy as ·a publisher in an introduction
to his edition of Aristotle's Organon: 'Those who cultivate letters
must be supl'lied with the books necessary for their purpose; and
until this supply is secured I shall not rest.' Indeed he did not rest. He
neglected everything but his work, resulting in a decline into poor
health that hastened his death in 1515 - he was worn out and not at all
enriched by his endeavors, owing primarily to the pirating of his
texts by competitors. But his contribution to literature was magnificent.
It resulted in ;the early dissemination of knowledge through the study
of the classi~. It made available the Aldine innovation of the in-
expensive small-format book (so successful that it was widely plagia-
rized in Italyj and France). The pirated editions not only stole the
carefully editt:d texts but imitated the types used by Aldus and even
affixed his pr~ssmark, the famous dolphin and anchor- the dolphin
signifying sp~ed and the anchor stability. The pirate editions even
frequently included Aldus's motto, Festina lente, 'make haste slowly.'

77
 THE ROMAN TYPE OF THE POLIPHILO
(ALDUS) r499 DESIGNED BY FRANCESCO
GRIFFO. NOW RECUT FOR. USE WITH THE
.. MONOTYPE" COMPOSING MACHINE

~ ETTER. design owes much to the famous

types cut by Nicolas Jenson in 1470 and
L->,;:r-L.:,,V_

used by him to such magnificent effe&. A

remarkable and permanent influence upon
the whole ofsubsequent typography resulted.
Within a year or two of its appearance his
_ roman was copied all over Italy. Nevenhe.,
less it is possible chat some exaggeration has
crept into our esl:imate ofits influence and that we have not ta.ken into
sufficient account the importance of Aldus. The latter's allivities as a
scholar and a publisher have perhaps to some extent overshadowed his
merit as a printer and we have contented ourselves with recognising
the importance of his usage of the first italic, 1501. It should be noted however that
from the time ofhis establishment as a primer until his death he never employed
types which were immediately based on the Jenson modeL Whether or not the
Aid.inc letters are an improvement upon those of his illufuious predecessor is a
matter of taste, but it will at least be agreed that they differ in such imponant
respects as set and cut of seri£ The type of this present announcement is a "Mono,
type" reproduclion of the famous letter used in the Poliphilus of 1499, and it may
be in place to emphasize its producer's claim to ctedit for a design beautiful in
itself and imponant in its influence. To our eyes it possesses a much more "present
day" feeling than is conveyed in the letters of the earlier master. It symbolises

Poliphilus (English Monotype)

The roman type in which De /Etna was composed (called simply

the De JEma type), on which Bembo is based, was cut by Francesco
Griffo, sometimes styled Francesco da Bologna. Aldus was most for-
tunate in obtaining the services of such an inventive punchcutter,
who produced all of the types for the Aldine Press, including the
famous italic of 1500-1. A former goldsmith, like many of the early
punchcutters, Griffo had already cut types for several other Venetian
printers - the brothers di Gregorii in particular - since arriving in the
city from Padua about 1480.

78
 . I.
QUOT SINT GENERA PRINCIPATUUM ET
QVIBUS MODIS ACQUIRANTUR

T i

utti JJi stati, tutti e' dominii che hanno avuto et

hanno imperio sopra Ii uomini, sono stati e so-
no o, republiche o principati. E' principati sono
o ereditarii,,.de' quali el sangue del loro signore ne sia
suto lungo tempo principe, o e' sono nuovi. E' nuovi,
o sono nuovi tutti, come fu Milano a Francesco Sforza,
o sono come membri aggiunti allo stato ereditario del
principe che Ii acquista, come e el regno di Napoli al re
di Spagna. ~ono, questi dominii cosf acquistati, o con-
sueti a vivere sotto uno principe, o usi a essere liberi; et
acquistonsi, b con le arme d'altri o con le proprie, o per
fortuna o pJr virtu.

. 11 ·
DE I.?RINCIPATl"BUS HEREDITARIIS

I o lascero :indrieto el ragionare delle republiche, per-

che altra yolta ne ragionai a lungo. Volterommi solo
al principato, et andro tessendci Ii orditi soprascritti,
e disputero come questi principati si possino govemare
e mantenere.1
Dico, adunque, che nelli stati ereditarii et assuefatti al
sangue del loro principe, sono assai minori difficulta a
mantenerli che ne' nuovi, perche basta solo non prete-
rire l' ordine de' sua antinati, e di poi temporeggiare con
II

Use ofBembo type bi; Giovanni Mardersteig, Verona, 1967

79
 When jobs have type sizes fixed quickly margins of error
widen unless the determining calculations are based upon
factual rather than hypothetical figures. No variation in the
amount of copy can affect the degree of error once that error
has been made. If instead of the required ten point the
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Bembo Condensed Italic (English Monotype)

Griffo also cut the roman type that was used for Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili by Francesco Colonna, printed by Aldus in 1499. This re-
markable work, believed by many bibliophiles to be the finest printed
book of the entire Renaissance, was, ironically, far removed in content
from the scholarly texts normally published by Aldus. It was evidently
a job he had taken on, in the manner of countless printers who followed
him, merely to keep his shop busy. The type of the Poliphili was long
considered superior to that of the Bembo book, but during the last
half century typographic taste has favored the latter design.
Most Venetian types from the time of Jenson had been rather
closely adapted from the humanist manuscript hand, and therefore
tended to be somewhat heavy in stroke and serif. (It was of course
this feature that so much attracted William Morris when he sought a
replacement for the anemic book types of the nineteenth century.)
Francesco Griffo must receive much of the credit for the departure of
the punchcutter from slavish dependence on the pen-drawn characters.
The engraving of a steel punch, utilizing files and gravers, requires
precision skills and allows refinements beyond the scope of the reed
or the pen. It is evident that Griffo realized the potential of his tools
in the creation of letter forms at once livelier and more precise than
those of the scribes.
Another significant departure from the Jenson type is noticeable
in Griffo's capitals, which he shortened in relation to the lowercase
ascenders. Serving as his model, however, were the same majuscules
cut in stone by the Romans that Jenson had followed.
Griffo's concepts apparently took several years to develop. The

80
WHEREVER CIVILIZATION EXTENDS
TYPOGJRAPHERS WILL BE REQUIRED
ABCDEFGHJKLMNOPORSTUVWXYZ

OF ALL DOCUMENTS JUDGED

SIX WERE GIVEN AN AWARD
ABCDEFGHJKLMOPORSTUYZ

THE BANK RECOGNIZES

OUR CLAIMS AS VALID
ABCDEGHJLMNPOWXY
ABDEGHJKMNORST
ABCDFHLNOPUVW
Bcmbo Titling (English Monotype)

great twentieth-century printer-scholar Giovanni Mardersteig noted

of the Griffo types that they were first a modification of the Jenson
letters but theh they showed a 'gradual evolution from the earliest
Venetian typ~, and they constantly improve until they reach their
finest shape in the Bembo type which he cut for Aldus.'
The Monotype cutting of the De /Etna type, although an excellent
rendering, could not be other than an approximation of the original.
There are always both aesthetic and economic problems in the adap-
tation of the ~arly types. For examp~e, there is the difficulty of
determining the allowance to be made for ink squeeze in the original
(owing to the weight of the impression), or the exact shape of char-
acters·that were badly printed or poorly cast in metal. In the redesign

81
PROFESSIONAL TYPOGRAPHY
In All Classes Of Printing Reflects Merit
in the product advertised and yields $12345
Bembo Italic

of Griffo's type there was also the problem of which variant of cer-
tain characters to select. For it must be remembered that during the
incunabula period printers were still in competition with scribes in
the production of books, and they frequently followed the scribe's
inclination to provide several variations of a particular character.
Discussing these variations in his essay on the De L'ftna types,
Dr. Mardersteig listed eight lowercase characters for which Griffo
provided alternates. For example, there were five variants of e and
three of a. These alternates have proven useful in determining the
origin of some of the French types, modeled on those of Griffo by
Claude Garamond and Antoine Angereau some thirty-five years after
Griffo had designed them.
In addition, the modern pantograph machine necessarily mecha-
nizes a design, particularly in its inabiliry to vary a face from size to
size, a factor that to the eye of the typographic purist removes much
of the individual charm of the historic fonts.
Finally, a major predicament in the production ofMonotype Bembo
was the selection and cutting of an italic to complement the roman, a
quandary previously discussed in the chapter on Cloister Old Style. A
panial solution in this case was to supply two italic forms for Bembo.
The first, cut by the noted English calligrapher Alfred Fairbank,
was judged too independent of the roman, a decision deplored by its
designer. It has since been marketed as a separate type, a true example
of the chancery sryle. Originally named Narrow Bembo Italic, now
called Bembo Condensed Italic, it is an exceedingly fine type in its
own right and justly popular as such. Upon the rejection of the
Fairbank italic the drawing room of the company prepared a more
conventional italic, based on the designs of the Venetian printing
master Giovantonio Tagliente.

82
 Bembo was a slow staner in the United States, even though the
Lanston Monotype !Machine Company of Philadelphia made it avail-
'
able in the 1930s. (ffhe American and English Monotype firms, as
noted earlier, were ,separate but maintained a working arrangement
until the demise of the American branch several years ago.) The
problem was the strong competition in the United States from the
slug-casting machines, Linotype and lntertype, which obtained much
the larger share of;the market for composing machines. Thus, the
single-type-casting tvfonotype system was not nearly so well repre-
sented in American ~ooks as it was in English and European.
But with the recent increase in phototypesetting for book compo-
sition such types as l3embo will undoubtedly see wider use. Several of
the manufacturers ~f film-setting devices have already made the type
available, which as~ures its continuing success almost five centuries
after its appearance.:
 ARRIGHI

One of the finest examples of the early use of italic types· appears in
Coryciana (1524), a collection of Latin poems written by Blodius Pal-
ladius. Like many another printed book, this volume is admired today
primarily as an example of printing rather than for the beauty of its
thought or language -justifying the observation of George Bernard
Shaw that the survival of a book can more frequently be credited to
its printer than ro its author.
The elegance of the Coryciana type was not just happenstance. It
was the product of a printer who had already established his repu-
tation as a writing master and who was the author of the first book
that taught the nonprofessional writer how to pen the style known as
the chancery cursive: the justly famous Operina, published in 1522 by
Ludovico degli Arrighi. Employed as a scribe in the secretariat of
papal briefs, Arrighi had written his text in pen and then had it copied
in a wood engraving for printing. The work is still used as a basic
calligraphic text, owing largely to the skill of John Howard Benson,
who translated the work from Italian, lettered the English translation
in Arrighi's style, and matched the original line for line.
The chancery cursive was a calligraphic development stemming
from the humanist revival of the fifteenth century. In the various
chanceries, or administrative offices, of both church and court, the
responsibility of the scribes was the preparation of letters of com-
munication. In the papal chancery in Rome these communications
were called bulls, so termed because of their round seals, bullae. The
bulls, written in ·a gothic hand, frequently required· supplementary
information in separate form, which was written in a contemporary
style of •round hand,' a cursive form of roman.
This informal •round hand' became standardized for less impor-
. tant papal business, and the documents themselves became known as
briefs. The sloped writing- cancelleresca cursiva (•chancery cursive') -
common to these briefs was to become the model for the styles that

84
 ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ
abcdefg hijklmno
pqrstuvwxyz
fiffflffijflgggy zy
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$& .),...,·,··
1234567890
Arrighi

-
85
 obtained the name italic in 1501, when they were first reproduced as
printing types by Francesco Griffo for the Venetian publisher Aldus
Manutius.
The historic development of italic itself has long been known to
modem printers, but the more distinctive cancelleresca cursi-va was
practically unknown in printing types until the 192os-that most
productive and innovative period of typographical research. Daniel
Berkeley Updike's Printing Types, first published in 1922, mentioned
Arrighi not at all, but in the second edition of 1937, the author
acknowledged the Italian printer-scribe in the notes in which he
described the increasing interest in typographic history that had .
developed since 1922.
But despite the efforts of modern scholars (Stanley Morison, for
one), many printers remain confused about the distinctions between
the ordinary italic types and those sloped forms based on the chancery
cursive. Both styles are currently in use, but the chancery is generally
restricted to accompanying roman types modeled on forms that
developed before 1500.
It was at that time that Aldus Manutius had begun the production
of editions of the classics that would find a ready market among
scholars and students. To accomplish such an objective he necessarily
had to depart from the established practice of printing books in large
format, a practice making them both bulky and expensive. To con-
serve space it appeared reasonable to use a type that was closer fitting
than the roman, or upright, character. His punchcutter, Francesco
Griffo, chose the informal cursive writing styles as a model, producing
a font that was used by Aldus to print a small-format edition of Virgil
in 1501. This was the first book to be set in an inclined letter, a style later
given the name italic, from 'Italy: its place of origin. This earliest italic
differs from later models in the lack of the sloped form of capitals,
roman being used in their place.
Probably the need for being economical with space, especially
space related to character width, was foremost in Griffo's mind when
he selected the cursive style. But another theory, and a· fairly logical
one, holds that earlier editions of the classics were beyond the means
of penurious scholars, who frequently resorted to copying the books
themselves. As their style of writing was the cursive, cursive print to
them would be as legible as roman print.
It is immaterial which theory is correct. The fact remains that
italic immediately became extremely popular for composing boc;>ks, ·

86
 design of Ludovi~o Jegli Arrighi, is used; it has never appeared
before. An earlief: -version of the face, called Arrighi, was wed
in the small pri~ateJy printed edition of the Poet Laureate's
new -verses, cc Th~ TapeHry," published in London laHyear.
'
The u Crito;" will be printed at the Ojficina Bodoni at
Montagnola di L~gano, Swit-<:rland, a press which 1:J reason
of its perjeElion d_j technique is juHly considered to rank among
the j oremoH in Europe. Later there will appear the interefling

MEM'OIRS OF THE AUTHOR

OF A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS
OF WOMEN

b
William Godwin,
transcribed and with an IntroduElion 'fry John Middleton Murry.
I

The reprint jollo1.vs exaElJy the rare second edition of this im-
portant c, Memoi/ published in 1798.

The details 1design and produEtion have been entrufleJ

to Frederic Warde who is well-known to· amatmrs offine
printing on both ~ides of tl?e Atlantic.
The first cutting of Arriglµ, called Vicenza, as used in the announcement for an
edition of Platu's Crito, Plf1ted by Giovanni Mardersteig, 1926
 D E F A I, S A S A P I E N T I A.
fo,fo,q; confirwt: rue ulli alteri fapere ronadit; ru fo
defipcrt fottdtuT. {td fimt_ d[z~ tollit; fie ip[a quocp d~
ttlqs tollirur ommbiH. Nihilo mm11s enim philofopbi
font qui ettm /1ultiti4 t1crufant . ~ttnamcp lauda ..
I

ucruJueramq; clixtri5;l philo[ophi5 uihlptrdfUrJut fol

fo.crcdemul ne i'l}tur unl fife fottm'q; dod~iJ'Jdm lau'-
clanti; ttn nmlm uniiH alttriiu igrz,orttntiam rnlp,m ...
ri£m?Re€h'# er~ fit nueffe efi ,'Juod plurirrn {enttun-t,

The italic cur for Aldus by Francesco Griffo, 1so1

and entire works, especially classics, were set in italic. The Aldine
Press, carried on by Aldus's sons following his death in 1515, continued
this tradition. The English bibliographer A.F. Johnson called the
sixteenth century the Age of Italics, stating that south of the Alps,
particularly in Italy, almost as many titles were produced in that styk
asmroman.
Owing to its use in the influential Aldine classics, italic soon
became established elsewhere, first in the pirating of the Venetian
printer's texts, and then for other original books. By 1525 italics were
being employed by German printers and had appeared in the scholastic
center in Basel. Following a cutting by Simon de Colines in Paris
about 1525, they were taken up by other French printers. Further
impetus was given to the use of the italic letter in French..erinting by
.the appearance of Arrighi's book, whose types were a great aesthetic
advance over the 1501 italic of Aldus.
It was probably the combined influence of the Aldine and the
Arrighi italics that led French punchcutters after 1530-Colines,
Claude Garamond, Robert Granjon-to create an italic different
from both, one that would complement the roman instead of being
an independent type. From the mid-fifteenth century this increasingly
became, and remains, the accepted practice everywhere.
Harry Caner, the late typographic historian, in his Lyell lectures
at Oxford in 1968, assigned to Fran~ois Guyot of Annyerp the credit
for actually matching romans with italics. Guyot was for many years a

88
supplier of type for the famous French printer Christopher Plantin,
and had in addition justified many of the matrices that Plantin had
purchased in France for use in his Antwerp shop. Guyot died in 1570.
In this area A.F. Johnson takes issue with Updike, who had
originally stated that the Aldine italic was the model for all subse-
quent italic types. Aldus, however, in his dedication to publishing
inexpensive texts, was under no compulsion tO demand a beautiful
model for his <;ursive type, nor did he make any attempt to produce
'beautiful' books with it. As a scholar, his principal concern was with
the subject matter, and as a publisher, with the economics of the
market for ~ks, particularly textbooks. Thus, the Virgil of 1501
shows a some'fhat cramped page, made even more difficult to read
by the employment of numerous ligatures; Updike noted some sixty-
five tied letters in this one book alone. The case for the Aldine italic
as the one model for all subsequent italics is therefore weak.
The full de;velopment of type in the chancery form had to await
the awakened interest of the writing masters whose talents were
manifested in the numerous books on letter forms that appeared
during the first half of the sixteenth century. The newly ubiquitous
nature of the printed word had, naturally enough, created keen interest
on the part of *ribes in the alphabetic forms being utilized by printers:
the English calligrapher James Wardrop has written, 'Printing, which
killed writing as a trade, favored its development as an art.' It is in
this respect that we now recognize the contributions of the Italian
writing master's, who inspired the cutting into printing type of the
finest of all italic forms, the chancery cursive.
In our owq. time, a number of excellent copies of this style are
available and tije best of them, namedArrighi, properly calls attention
to the man who first used such a design-the calligrapher Ludovico
degli Arrighi, originally from Vicenza, who hence occasionally styled
himself Vicentino.
I

Having bec;ome interested in the printing craft during the pro-

duction in 1522 of his Operina, Arrighi set up a press at Rome with
the intention of doing fine printing. For his type he drew an italic
letter patterned on those same chancery forms shown in his calligraphy
book. He employed an engraver of seals, Lautirius Perusinus, for the
cutting of his punches. The delicate kerning of so many of the written
characters required outstanding skill on the part of the engraver, and
Perusinus, whose talents have been praised by no less an authority
than Benvenuto Cellini, supplied such skill.
 aGcltt'JJj ~;{ [mncy1reftux~
r:xy7yz'Z[_,&J
q,~ 1[ftatuhum~=~iJ"!fFef }11«'
8 ilcD!:foJuo,@dima-n 1ief~ So[.
eni

ryirtu lcm3fcrtr' horrufa.

, ~ "Jtrra,.

4 ANNAMDXXIl 4

cI)co,~tuh omnia Jebent,

Page from the Operina ofAmghi, Rome, 1522

90
 The initial use of Arrighi's new cursive was in the Coryciana of
1524. Apart from being composed in one of the finest italic types ever
drawn, the book is also notable for the first appearance of those
capitals we know (-Oday as swash. A second italic type of Arrighi,
produced in 1526, eiiminated the swash capitals and affixed standard
serifs to the ascenders: in the first type, the ascenders had been
rounded (or pear-shaped, to some authorities), in the style of the
pen-drawn cursivtj, and it is evident that in his second version
Arrighi was attempting to produce a type of greater utility than the
I
original design. It must be remembered that all types were hand-cast
and that the compbsirion of type metal produced a relatively soft
type whose quality cannot be compared to the more solidly cast types
achieved in the tweqtieth century. This weakness particularly affected
the casting of kern(id letters that project from the body of the type
and are a prorninent:feature of italic.
That Arrighi had succeeded as a printer and as a type designer
may be noted from al!etter written to Pope Clement VII by Giangiorgo
Trissino, an author !whose work was printed by Arrighi: 'These new
letters have been ma~e here in Rome by Ludovico Vicentino, who, as
in calligraphy, has surpassed all other men of our age, so, having
recently invented tliis most beautiful method of doing in print all
that was formerly done with the pen, in his beautiful types he has
gone beyond all other printers.'
Arrighi printed ~uccessfully until 1527. That year it is believed
he lost his life in rqe Sack of Rome, since he was not heard from
following that outrage.
His death notwitbstanding, Arrighi's chancery cursive subsequently
became well establis~ed and was cut by other engravers in Italy and
France, where it seryed as a model fo~ the development in the seven-
teenth cenrury of the italic forms of the French punchcutters. There-
after, however, it went out of style, not to be revived until the
twentieth century.
Probably the first' modern type to be based on the cancelleresca was
designed by the En~lish calligrapher Edward Johnston. It was his
classes in the study cpf calligraphy early in this century that were so
very important to tl\.e revival of interest in the work of the Italian
Renaissance writing masters, and which in turn encouraged the
present interest in dassic handwriting and the prestige enjoyed by
calligraphers;
Johnston began Work on a chancery cursive about 1914, but his

91
 experiments were not widely known. His designs were cut by the
noted punchcutter of the Kelmscott and Doves Press types, Edward
Prince, with the aid of George Friend. Johnston's type, to be used
in conjunction with a roman for Count Kessler's Cranach Press at
Weimar, was laid aside during the First World War when this fine
. press ceased its activities, not to resume production until 1925. The
cursive was thus first used in 1926, for the colophon of an edition of
Virgil, but it was not cast for text composition until 1931.
In the meantime, the type revival program by the English Mono-
type firm had already begun under the direction of Stanley Morison.
For Poliphilus, cut in 1923, it became necessary to supply an italic
that had some affinity with the roman, and Morison decided on a
chancery cursive. Consequently, he turned to the second type of
Arrighi. Morison later acknowledged his debt for 'discovering' this
design to Johnston in the latter's influential text, Writin.q and Illumi-
nating and Lettering (1906). The Monotype version was named Blado,
as it constituted the first revival of such a letter to be made available
to printers since the time of Antonio Blado, who had acquired the
Arrighi types in 152.6. The italic of Poliphilus is thus an independent
type, although Blado and Poliphilus complement each other.
The next.chancery to be revived was designed by a young American
typographer, Frederic Warde. It was named Arrighi, since its model
was the type of Coryciana. Warde was an enigmatic figure in American
typography of the early 192os. He began working at the Printing
House of William Edwin Rudge in Mount Vernon, New York, during
the great period when Bruce Rogers was active in that firm. The repu- .
ration of Rogers was instrumental in attracting many aspiring young
typographers to Mount Vernon, where they had the opportm)ity to
rub elbows with the most famous book designer of the century; this
group, later known as the Rudge Numni, included such prominent
figures as Joseph Blumenthal and Peter Beilenson.
Warde next became director of printing at Princeton University
Press and married Beatrice Becker, then an assistant librarian to Henry
Lewis Bullen at the library of the American Type Founders Company.
In 1924 the young couple decided to travel to Europe to devote their
time to typographic studies. Beatrice Warde was to remain in England
for the rest of her life, establishing a worldwide reputation as a writer ·
and publicist for typography.
In England, Frederic Warde met Charles Hobson of the Cloister
Press in Manchester, and through him, Stanley Morison. The Wardes

92
 _Coryt1)1s 'Voto reUtlit jflnji10
H m!Jit t11im ;(G-,,s mentttn Deus , et le!it arti
~ol non h11man~ 1f ,j1:5eret nrtis , opus .
Alefon
• ~ I I
'1.lt7llo parrns , nee '\111;50 part11s , nats,sp , ntposp
11
1 aem jlli cm£lis pater bic rplet
f..ffepo/1f piirj mams, te mc6ce', rer,,m i>
S unt h~c ae' ca::fo "!Y}hcn mi/fo_ttbi •

1 1? hifppus~eroafcbu l•mior
<ti o6is {j,rycius maxima mm,ina
H as ponitflatuns , no11Jibi ~itans Jf
A '"l'a
arbitrin r~ni ,
M aior~ aut titufum ambinrs ,
N ttm 'fr -vfra hominifancla lcJit t11'11"1S
S at f~t$1mfaciimt . Vos r'1!]ttt -vt a,'"
H is 1"t p'1Jicfct, -,,,-ti
& 'Vita incofumi p1eat ,
A 11dtJacr:a robors ccrGtmn et ttrcipe> I

~sfrt {jryriusjppGrzter prrrrs

S i ctimin ptirttn- <Jif ,
&fl 'Vps roG,it pie'.
Page from Coryciana; printed by Arrighi, Rome, 1524

. 93
 .MARCI HIERONYMI VIDAE
CREMONENSIS
SCACCHI A
LVDVS.

V dim,,s 1.fi.gicm belli I simulataqut

l ueris
p rtrlia, buxo acies.fiElasI et luaicra
res,11a • _
V tfpnini i11ttrfa rcgcs albusque, n~erqut
P ro laude opp1'ti ccrtent bicoloribus armis.
D icite Seriades Nympbtr ccrtamina tanta
C arminib11s proifus uat11m illibata priorum.
N ulla 11ia efl. tamen ire iuuat, quo me raptt ardor,
I nuiaque audaci propero tentare t11uenta.
V os per inaccejfas rupes, et inbosptta eimtem
Saxa Detr rry/te, ac facretu,n oftend,te callcm •
Vos 1,ui11s ludi imprimis mcmini/Jc necejfa cjl.
V os primtr ffodta hR'c Italis monflraflis in _oris
K
The second italic of Arrighi, Rome, 1527

94
 and Morison struck up an instant, if short-lived friendship (at least
on Frederic's part). ~ut it was through Morison that Warde became
acquainted with Arq.ghi's Coryciana, obtaining a copy from a book-
seller in Paris. It wasi also at Morison's suggestion that Warde under-
rook the design of a qiodem version of the Arrighi type.
Warde turned appirently to the Parisian punchcutter Charles Plumer
for the engraving o(the punches from his designs. There has been,
however, some contrpversy concerning the cutting of the punches.
Morison wrote in 1953\that Charles Malin, another French punchcutter
of the period, had maqe them; Morison stated, 'I think that I was solely
responsible for the ne&"otiations and began discussion with Malin .... '
Yet in 1934 Warde haq written a letter to Henry Watson Kent of the
Metropolitan Musel.ltjl in New York (which had purchased Warde's
matrices and punches)\saying that Pluroet had cut the punches; this is
corroborated by Morison's biographer, Nicolas Barker, who in his
1972 study of Morison ~uoted from letters between Pluroet and Warde.
Moreover, in the only piographical article written on Warde after his
death, in 1939 (publish~d in Print magazine), Will Ransom declared
that Pluroet was the pkchcutter. The matter was cleared up in 1981
I
when the Melbert B. C~, Jr. Graphics Arts Collection at the Roch-
ester Institute of Techqology acquired the punches and matrices for
Arrighi. The name of ~hades Plumer is inscribed at the foot of each
punch in the font. ·
Arrighi type was first used in 1926 in a book entitled The Calli-
graphic Models of Ludowpo degli Arrighi, Surnamed Vicentino, printed
by Hans (later Giovanni) Mardersteig at the Oflicina Bodoni, then
located in Montagnola ~ Lugano, Switzerland. The introduction to
this book was written by1Morison.
Warde then producet;i a second version of Arrighi, with standard
treatment of serifs on th~ ascenders. In the colophon of the first book
in which this new type '1"as used, in 1926-Crito: A Socratic Dialogue
by Plato, also printed by ¥ardersteig - the face was called Vicenza.
The final version of Arrighi, and the one that is best known, is
that of England's Lanstbn Monotype Corporation. In 1929 Bruce
Rogers had gone to Oxford tO plan the printing by the University
Press of his great mascer\work, the lectern Bible (which was finaliy
completed in 1935). It w~ composed in his own Centaur type in the
22-point size. Centaur-first cut as a private type in 1914-did not,
however, possess a compapion italic. Thus, when the Monotype firm
adapted Centaur to mac~ine-casting for use in the Bible, it was

95
 THE FIRST ELEGY

lio11J011fifgiotear,11mon9 tkan9ditliost,
- Wm Itocryali,ual antferen ifane
Amangsttliemtoofme S111!ftijtoliis liearf,
I slioulifrlissofoe.ifortliisstrengr6afkm9.
For kaulfsnot6in9 .iuttfie.iitt6aftmor,
Wliit.iwetmfurr .iut.irudj,and;tndiiring,
Mustwontftr at il,in tlialil disdains
Totompasr ourtfrstrilction. mryangtf
Is tmi.ik,antft6us in rdf,conlrof
I crus6tkappaflliat riSts wit6myso.is.
Ofta6om,alirs,ajwliam sliaffwe liaoe neetfl
Ndt6uafan9tfinorofmen:afrratfj
Tk sagacious ammafi liaocJa11nrlus.out,
How lirtfrot our taSt Ill( lioeanrfmof1t
In 16ismteff;9;.ifr1110rfrf. may.it
Wt f.rtp t!it imagt ofsomt tm tliatliangs
Alioota sfo_pe, t.iat dai(y tDt .ie!iofif;
Orwe mafftliepat6ofyesterday,
Anaou_rintfufiJencttorneconstrlntJ
Ofsomt(k(Jr lia.iit,t6at rrmainea111it6us
4

Edward Johnston's italic type in the Cranach Press edition of Rilke's The Duintser
Elegien, Weimar, 1931

96
 necessary to provide an italic. Rogers was of the opinion that he
lacked the skill to produce a competent chancery cursive to accompany
his roman, and he therefore persuaded Frederic Warde ro design such
a type. Warde thereupon made a third version of his Arrighi design,
this time supplying inclined capitals, which had not been available in
the first two cuttings, which followed the Aldine tradition of roman
capitals. He also shortened the ascenders to conform more closely
with Centaur, a type that Rogers had adapted from the 1470 original
of Nicolas Jenson. ·
Since its introduction as a Monotype face, Arrighi has been con-
sidered by many typographers to be the best current example of the
chancery-cursiye style, and thus has been widely used by many of the
great printers ~four time. Rogers called ir <one of the finest and most
legible cursive letters ever produced,' and proclaimed it a fitting com-
panion for such a calligraphic roman as. Centaur.
Warde sold 'his original punches and matrices to the Metropolitan
Museum in 19~4 (his critics have since claimed they were not his to
sell). More rec;ently, the English printer Will Carter requested the
matrices and received permission to recast several fonts, which was
done at the foundry of the Oxford University Press. The whereabouts
of the punches is now unknown.
Arrighi in its best-known adaptation, the Monotype rutting, has
many of the features of all the chancery italics: the compact set width,
the wide kernimg, and a slighter incline than the conventional italics.
However, several distinctions may be noted. Perhaps the easiest char-
acteristic of thi~ type to remember is the lowercaseg, in which the ear
has been removed.

97
 DANTE

Readers may very well be mystified as to why such a handsome roman

letter as Dante has not achieved the degree of popularity in the
United States accorded other Renaissance printing types, such as
Bernbo, Centaur, and Palatino. This less-frequently encountered
revival was designed in 1954 by Giovanni Mardersteig.
Although the craft of the printer contributes to the scholarly
aptitude of most of its practitioners, the fact remains that since the
first century and a half following Johann Gutenberg's invention of
movable type, the appellation scholar-printer could be reasonably
applied to very few people who labored in the printing office. And
this is particularly true in the present century. Only three American
exceptions come immediately to mind - Theo.dore L. De Vinne,
Daniel Berkeley Updike, and Joseph Blumenthal. All these men were
first practical printers, in the sense that they were responsible for the
operation of printing plants (although only one of them, De Vinne,
had learned the trade as an apprentice). But long after their firms have
been disbanded their names remain widely known for their singular
contributions to the printing craft itself, in which each of them tran-
scended the mere management of a business.
A European example of this genre was Dr. Mardersteig, whose
name is instantly associated with the great traditions of typography by
those who have known him, and whose work at his Officina Bodoni
has provided constant and distinguished service to scholarly printing.
Future typographic historians will probably be surprised that his
efforts to maintain the scholarly heritage came at a time when tech-
nological change was creating an atmosphere uniformly antithetic to
the continuance of this old printing tradition: it is because of the
success of his efforts that this great tradition was preserved.
What are Mardersteig's credentials as a scholar-printer? In the
course of a lecture on his work presented several years ago, Alan
Fern, of the Library of Congress, put them into a succinct statement:
 'His profound scholarship was reflected in the choice of works he
printed. His texts were the result of his reading in a number of
languages. Upon them were bestowed the most careful editorial
attention and the finest possible typographic form.'
The printer preferred anonymity, but he did write a shon expo-
sition of his philosophy, which might be defined as a credo: 'First,
service to the author, searching for the form best suited to his theme.
Second, service to· the reader, making reading as pleasant and light
for him as possible. Third, the giving of the whole an attractive
appearance without imposing too much self-will.'
In an account of his first six years as a printer, Mardersteig wrote:
'All texts before being set up are thoroughly examined. The best
critical edition is ~hosen and if it does not agree with the latest
research, a new revised text is established by comparison with the
original manuscript or the first edition.' Few private printers could
even begin to match such rigorous standards of production.
Born in Goethe's city of Weimar in 1892 and christened Hans
Mardersteig, he w~s fortunate to be a member of an extremely lit-
erate and artistic (amily. Although he earned a degree in law, he
declined to follow that profession and instead became a teacher.
However, an association with Count Harry Kessler, proprietor of
Weimar's distinguisred Cranach Press, turned Mardersteig's thoughts
to publishing. He then became an editor and production supervisor
for the publishing ~ouse of Kurt Wolff, first in Leipzig and late£ in
Munich.
In 1922, because of declining health, Mardersteig moved to Mon-
tagnola di Lugano 1in Switzerland to establish himself as a printer.
Upon his arrival he: commissioned the construction of a hand press;
for his type he was most fortunate in having obtained permission
from the Italian government to resurrect matrices produced by the
great eighteenth-century printer Giambattista Bodoni. Mardersteig
was given exclusive use of the original types, which had been pre-
served at Parma.
During the next five years he produced twenty-one books, most of
which were hand-set in Bodoni. Of these early volumes, two became
landmarks in Mardersteig's progress as a printer of scholarly attain-
ments, and both were in fact a departure from the Bodoni pattern.
First was The Callig,:aphic Models ofArrighi (1926), written by Stanley
Morison, set in a cutting of the Arrighi cursive by the American type
designer Frederic Warde. A year later Mardersteig produced ANewly

99
Discovered Treatise on Classic Letter Design Printed at Panna by Dami-
anus Moyllus circa I411o, edited and introduced by Stanley Morison and
composed in the Poliphilus and Blado types. Several of these early
editions were produced for other publishers, and in doing this Mar-
dersteig established a tradition that he followed for the rest of his
life - printing on commission as well as to please himself.
Mardersteig's work at Montagnola was interrupted in 1926 when
he won a competition to produce the entire works of the Italian poet
Gabriele D'Annunzio. For this huge project he found it necessary to
remove his establishment, Officina Bodoni, ro the large modem press
of Arnoldo Mondadori in Verona, where the D'Annunzio work was
to be printed. The forty-nine volumes took five years to complete, a
trying time for the printer, as the theatrical poet often demanded to
see the work page by page at his home on the shores of Lake Garda.
Some of these books ran to more than five hundred pages, all hand-
set in Bodoni types. Two hundred ninety copies of the set were
printed, all on the hand press.
Following this rather harrowing experience, Mardersteig spent
1933 in Glasgow, Scotland, as adviser to the Collins Cleartype Press.
When he returned to Verona, he refused an offer from Mondadori to
become art director and chose instead to take his press into his own
home, on a hillside overlooking the city. He now expanded his typo-
graphic resources to include such historic faces as Garamond, Basker-
ville, Bembo, Janson~ and Centaur.
Mardersteig had met the English typographic historian Stanley
Morison as early as 1924. The two shared an interest in the fifteenth-
century Italian letter forms, particularly the types of the punchcutter
Francesco Griffo, who had produced for Aldus Manutius the types of
two of the great works to issue from the Aldine Press, Bembo's De
/Etna and the Poliphili of Colonna. About 1929, at Morison's urging,
Mardersteig began his research into the Griffo types that resulted in a
new design. He secured the assistance of Charles Malin, a highly
skilled punchcutter residing in Paris, who had cut the trial size of
Eric Gill's Perpetua design. For the next twenty-five years Malin was
to collaborate with Mardersteig in the cutting of all of his types,
offering numerous suggestions in their design that proved invaluable
to the printer.
This initial venture into type design in 1929 was named Griffo.
Similar to the Monotype Bembo, which was also inspired by the De
/Etna, Griffo may very well be a closer rendition of the original.

100
 DANTE
Charles Malin, Paris

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The type of Francesco Gri.ffu, Venice, 1495

Un.acconntably, it was not used at the Officina Bodoni nntil 1939, for
the edition of Due Episodi della Vita di Felice Feliciano, the forty-first
book produced at the press. After the war the type was revised. In
1967, when Mardersteig printed his own edition of De L£tna, he
chose Griffo for setting the original Latin and Monotype Bembo for
the English translation, making for a most interesting juxtaposition
of the two types. He also wrote an erudite account of the types'
origin.
The association with Stanley Morison, as well as the one with
Frederic Warde, had definitely increased Mardersteig's desire to
investigate the development of classic typefaces. But though his
predisposition was to remain in the era of Aldus for inspiration, he
did break away on at least one occasion. During his year's residence
in Scotland with the Collins Cleartype Press, Mardersteig had super-
vi~ed the production of a type for that firm that was based on the
English Roman No. 1 of the nineteenth-century Scottish typefounder
Alexander Wilson. It was named Fontana and was cut for Monotype
composition. Fontana was used by Collins for thirty years before the
firm released its exclusive rights.
About 1934 Mardersteig drew Zeno, which was cut in Paris by
Malin in 1936-37. The design harks back probably to one of Nicolas
Jenson's contemporaries of mid-fifteenth-century Venice; it retains
the solid strength of the Venetian types but without the somewhat
cumbersome slab serifs so prevalent in those styles. In the 16-point

102
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING
1 TO SAINT MARK

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING OF THE GOSPEL

ofJesus Christ, the Son of God; as it
is written in the prophets, Behold, I
send my messenger before thy face,
which shall prepare thy way before
thee. The voice of one crying in the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make
his paths stra1ght.
John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the
baptism ofrepentance for the remission ofsins. And
there went our unto him all the land ofJudxa, and
they ofJerus~em, and were all baptized of him in
the river ofJoi;-dan, confessing their sins. And John
was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of
a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and
wild honey; ap.d preached, saying, There cometh
one mightier ~han I after me, the latchet of whose
shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose_
I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall
baptize you wi,th the Holy Ghost.
And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came
from Nazareth; of Galilee, and was baptized ofJohn
in Jordan. Anc;l straightway coming up out of the
water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit
like a dove descending upcn him: and there came a
II I

Mardersteig's Zeno design as used in The Four Gospel.s, Verona, 1962

103
 PACIOLI
Charles Malin, Paris

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size, Zeno was first used in an edition of San Zeno Vescovo, Patrono
di Verona, by Lorenzo Montano, printed in 1937. Later Mardersteig
revised this face and employed it in one of the great books of his
press, The Four Gospels, printed in 1962.
Still another 1Renaissance type came from Mardersteig's hand, in

l05
1950-51. Named Pacioli, it was a titling font for which the model was
the majuscule alphabet drawn in the fifteenth cenrury by Fra Luca de
Pacioli. Mardersteig first used this beautiful rendition, appropriately,
in his_ edition of Pacioli's De Drnna Praportione, published in 1956.
Dante was Mardersteig's last and finest type, cut in 1954. Here
again, the Verona printer became involved with the fifteenth-century
Italian types. It is unfortunate that Mardersteig never managed to
find the time to write extensively about his five types; it would be
interesting to compare the drawings, for example, with the models
that he was adapting for his personal use at the Oflicina Bodoni.
Without such explication, we must look to the letters themselves, and
Dante appears to have been influenced by the Aldine types, although
it retains some of the vigor of the earlier Venetians.
Malin completed the punches for the 12~pcint size just one year
before his death, in 1956. Unlike Griffo and Zeno, which were not
used immediately, Dante was chosen for, and received its name from,
the edition of Boccaccio's Trattatello in Laude di Dante that Marder-
steig printed in 1955. The type quickly became a favorite of its designer,
being selected for another two dozen books during the next twenty
years.
Although produced for a private press, Dante is by no means over-
refined, a condemnation that may be applied to so many types of
similar conception. k a book type it has few idiosyncrasies to inter-
fere with its readability. Its crisp and sparkling contrast of stroke is
eminently suited both to the antique finish of most book papers and
to the dull-coated stocks, used for illustrations. The height of the
capitals falls slightly below that of the ascenders, but the reduction is
not quite so abrupt as in the Bembo series.
Recognizing its usefulness as a book type, the Monorype c_or-
poration of London arranged in 1955 to issue Dante for machine-
composition. The firm used the 12-point size as produced by Charles
Malin, which with but few changes was adapted for the range of sizes
that would make the design most serviceable to printers. The italic is
a chancery, matching beautifully the spirit of the roman; in this case
Mardersteig depaned from the earlier concept of the cursive form he
had given to Griffo, which is more dosely related to the first italic cut
for Aldus (in 1501) than to the chancery style associated with the designs
of Arrighi. Since the introduction of Dante, Monorype has added a
semi-bold weight, along with a series of titling capitals, both of which
broaden its usefulness in book production.

106
 its poet. Even our aforementioned D'Annunzio, by training per-
fectly equipt, ca,nnoc do much more than moan ornately.
0 sinuous, moist and burning mouth, where my desire is intensified
when I am sunk in deep oblivipn, and which relenclessly sucks my
life. O great head of hair strewn over my knees during the sweec
act. 0 cold han~ which spreads a shiver and feels me shivering.
Yet in the moment that our situation seems to have become
impossible (as ~ereft of hope as Virginia Woolf's Orlando has
imagined it to be), deus ex machina: we recollect the honest mas-
ters of our tongue, and in them, on occasion, we find the problem
solved, the tribute paid, the vision pure. the writing done. In Ben
Jonson, for insta'nce:
Haye you seene but a bright Lillie grow,
Before rude hands have touch'd it?
Ha', you mark'd but the fall o' the Snuw
Bffore the soyle hath smutch'd it?
Ha'' you felt the wool! of Bever?
Or Swans Downe ever?
Or have smelt o' the bud o' the Brier?
Or the Nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the Bee?
0 so white! 0 so soft! 0 so sweet is she!
Initially I wrote of displacement as if it went from thing to
thing-phallus to flower:
Fulligently now she takes him by the hand,
A lily prison'd in a gaol of snow,
Or i~ory in an alabaster band;
So ~hite a friend engirts so wh!te a foe ...
but I have been dropping hints all along like heavy shoes that the

Page of Monorype Dante from On Being Blue by William Gass, 1976

107
 American book designers regret the restricted availability of Dante,
in which mechanical composition is confined to the Monotype, a type-
setting machine no longer in wide use. Up to the time of this writing it
has not been adopted for phototypesetting by any of the American
manufacturers, although it seems only a matter of time before a licensing
agreement will be worked out with the Monotype Corporation that
will add the face to the library of fine book types currently ~btainable
on phototypesetting machines. .
Although Dante was the last rypc to be designed by Giovanni (as
he was now called) Mardersteig, his career as a scholar-printer con-
tinued unabated. It was in the last three decades of his life that his
reputation extended far beyond the circle of connoisseurs of fine
printing.
An astute observer of the changes that were bound to come in
printing technology, Mardersteig had realized that he could not
depend on the hand press for economic survival, and in 1949 he
founded a modem printing plant. Located in Verona, his Stamperia
V aldonega quickly established itself in the production of first-quality
printing. The Officina Badoni, meanwhile, continued in Mardersteig's
home, issuing distinguished books, every edition of which was sold
out upon the announcement of its publication.
There now followed exhibitions of Mardersteig's work in the
major cities of Europe, along with honors in profusion on both sides
of the Atlantic. He received the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Mainz
in 1969; his biographer, Hans Schmoller, commenting on this fitting
award, has stated, 'If ours is to be the last century of the traditionally
printed book, how formnate that a printer like Mardersteig lived in it
and created such an incomparable body of work.' In 1968 the American
Institute of Graphic Arts awarded Mardersteig its Medal, which has
gone to most of the great printers of our time. Then in 1972 the
School of Printing of Rochester Institute of Technology brought
him to the United States-for what he knew would be his last visit
to these shores-to receive its Frederic W. Goudy Award. R.I.T!s
Melbert B. Cary, Jr., Graphic Arts Collection contains one of the
most complete holdings of Officina Bodoni -books in the United
States, a number of which were obtained in Verona by Cary in the
early days of that press.
During the visit of 1972 Dr. Mardersteig addressed an enthusiastic
audience at the Morgan Library in New York City. His concluding
remarks were: 'What the future of typography will be, nopody knows.

108
The invention of phototypesetting will have a decisive influence. But
we who don't belong to the big industry believe that it is necessary to
aim for the highest standard, which could be a model for others, so
that our crafts will not lose their imPortance. The art of printing
should never die.'
I
Giovanni .N1ardersteig died on December 27, 1977. It is perhaps
fitting to remember him as, in the words of his good friend Stanley
Morison, a printer who 'acted on the belief that to confer fine typo-
graphical form upon a fine piece of literature is a justifiable use of
time and labor; material and skill.' It may be noted here that Martino
Mardersteig is 'continuing the tradition of his father in both printing
establishments: in Verona, the Officina Bodoni and the commercial
press, Stamperia V aldonega.

Giovanni Macderst~ig

109
 GOUDY OLD STYLE

'If there were an individual, readily recognized quality or characteristic

which the type designer could incorporate in drawings that would
make any one type more beautiful, legible, or distinguished than
another, it is obvious that only type of that kind would be designed.'
This statement was made by Frederic W. Goudy, a man who spent
more than fifty years of his life in pursuit of that 'recognized quality'
in a printing type. Nobody seems to know exactly how many types
Goudy produced (even he couldn't recall every design), but a reason-
able estimate would be upwards of 125. Many of them are now nearly
forgotten, a factor due probably to his persistence in 'going his own
way' and designing letters primarily for hand~composition, rather
than to the quality of the types themselves. Another circumstance
was the loss by fire in 1939 ofthe accumulated drawings and matrices
of many years of his type production. In addition, those types that he
produced for the composing machine were limited to the Monotype
single-type system, which in the United States never attained the
popularity of the linecasting machines.
Frederic Goudy died in 1947, and since then the appreciation of
his types has been in decline. There has also been a tendency to dis-
regard his influence as one of the great type designers of this century,
although few disputed this reputation during his most active years of
type production, 1915 to 1940.
Indeed, the name Goudy was, during the last quarter century of
his life, a household word in printing offices in every part of the
United States and in a number of other countries as well. A primary
reason for this fame was not just his numerous types but also the fact
that Fred Goudy was a very accessible man, who willingly appeared
on countless lecture platforms from coast to coast to discuss the great
love he had for letter forms. His warmheanedness toward his fellow
printers caused him rarely to refuse a request to talk about type.

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FRED · W · GOUDY AND WILL · H · RANSOM
THE VILLAGE PRESS· PARK RIDGE· ILLINOIS
HIS is the fu.st showing of a new
type designed by Mr. Goudy for
the exclusive use of the Village
Press. The matrices were cut and
the type cast by Wiebking, Hard-
inge & Co. of Chicago, to whom
credit is due for the faithful reni•
dering of Mr. Goudy's drawings.
~The designer's aim was to produce a letter generous
in form, with solid lines and strong serifs, and "with-
out preposterous thicks and thins."' Legibility of the
text as a whole was the first consideration, & the found-
ers of the Press trust that the letter will prove accept-
able to the readers of their productions. ·
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The Goudy Village type, 1903

Born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1865, Goudy was over thirty before

he designed his first typeface, Camelot, in 1896. By 1900 he was an
instrucror of lettering in Chicago and beginning to make a reputation
as an advertising designer. With the establishment in Chicago of his

112
Village Press, in 1903, he also became active as a printer and gradually
began to build his reputation as a type designer.
Goudy's earliest types were display faces, reflecting his commercial-
lettering expe~ience. Even the type he called Village, first used for his
own Village Press, was originally created in 1903 for Kuppenheimer
& Company, a Chicago clothing manufacturer. In 1908 he ventured
to design a bdok type for the old Life magazine. Cut for Monotype
composition 9y the Lanston Monotype Machine Company, it was
officially named 38-E, although it is often called Goudy Light or Goudy
Old Style (not to be confused with the subject of this chapter).
Possibly G0udy enjoyed this excursion into the design of a com-
mercial type for a periodical and the challenges it brought (such as
the need to stqdy Renaissance forms), but there is no doubt that he
was also exciteµ by the private-press movement-then at its height-
in which he tdok an active part. In any event, in 1911 for the New
York publisher Mitchell Kennerley he produced Kennerley, his first
important book type and first popular success. This effort was immedi-
ately followed i?Y the titling letter Forum, which was enthusiastically

OLD STYLE TYPES

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NEW TYPES
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Goudy Light Old Style No. 38 (Monocype)

113
 received and fully established his reputation as a type designer. Both
of these types were cut for private use.
The American Type Founders Company thereupon became in-
terested in Goudy, commissioning him to do a type. He agreed, on
the condition that his original drawings would not be subjected to
'interference by the foundry's drawing room.' Goudy then began
work on the face, which eventually became the most widely used type
he ever designed. Called Goudy Old Style by ATF, it first appeared
in 1915 and was an instant best seller for the foundry.
There have been numerous accounts of the origin of the type.
One of the reasons for its success was the _re(lewed interest in the
classic typefaces, which Goudy had already begun to satisfy with
Kennerley and Forum, and which ATF had fed with the Bodoni
revival in 1910, followed by Cloister Old Style two years later. Goudy
at one time stated that his inspiration derived from the lettering on a
Hans Holbein painting, but he later admitted that he couldn't trace
the exact source. Most type designers would sympathize with Goudy
in this, as it is easy to grow enthusiastic about a letter form and then
when a type idea germinates to be confused about its specific sources.
One of Goudys biographers, Peter Beilenson, said of Goudy
Old Style that it was a 'happy blend of French suavity and Italian
fullness, marred by the supposed commercial practicality of shortened
descenders.' Goudy apparently agreed with this criticism, for just be-
fore his death he wrote that he had- albeit under protest - 'allowed
ATF to inveigle' him into using such abbreviated descenders.
It was, however, these short descenders that helped endear the
type to the commercial printers, allowing as they did an economical
use of vertical space, particularly for the composition of advertising.

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Goudy Bold (Morris Benton-ATF)

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Goudy Old Style was thus an immediate success in the 'ad alley; as
newspapers refer to their advertising section. In the 1917 supplement
I
to the famous 'Big Red' ATF specimen book of 19u, an addition to
the Goudy 'family' '"7as announced-Goudy Title. The 1920 supple-
ment introduced Goudy Bold. In 1921, Goudy Catalogue was ready,
followed by Goudy Handtooled in 1922. Goudy Extrabold was added
in 1927, and that year ATF issued a separate 124-page specimen book
containing nothing ~:mt Goudy Old Style and its derivatives.
Although this promotion of tne Goudy types was most remunera-
tive for the foundry, ;it didn't enrich the designer, for Goudy had sold
the original design f9r just fifteen hundred dollars instead of entering .
into a royalty agreement based on sales. His relationship with the
American l'ype Founders Company naturally deteriorated, particu-
larly after 1920, when Goudy was named art director of the Lanston
Monotype Machine Company and he began to produce a notable
group of types for ~at firm. For ATF he designed but one other
face, Goudytype, plus a series of initial letters named Cloister Initials.
All of the variants of Goudy Old Style were cut for ATF by its
resident type designer, the talented Morris Benton. Wadsworth A.
Parker, another ATFhouse designer, aided Benton in the cutting of
Goudy Handtooled.
In its original forQ1, Goudy Old Style was widely USfd for adver-
tising and job printing. Its beautifully drawn classic capitals became a
favorite of book designers for title pages and chapter headings, but it
has nor generally bee~ used for book-text composition, although it
later became available for Monotype composition. In the fifty years

115
between 1923 and 1973 only once has it appeared for an entire book in
the annual Fifty Books of the Year Exhioition, in 1933. It has, however,
been selected for innumerable title pages during the same period.
It is the boldface version that keeps Goudy Old Style alive and
healthy, despite the chagrin of the designer at 'not being allowed
to draw the boldface.' The American typographer Lester Douglas
showed the writer a drawing Goudy had given to him, captioned:
'How I would have drawn- Goudy Bold.' In actuality there was not a
great deal of difference between this sketch and that of the bold's
designer, Morris Benton. Goudy was justifiably piqued, of course, by
ATF's refusal to give him further compensation for the huge success
of the Goudy family.
In his autobiography,AHalf-Century ofTypeDesign and Typography,
1895-1945, Goudy mentions a visit to ATF by members of the American
Institute of Graphic Arts. While leading a tour, Henry Lewis Bullen,
the typographic historian and librarian of ATFs Typographic Library,
stopped at a casting machine. Bullen informed the group that the
types being cast there had been designed by one of the Institute's
own members and further stated, 'Here is where Goudy goes down
to posterity while the American Type Founders Company goes down
to prosperity.'

EXPERIENCES WHICH REVEAL DISCOURAGING DIFFICULTIES

PRIMITIVE NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER HAD TO CONTEND wrtfl
My father had already been a printer it for his life's calling, without much
for a number of years, and some time regret.and though with his inventive
in the early thirties had led a forlorn and speculative nature he was often
editorial struggle in a West Virginian tempted to experiment in a number
hamlet, with the monthly periodical of other things, I do not think that he
which he printed himself and edited would ever have thought of forsaking
with the help of his sister. As long as his newspaperwork. In truth,the call
he remained in business he remained of printing was in our blood, though
simply country editor and country it brought to us neither honor nor
printer. He had started the study profit and we were planning and
of medicine when quite young dreaming most of the time how
but in due time abandoned we could break away from it
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Goudy Handtooled (Morris Bcnton-ATF)

II6
 There appears over the past decades to have been a noticeable
reliance on Goudy Bold in the advertising of distillers: this writer has
listed some fifteen different alcoholic beverages promoted by Goudy
Bold. But the; type also remains a prime favorite for all advertising
appearing daily in consumer periodicals at every level. In fact, it seems
that wheneverlthe requirements are for a solid, legible roman letter,
the layout is marked for Goudy.
All of the R hotographic devices currently available for the setting
I
of display cortjposition offer fonts of Goudy Old Style, assuring its
wide use for a lpng time to come.
Frederic W, Goudy and his types may seem dated to the younger
typographers of today, but there is not much question about his
influence during a good part of this century. He was never an ivory-
tower designer, always retaining the common touch, even though in
his later years &e·designed fewer display types and became more and
more involved, in his personal investigations into the purity of the
Italian Renaissance letter forms.
All of Goudy's types were drawn freehand-without the use of
compass, straightedge, or French curve. Early in his career of designing
types for the cpmPosing machine, Goudy objected to the methods
employed by th;e Monotype firm to transfer his drawings to matrices;
he believed thatr this compromised his artistic principles. He therefore
in the midtwenties withdrew to his workshop in Marlborough, New
York, to produce his own matrices ior what he called the Village
Letter Foundery.
Here for some fifteen years he turned out many of his best designs,
but offered them only in fonts for hand-composition. In 1939 the
workshop was destroyed by fire, with the result that the types produced
here during thi~ prolific period were lost. Fortunately, however, the
types Goudy had continued to draw for Monotype, such as Deep-
dene and Goudy Text- two of his most successful designs -were not
among these.
Thus, during the last quarter century of his life, although Goudy
maintained his Gonnection with the Lanston Monotype company, he
spent more time on his own production of types. These were of less
commercial application than his earlier designs, but they satisfied his
instincts as an independent type designer.
The many ropians Goudy designed in his home workshop during
the period up to 1939 have been rejected by his critics as look-alikes.
His numerous friends and admirers, however, could distinguish them

117
 THIS is sixteen pt. Deepdene Roman, designed and cut by
Fred W. Goudy. It was first shown in September, 1927.
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Deepdeae and Dccpclcne Italic

as the products of his continuing quest for perfection of the roman

letter forms. The fruits of that quest were destroyed in the fire. 1

The idealistic Goudy's essential practicality is evident in a lecture -

he gave before the annual convention of the International Club of
Printing House Craftsmen in New York in 1939. He stated: ·
My craft is a simple one. For nearly forty years I have endeavored constantly
to create a greater and more general esteem for good printing and typography,
to give printers and readers of print more legible and more beautiful types
than were hitherto available. Printing essentially is a utilitarian art, yec even
utilitarianism may include distinction and beauty in its type: forms. To meet
.the demands of utility and preserve an esthetic standard is the problem I set
myself years ago, and now, at 74, with over one hundred and eight different
type: designs to my credit, I am proud to say that I have never consciously
permitted myself to use the print presenting a worthy message to serve as a
mere framework or scaffolding upon which to exploit my own skill, or even
to allow my craft to become a means in itself, instead of a means only to a
desirable and useful end.

During his lifetime Frederic W. Goudy made a lasting contribution

to American typography, and though never adequately rewarded
financially, he received broad personal recognition, resulting in three
honorary degrees from American colleges and numerous medals,
including that of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

n8
 More important, Goudy acquired countless friends, who never
ceased to respond to his humanity. Attesting to this are the three
biographies published during his lifetime and four others that remain
unpublished. There is also a Goudy Society, which meets annually to
celebrate his birthqay, March 8. No other designer of printing types
in our times has been so warmly remembered.

Frederic Goudy

Il9
 PALATINO

In 1950, with the design of Palatino, a young German calligrapher-

type designer named Hermann Zapf came to the attention of the
world's typographers. Although the type took a year or two to circu-
late, its thirty-one-year-old creator made an immediate impact. For
that year Feder und Stiebel (Pen and Graper in its English version) was
published, employing the new type in its introductory text. A product
of the Stempel typefoundry of Frankfurt am Main, for which Zapf
was serving as art director, this book consisted of twenty-five pag~s
of alphabet designs. These had been lettered by Zapf in 1939 and
were cut in lead printing plates by August Rosenberger in his spare
time during the war years (it was Rosenberger who had introduced
the young designer to the cutting of punches).
Feder und Stiebel was published in an edition of only 80 copies on
Japan paper and in 500 copies on Fabriano. The supply was quickly
exhausted, as the revival of calligraphy that had begun in London
early in the century under the influence of Edward Johnston was well
under way, and most practitioners were avid for fine examples - the
magnificently printed slim volume quickly achieved renown as an
outstanding manual of the calligrapher's art. The introduction in
the new Palatino. font, representing the type's first use, was hand-set.
A further personal touch was that all the copies of this edition were
hand-bound by Gudrun von Hesse, Mrs. Hermann Zapf.
In 1951, Cooper Union in New York became the first American
institution to recognize Zapf's talents, and mounted an exhibition
featuring his work along with that of Fritz Kredel, the famous wood
engraver and book illustrator. Zapf at this time made his first visit to
the United States, captivating American audiences with his charm
and his very obvious love for and skill with letter forms. Through the
efforts of the American calligrapher Paul Standard, who had arranged
the show, the English edition of Feder und Stiebel was planned (the
German edition had gone out of print). Thus in 1952 the printing

120
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Palarino

office of Stempel produced 2,000 copies of the new version, which,

like the first edition, were disposed of very rapidly. Both editions
now command high prices from booksellers fortunate enough to
locate copies.
What is considered remarkable is that this beautiful, classic book
was lettered by, a man just twenty years of age and self-taught as a
calligrapher. Apprenticed at fifteen as a color corrector in a lithographic
plant, Zapf a year later visited an exhibition of the lettering of Rudolf
Koch. He was 59 much inspired that he immediately purchased supplies
and began the experiments that quickly brought him to professional
competence. Later he described his long hours of practice, when he
was frequently admonished by his parents for overuse of the electric
lights in the srnhll hours of the night. He sometimes despaired from
lack of guidancf- discovering, for example, that after three years of
effort, he was hqlding his pen in the wrong position.
In 1950, Zapf was extremely busy in the production of printing
types. To accompany the Palatino, he added a titling font, which was
named Michelangelo. He also drew two italics, one to serve as a
complement to the Linotype version and the other for single-type
composition in foundry type. This second ita.M,c, closer fitting than
the first, is a chancery cursive and is one of the best available types in
this category. The next addition to the Palatino family was a bold
titling letter called Sistina, soon followed by a boldface version of
Palatino itself ap.d a font of swash capitals for the foundry italic.
Michelangelo a~d Sistina today enjoy frequent use, independent of
Palatino, wherever fine capitals are required.

121
 Die llle/rnfhi~ft;~n t11cn/tia1t7u cincr
,1;1qov,u7'ltcnStbnf;,;1,ffi1r ·
neutli~katLS/2,;i1hat ~=t-( 1'11~1/:tcr/4:1,,.
/ .Y ,:,,,,' ,,,,.., -

Zapf calligraphy, from Pen and Graver, 1952

This vast output within such a short time recalls the virtuosity of
Frederic W. Goudy, and Hermann Zapf would be quick to recognize
and appreciate such a consanguinity. He has long harbored great
admiration for Goudy's ability as a type designer and also for his
espousal of craftsmanship. In still another way Zapf has followed
Goudy- in his readiness to be of help to his fellow typographers, no
matter how inconvenient to his personal life.
Zapf did not begin his career as a type designer with the creation
of Palatino. After three years of his apprenticeship as a color etcher
the creative urge was so strong in him and his lettering studies had
progressed to such a point that in 1938 he applied for employment
with a Frankfurt lettering studio. Shortly thereafter he became a free-
lance letterer, at which time he began the serious study of printing
types that would lead to the experiments resulting in his first type by
1939. Understandably, this was a Fraktur, for much of Zapf's early
calligraphy had been in that style. Zapf later wrote that it was through
his reading of Writing and Illuminating and Lettering, Edward John-
ston's famous manual of 1906, that he drew away from the 'highly
individual' style of Rudolf Koch's lettering and expanded his knowl-
edge of the wider tradition of letter forms.
Gustave Mori, the German historian of European typefounding,
who was directing the Stempel foundry, learned of Zapf's presence in
Frankfurt and in 1939 retained his services for the firm. The punch-
cutter August Rosenberger took Zapf's drawings and hand-cut the
test size of the type, which was_ called Gilgengart (honoring-a German
sixteenth-century book of rdigious texts). The type was not ready for

122
distribution until 1941, and it unforrunately coincided with the govern-
ment decree branding Fraktur a 'Jewish concoction.' It was not until
after the war- during which Zapf served as a map designer- that he
produced a roman type, drawn with a broad pen, which was named
Novalis. However, after the cutting of a normal weight, a boldface,
and an italic, the decision was made fur commercial reasons not to
issue this type; nevertheless, its designer had acquired invaluable
experience in the effort.
In 1948 Zapf started work on another roman, but one that he felt
was more attuned to the times. This was the design that finally became
Palatino. In its drawing Zapf applied the rationale he was to bring to
many of the fine types he has produced since that time: the concept
of adapting types to printing processes, as well as to their methods of
manufacture, from that of single-type casting to composing-machine
matrices. He later employed this approach to meet the exigencies of
transfer to film grid ~d disk, and eventual digitizing fur cathode-ray-
tube (CRT) typesetting devices.
The open countc;rs that make Palatino such a legible letter were ·
provided to overcome a then current printing problem in Germany,
poor-quality paper. The weight of the type was also thickened beyond
that of a normal ro,man in order to adapt to the lithographic and
gravure printing pro~esses of that period.
As a boy Hermann Zapf had been determined to become an
electrical engineer. Although he was won over to the practice of
calligraphy, his scientific bent has kept him sympathetic to the techni-
cal requirements of modem type design-he strongly believes that the

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Pa!atino Italic with swash characters

123
DON CARLOS
HEIDELBERG
Michelangelo

designer must temper artistic judgment with technical understanding.

Because he has pursued a study of the newest technologies, engineers
in tum respect his capabilities and are most willing to collaborate with
him. As a result, his types remain true to his concepts of typographic
harmony. Zapf also believes that the typographer, and not just the
type designer, must in the future become 'an analytical designer who
must hew to strictly logical sequences in the course of his work.'
Along with many of the best type designers of this century, Zapf
returned to the letter forms of the Italian Renaissance in the preparation
of Palarino. Although he wished to call the new face Medici, it was
the decision of the foundry staff that it be named Palatino, after
Giovanbattista Palatino, a sixteenth-century calligrapher and con-
temporary of the punchcutter Claude Garamond. Palatino's writing
manual, Libra NU01Jo d~Imparare a Scrivere, was published in Rome
in 1540. Although a controversial figure among his fellow scribes,
Palatino has been called by the historian of calligraphy James Wardrop
a 'calligrapher's calligrapher.'
Following his work on Palatino, Zapf went to Italy, visiting
Florence, Rome, and Pisa in order to study firsthand the Roman
inscriptional letters found there in such profusion. The sketches he
made at this time later became the basis for the Palatino titling fonts
Michelangelo and Sistina. The influence of the classical lapidary
majuscules is evident throughout the Palatino family, markedly in
E, F, and L, which retain the riarrow proportions. The swash variants
he produced for Palatino italic stem particularly from studies in the
Laurentian Library in Florence and the Vatican Library in Rome.

124
 Zapf has steadily maintained that as he did not create Palatine as
a book type but rather as a commercial face, he has always been
somewhat distressed by its use for book work. As his intent was to
produce a display type, he leaned to a calligraphic treatment of certain
letters, which ~o some extent interferes with the legibility of Palatine
when considered as a type for continuous reading. Nevertheless, such
a stricture has seemingly not discouraged book typographers in the
United States. One response to the legibility factor was the suggestion
of the well-kn~wn American type designer William A. Dwiggins to
design a number of 'alternate' though normal characters to replace
the·elaborate letters in question (E,F, S, 11, w,y, and others), a process
that of course represents a reversal in the usual procedure of cutting
alternate letters - it is the fancier characters that are ordinarily cut as
alternates to the original ones. In addition, Zapf conceived of a weight
to be called Palatjno Book, which he cut, but the salespeople at Stempel
and German Linotype preferred to produce it as a separate type, to
be called Aldus Buchschrift (a decision that annoyed Zapf, as the
basic design had little relationship to the types of the scholar-printer
Aldus Manutius). Never cut in display sizes, Aldus has been used
primarily in Germany for machine-composition.
The success :of Palatine was international, despite some modest
criticism of the .serif endings of such letters as h, n, and m, and the
unusual lowercase t, which rises to almost full ascender height. In
Aldus, this lette~ was brought back to normal proportions.
The favorable opinion of typographers unfortunately brought

MALKUNST !

LEONIDAS
Sistina

125
with it difficulties that have plagued Zapf's artistic life ever since, and
for a time had him at the verge of quitting his work as a type designer.
Plagiarism seems to be the price of popularity. The unauthorized
copying of types has harassed type designers throughout the 500-year
history of printing, and it seems destined to remain one of the hazards
of the profession.
Palatino appeared simultaneously with the emergence of photo-
typesetting as a replacement for the standard hot-metal operations.
While the composing-machine manufacrurers were themselves adapt-
ing to this trend, a number of firms with no previous exposure to the
printing trade decided that this changeover represented an opportune
time for them to become involved in the growing graphic-arts market.
The newer firms quickly equipped themselves with facilities for the
preparation of types, but they had little interest in the development
of their own styles. Printers who purchased the new devices naturally
wanted to have the popular type styles, and this demand inevitably
resulted in a wave of imitation of existing types. Under the law,
the name of a type could be registered but the design itself was
unpatentable, and therefore considered by the new entrepreneurs to
be in the public domain. Palatino is thus currently known as Elegante,
Malibu, Andover, Paladium, and Pontiac, depending upon the sup-
plier. The designer receives no financial return from any of these
'adaptations.'
Unquestionably, Hermann Zapf is the most conspicuous victim
of the widespread pirating of type styles in the post-World War II
era. His later types, Melior and Optima in particular, were also broadly
appropriated. To add insult to injury, the new composing equipment
not only stole the designs but also invaded the market of conventional
machines, further reducing the designer's income from his royalties
in the sale of matrices and foundry types. Since Zapf received no
remuneration from the firms that usurped his designs, it was manifest
that type design could not be profitable for him, which discouraged
him from pursuing his calling. Moreover, he had to suffer the artistic
anguish of witnessing the wide use of badly produced renditions of
his creations.
For a time during the 1970s there was speculation that these abuses
of artistic property would be curtailed by the passage of a new copy-
right act, but the United States Congress refused to give protection
to the design of printing types. However, within the industry itself
there have been heartening signs that unauthorized appropriation of

126
types will at least be discouraged A firm representing designers, the
International Typeface Corporation, was founded in 1970 and has been
most successful. Its method is to work with a type designer in the
preparation of a new font and to license the font's use to the various
composing-machine manufacturers. ITC will supply the original arr,
obviating the manufacrurer's need to produce - often inadequately -
its own copies, thus assuring the integrity of the original. The subse-
quent sales by the manufacturers will bring royalties to the designer
through an arrangement with ITC. This concept has been accepted by
the great majority df firms engaged in the production of typesetting
equipment with the -:,vholesome result that the design of printing types
may once again offer a reasonable financial return to their creators.

!J m,t 1 p durchscho~sen L 1140 10 p

The art of booktproducing was never on a higher level than
at the time of the invention of printing. The power and har-
mony of what Gutenberg and his associates in strict adherence
to the sound tradition of Gothic scripts cut, founded, set and
printed has been: surpassed by none of their followers either
in their own coqntry or in other countries; A second culmi-
nating point of German graphical art was reached in the early
Renaissance wh~n masters like Diirer, Holbein, and Cranach
were using the woodcut which had had its origin and been put
TO THE TEST IN GERMANY, FOR BOOK-ILLUSTRA
!l mil 1 p durcnsd1ossen L 1141 12 p

Die Kunst, ein; Buch als Ganzes schon zu gestalten,

hat nie hoher gestanden als zur Zeit der Erfindung
des Buchdruck~. Was Gutenberg und seine Genossen
im Anschluls an die sichere Tradition der gotischen
Handschriften ,geschnitten, gegossen, gesetzt und
gedruckt habetj, hat keiner ihrer Nachfolger daheim
oder im Ausland an Kraft und Harmonie iibertroffen.
Den zweiten H6hepunkt erreichte die deutsche Buch-
kunst zur Zeit per friihen Renaissance, als Meister
WIE DORER, HOLBEIN UNO CRANACH

Aldus (Linotype)

127
 Hermann Zapf worked closely with ITC, producing a number of
new types. He now works out of his home, designing typefaces and
type programs for a number of companies, bringing his unique skills
in the construction of beautiful letters to a marketplace in which
traditional inventiveness is far too often in short supply.

Hermann Zapf

128
 GARAMOND

The types that currently bear the name of the great sixteenth-century
French punchcutter Claude Garamond have been in popular demand
for about sev~nty years and are thus available from a variety of sources,
including f01,mdries and composing-machine manufacturers. These
rn~y versiollls do not always have the same characteristics, a dis-
concerting factor that interferes with their ready identification.
The Garamond types have a rich past, stemming as they do from
the most inflµential era of French typography, the 15oos. New in-
terpretations :of the historic sources continue to appear from time to
time, and though these may be confusing to younger typographers,
they do attest to the universality of the French old-style types and
offer a challenge in the pursuit of their origin.
During th~ first century of the printer's craft, each printing office
was more or less independent, there being practically no outside
source for supplies other than paper. In order to secure a supply of
type, it was ntcessary for the master printer to hire a punchcutter and
a typecaster. (The rwo occupations could be embodied in the same
person, but the cutting of a punch required both technical and artistic
ability, whereas the caster's job demanded less skill and was lower on
the scale of printing-office employment.) After punches had been cut,
it was necessary to drive matrices of copper or brass, and these_ had
to be carefully justified in order to achieve the proper fitting of the
character stru~k and assure its alignment with the other letters of
the font. A mold had to be constructed, and following the casting
operation each letter had to be dressed, which included removing the
jet caused by the type metal entering the mold, the rubbing of each
character to r~move burrs, and finally the planing of the foot to
eliminate the j~t break.
The printer also had to obtain a supply of type metal, consisting
of tin, lead, and antimony, and such supplies were difficult to procure
in many localities.

129
 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO
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Garamond (ATF)

It was sometimes possible to purchase punches and matrices from

the spouse of a deceased printer or, on occasion, to bargain for them
with a competitor. This practice, however, provided no guarantee of
a sufficient supply of type if the cutting and casting skills were not
available within the shop. Another method of obtaining matrices was
to purchase strikes from another printer who would, of course, be
reluctant to sell the punches. Such sales often took place at fairs
where printers congregated to trade and sell their books.
Punchcutting, along with matrix adjustment, was a skill that
required a good deal of training and experience. There never seemed
to be an adequate number of such craftsmen to keep printers happy
until the establishment of typefounding as a completely separate craft,
in the rsoos.
By the mid-sixteenth century typefounding was making a tentative
start, primarily in the form of shops that had accumulated stocks
of punches and matrices and which employed casters who produced
types for other printers without such f~ilities.
Into this printing scene entered Claude Garamond, who had been
born about 1500, the exact date being uncertain, as are the facts of his
early years. It is probable that he was apprenticed to the punchcutter
 148 ..A'NYJ. VES..Al.11 YJE CO."R.PO"JUS
& parem inibi cum ofsibus fupe~ciem conll:!tuences,i)l~rum gib~um,quocl
deprelfum magis,acplanum,quam teres cen:iirur,ne mm!mum qmclem ex~c
dunt.adeo,ut qu~maclmoclum ulx:iai:11 &ra_dmm ~tten~s ~pfis_cedere ofl:end1-
musmufculis,li1= quoq; poll:brach1ahs o(!alccundum logicudmem angul_of:t,
&lineis 9.uibufd11m pukhre exruberan~1a fpeEl:entur, pr~ n:iufc1:1Io~um wde:
licet,qui1pfis exporriguntur,ranone.ur1 e_nam ~ofl:brach1ahs os,md1cem fufl:1
nens, in intern amanus fed em, qua brach1ali arnculatur, noratu d1gnm11 cdu-
cit' procdfum,cui' mufculus brachiale mouencium fecunclus inferirur.Dein , , fi"P·
pofl:brachialis os,pa_ruo prrep".~tum cligito,qu:i ~rachi1i c01~".1i_rtirur?exter- ;;,.:;;~.
no fuo latere, uelun it brach1ah protuberat, ut comode tendm1s mfernonem a,.
aclmitteret" mufculi brachiak mouencium cerrijJnfuper ofla indicem & me !,;.:_•fo.
dium digitos fuffukiencia;pforum extemafede ad brachiale amplaquoq;& '" ,,,/iz. 0

alpera font, ut bificlum excipi~nt rendinem' mufculi brachiale mouencium ~-;.;_1•~

quarc~quiicleo potilsimum uidetur bipartiri, & dein latefcere, quod fimplex • •_:'4<-
&teres uni alicui procelfui pan1 apte infereretur, qui extra bradualis & poU- :~·;.-.,p.
brachi:ilisexteri9rem gibbamq;feclem excubmlfet. ::,;;;~
DE OSSIBVS DIGITORVM MANVS.
Capuc xxv1r.

FJ(jV"R..A Vl~ESI.Ml SEPT/Ml

C',APITIS, T(ES CON-
tm,m ,.J,,/1..,.

~RIMA TA• SECVNDA. TERTIA.

, bella.

TR!Vl\11 TABELLA.RVM HVIVS CAPITIS

figur~,& carundcmchar~dcrum Index.
0 s s I r .11 Jijtorfm_ jir1:emJutt priDrtt ftur£, adinitiu~ uigefrmi'fumti ,Ctp~Hrtpofatt, tommm-
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Z). li<,jli,.ZJ u,ra{inumf"in•oft,,'f"''•f"' Cmfagmrum1xar11ur.
E.F. _S.cund.ra~,IJ,,f~indicis 'f~•f, asnocar,E_ rn14:um,&ftcundum f"'iur F ~/igmmm: ut horum
~,H. ofo,um_J,bne•ua Jicu~"Ju41ucrdJg11orum_nt1<uliJl,ec,em f"f•ntrtt. _~""Ji & f/J;;,;n,J,c4111c•pirula
/, {- ,,,,,_,,,,,,J,c,;ofk. l ,,~, ';'" /(_ fin"'.fi'':'nJ,,fli,,'f"°' Juarmns,fli,c"f"uf4J,,bmmU1t.L dU(Ofl f11n1m f-
/.. gnijicat, mm,diac.,1tulorumpr,miojfu con(,f/11,um, .,"''fl«mlul,1rculum Jicundiafi< int,r duo, f nu, /
.Ja. 6~ ( not11rose_rom,n.rm1 &Minfignitnmfab1n.!!tditur.
"N.O. · 'Jirn,u,d,;IL,Jic1tnJ,4,,mJicHot 'N infigninm,, & rmium O nat•t""'FOf•mr, wtif c1uuf1,Jitftiu-
aculi

Garamond type as used in The Anatomy of Vesalius, printed by J. Oporinus, Basie,

1543

131
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Garamond Roman (Stempel)

Antoine Augereau, from whom he learned the crafr that was to establish
his reputation into the twentieth century. Garamond apparently then
worked with other punchcutters before embarking on an independent
career.
It was probably in the late 1520s that Garamond was approached
by the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne to cut a series of new
roman types. Estienne was continuing the press founded by his father,
Henri, about 1502, and he was turning it into one of the establishments
that helped mark the era as noteworthy in the history of typography.
Gararnond's roman first appeared in Paraphrasis in Elegantiarum
Libras Laurentii Vallae, by Erasmus, printed by Estienne in 1530. That
year Estienne produced several other books with Garamond's ·type.
The first complete showing of the types came in 1531 .
. Typographic scholars have long debated the design origins of
Garamond's types, but there is general ·agreement now that they
derive from the types cut for Aldus Manutius in Venice by Francesco
Griffo. Of particular interest in this respect is the 1495 edition of
De ./F,tna by Pietro Bembo, much more than, for instance, the Aldine
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499 ..Garamond was a friend of Geoffroy
Tory, the first French imprimeur du roi (royal printer) and a notable
force in the aesthetic development of the printed book. It is known
that Tory possessed a copy ofDe ./F,tna, which could have been passed
to the punchcutter for study. The matter becomes complicated as
three others - Simon de Colines; Antoine Augereau, Garamond's
former master; and the printer Christian Wechel-produced similar
types at about _the same time. There is no conclusive evidence that
Colines was a punchcutter, but he was certainly a good printer, who,
having married Henri Estienne's widow, had continued to produce
the fine Estit':nne books. According to Nicolas Barker in an article in
The Library dn the Aldine romans in Paris, Garamond's and Augereau's
versions were almost identical.
There is no doubt, however, that the De ,I.Etna type was the
inspiration f~r the French copies. The reader will recall, in the chapter
on Bembo type, that it possessed eight variants of certain lowercase
letters. In thf type that he cut for Estienne, Garamond used seven of
these variants, in all instances selecting the more eccentric renderings,
according to:Barker. Since these alternate characters appeared only in
De /F,tna and not in later Aldine publications, the evidence points to
this type as the model for Garamond.
In later romans, Garamond frequently departed from his earlier
copy and refined the type to better reflect his own artistic concepts.
One particul~ such letter is the capital M, which in the early models
lacked the serif at the top of the right stem.
The relationship that Garamond maintained with Robert Estienne
was mutually beneficial. The punchcutter was most fortunate to be
working in ~ cultural climate that encouraged scholarly printing-it

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Garamond (Ludlow)

133
was the regime in France of Francis I, who enthusiastically promoted
the art of the book- but Garamond could scarceiy have advanced
his reputation without the assistance of a printer such as Estienne,
of marked superiority in the practice of his craft. And Garamond's
growing skill gilded Estienne's name.
The Garamond types brought attention to their designer, prompting
the king to commission from him a font of Greek. Garamond's Gree
du Roi further enhanced his celebrity, although later Greek scholars
deplored his models, which continued the tradition of the informal
Greek script originally cut for Aldus Manutius. Nevertheless, the
Garamond Greek served as the standard until the present cenrury.
Upon Garamond's death in 1561, his punches and matrices were
sold, a principal purchaser being Christopher Plantin, whose printing
office in Antwerp was to become the largest and finest in Europe
before the end of the cenrury. This establishment still exists as the
Plantin-Moretus Museum, where during the past thirty years typo-
graphic scholars have catalogued the tholl:5ands of punches and
matrices in its possession. Many of these are now attributed to
Claude Garamond.
The Garamond punches also found their way to the typefoundries
being established in the sixteenth cenrury. In 1592 the Frankfurt
foundry of Egenolff-Bemer issued a broadside specimen that has
since become an important source of information concerning the
types of the era, and in it are several fonts ascribed to Garamond.
There is some doubt whether these punches were acquired directly

Q.Qi sequitur me, non ambubt in tcnchris: dicit

Dominus. Haec sunt verba Christi, (Juibus ad-
monemur, quatenus vitam cjus & mores imitc-
mur, si velimus veraciter illuminari, & ab omni
caecitate cordis liberari. Smm111m1 ~r;itllr · st11d-
n11n nostrum sit, in vita ]ts11 Christi medit,,ri.
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Garamond (English Monotype)

134
 CHARACTERS IN FONTS

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(Lining Figures supplied with all Fonts unless Hanging Figures are specified.)

DIG1\TIFIED FOR
Broadsides, Booklets
and falders as well as
Frederic W. Goudy's Garamont (Monotype)

from Garamond's ~idow or were brought to Frankfurt from Antwerp

by the punchcutter Jacob Sabon.
Sabon, upon the death of the printer Christian Egenolff in 1555,
had become assoqated with Egenolffs widow in the maintenance of
the rypefoundry that was part of the printing office. Having later
worked with Chrii,topher Plantin at Antwerp, Sabon might well have
helped in the subsequent acquisition of the Garamond punches and
matrices from Pl-!11cin by the Frankfurt foundry, of which he had
become own\!r by virtue of his marriage to Christian Egenolfl's grand-

135
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Caracttrcs de l'Universite (lmprirneric Nationale)

daughter. Upon Sabcm's death in 1580, his widow married Konrad

Berner, the foundry then being styled Egenolff-Berner. The Egenolff-
Berner casting established the Garamond designs as the principal
roman types used by European printers during the next century. It is
the 1592 specimen, which also contains italics designed by Robert
Granjon, that has served as the source of several of the current revivals
of the Garamond types.
Another important derivation of the present-day Garamonds is
the type that was cut by the French printer Jean Jann.on and first
shown in his specimen sheet dated 1621. Jann.on, who was printer to
the Protestant academy at Sedan, suffered the misfortune of having
his typefounding materials confiscated by the king's forces at the
instigation of Cardinal Richelieu. His punches and matrices were
later placed under the care of the Imprimerie Royale - the royal
printing office-which had been established by Richelieu in 1640

136
 (and still exists as France's national printing office). The first use
of these Jannon types was in the 1642 production of the cardinal's
memoirs.
Althou~ cut some sixty years following the death of Claude Gara-
mond, the J~on types contain many characteristics that are obviously
patterned on his designs. However, as 'M. :Beaujon' (Beatrice Warde)
points out, in the authoritative article on the Garamond types in
volume five bf The Fleuron (1925), the angle of the serifs of such letters
ass, m, n, p~ and r in the Jannon model is much greater than in the
Garamond 9riginal. Obviously Jannon, though influenced by Gara-
mond, did e;xercise his artistic prerogative to alter a number of indi-
vidual features.
The style represented by the Jannon designs lost favor, and his
types were ignored for about two hundred years. When they were
'discovered'' in the vaults of the French national printing office, in
1825, they we;re attributed, not to their designer, who had been long
forgotten, but to Claude Garamond. Printed in 1845 in a specimen of
the historic. types owned by the office, the Jannon types were not
used again until revived by Arthur Christian, director of the printing
office, for a fuistory of that establishment published in 1901.
The Jannon types were again used with distinction in Anatole
Claudin's foµr-volume Histoire de Plmprimerie en France au xve et au
XVJe Siecle., of 1900 to 1920. This work-called by D. B. Updike
'probably m;e finest book on printing that has ever been published' -
brought int~national renown to the caracteres de l'Universiti, as the
type was kn<i>wn.
The use of 'Garamond' in these books called attention once again
to French typography of the sixteenth century. Here in the United
States in the early 190os, the American Type Founders Company,
looking to continue the success it had enjoyed with the revivals
Badoni and.Cloister Old Style, turned its attention to that period.
The foundry was of course fortunate to have as its librarian the
typographic historian Henry Lewis Bullen, and the ATF library was
the best of its kind in the United States. With Bullen's encouragement,
Morris Ben~on commenced a redrawing of Garamond. The foundry
was also fortunate to retain as adviser the typographic designer T. M.
Cleland, whp lent invaluable assistance to the project.
The model selected was the caracteres de l'Universite group of
types. But fr was not for several years, after the Garamond revival
was well unc;ler way, that Beatrice Warde (a former assistant to Bullen

137
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at the ATF Library) began her researches into the history of the
Garamond types. She discovered in the Bibliotheque Nationale in
Paris an unknown copy of the Jannon specimen book of 1621, and
published her surprising findings in 1927, under the pseudonym Paul
Beaujon. Jannon thus finally received credit for his designs.
When ATF Garamond was completed, in 1917, it set the standard
for an international Garamond revival, becoming the hallmark design
that has since influenced numerous adaptations, all worth noting
carefully. Within a decade all the composing-machine manufacturers
had produced copies, varying their interpretations according to the
models selected.
In 1920 Frederic W. Goudy became arc director of the Lanston
Monotype Machine Company, and for the first type under his new
responsibility he turned to his own conception of the Garamond
design. He elected to follow the Jannon type, although his interpre~
 GROS CA NON.

La crainte de l'Ecernel ell

le chef defcience: mais les
fols rnefprifent fa piece &
ITALIQYE GROS CANON.

Car ils feront graces enjilees

enfemble aton chef. & car-
1uans li ton col.Monfilsji les
Specimen ofJean Jannon, Sedan, 1621

tation differed in,a number of respects from chat of ATF. It is called

Garamont, the spelling chat appears in several historical accounts
of French printi11g. Goudy later wrote chat his delineation was 'not
the result of inspiration or of genius on my part, but was merely the
result of an attempt co reproduce· as nearly as possible the form and
spirit of the Garamond letter.'
The next Gar:amond to be produced issued from the Stempel
foundry in Germany in 1924, and it too was made available for the
Linotype machinf· This type was adapted from the Egenolff-Berner
specimen sheet 0£ 1592 and is therefore a copy of an actual Garamond,
whereas the aforementioned reproductions are not.
Mergenthaler Linotype Company in 1925 produced a Garamond
closely allied to the Stempel cutting but somewhat heavier and not
quite so graceful., A little later the firm felt economically obliged co
issue a type identical to ATPs standard Garamond, calling the copy

139
Garamond No. 3. The firm's business sense proved acute, as this type
soon became the most widely used of all Gararnonds in the United
States.
In 1930 R. Hunter Middleton designed for the Ludlow Typograph
Company a Garamond also based on the 1592 specimen. Another indi-
vidualized interpretation, like Goudy's, this is the lightest in weight
of all the Garamonds. The distinguished typographer Bruce Rogers
greatly admired Middleton's design; he told this writer that he believed
it to be one of the best of the modern cuttings of Garamond. Rogers
used it in the edition of Gulliver's Travels that he designed for the
Limited Editions Club in 1950.

140
 GALLIARD

The latest addition to the list of French old-style types was brought
out in 1978 9y the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. N arned Galliard,
it is based on a type made by the sixteenth century's Robert Granjon
and is the first of its genre to be designed exclusively for photo-
typesetting . In contrast to the situation when the American Type
Founders' qararnond was introduced, in 1917-Garamond's immediate
approval W¥ primarily owing to the few classic types then available -
it is too early to predict the reception for Galliard, since to many
printers it might at first seem just another roman in a market they
believe to be saturated.
The name Galliard stems from Granjon's own term for an 8-point
font he cut •about 1570. It undoubtedly refers to the style of the face,
for the galli~rd was a lively dance of the period.
This latest venture of Mergenthaler's into the sixteenth cent;ury was
at the direction of Mike Parker, the firm's knowledgeable director of
typographic development. His roots as a typographer go back to the
1950s, wheni he was on a fellowship from the Belgian-American Edu-
cational Fo~dation working in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Ant-
werp. Parker was instrumental in helping the museum set up the
procedures by which the identification of the many thousands of ma-
trices and punches owned by Plantin was expedited.
Parker cpllaborated with a designer eminently qualified to revive
a Granjon original, Matthew Carter. As a teenager Carter had been
apprenticed; to Paul Raedisch, the punchcutter of the Enschede type-
foundry in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Perhaps more important, as
the son of Harry Carter, the notable typographic historian, Matthew
had receiv~ the impetus to study the classical roman letter forms,
particularly those of the sixteenth century.
The reader has previously noted that Robert Granjon was highly
praised for his italic types, which were used as models for the italic
forms of some of the Garamond revivals. But heretofore the only

141
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-
142
 roman of his design that had been adapted for modern use was one
that, though a huge success, brought no attention ro Granjon, as it
was called Plantin, fdr the printer who had commissioned the original.
Quite possibly Granjon would not have recognized that reemergence
in 1913 of his Gros (:icero, for it had been appreciably changed to
meet the typographic demands of the early twentieth century: the
ascenders and descenders were shortened and the strokes thickened
to almost monotone weight, to adapt it for the composition of
periodicals.
It is a coincidence that the Granjon-based Plantin type, like the
much later Galliard, was a roman cut for a modern method of type-
setting- one of the first such rypes. Plantin was designed for the
Monotype machine, then achieving its initial popularity in Europe.
It has remained an English favorite, possibly because in the post-
World War II period, which witnessed the enormous growth of
offset lithographic piinting, Plantin's lack of strong contrast in thick
and thin strokes ada;pted well to the process (this, of course, was
before lithographers had developed the skills in film handling and
I

plate making that made such subterfuge unnecessary). In the United

States, Bookman _type was the standard for photomechanical repro-
duction. Plantin later served as the model for Times New Roman,
but here the direction of design was forcunately a return to Granjon's
standards, even though the type was not recognizable as a Granjon
original.
While the designers of the regenerated Garamonds were attempting
reasonable fidelity in their copies, Carter preferred simply to bring to
Galliard his interpretation of the spirit of a Granjon original. Here
his broad knowledge of historic printing types bore fruit. In addition.
his skill as a punchcutter resulted in a revival that is most sympathetic
to its prototype.
Galliard thus possesses the authentic sparkle that is lacking in the
current Garamonds. It is a type of solid weight, which will bring
good color to the printed page - an asset in offset printing in which
the more delicately constructed romans appear to disadvantage. (This
has been one of the difficulties encountered by typographers in the
selection for photomechanical printing of rypes originally designed
for relief printing: rl:ie crispness of the depressed image of relief
printing cannot be captured in offset lithography and gravure.) This
comparison of printing processes long captured the attention of
typographers, particularly in the era 1930-1970. Many and prolonged

143
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144
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were the arguments concerning type selection for the different repro-
ductive processes. Eric Gill, for example, wrote: 'A print is properly
a dent made by pressing; the history of letterpress printing is the
history of the abolition of that dent.' Here Gill is referring to the
twentieth-century concept of the 'kiss impression.' Beatrice Warde,
renowned fort championing typcgraphic taste, was fond, in her world-
wide lecturing, of comparing relief printing to sculpture, and in fact
recommended that readers feel the impressions on title pages, an advo-
cacy greeted with horror by all librarians within sound of her voice.
The italic ,of Galliard is particularly felicitous in that the designer
reached back to the feeling of the chancery style, from which Claude
Garamond, in his complementary italic, had departed. The prototype
selected by Carter was a cursive that Granjon had cut for Christopher
Plantin. Galliard italic is a more upright letter than that of Garamond,
demonstrating the former's closer relationship to the chancery forms.
In keeping with current trends in the preparation of fonts for
phototypesetting, Galliard is supplied in four weights. Following the
'normal' boldface adaptation are two additional designs, called Black
and Ultra. Although in Black some semblance of the normal weight
of the roman remains, it seems quite lost in Ultra, but such arc the
modern exigencies of typeface marketing which demand the broadest
application for every design. From the standpoint of manufacturing,
the preparation of additional weights is now being simplified by
the computer, which can eliminate many of the laborious procedures

145
formerly involved. In the case of Galliard, the Ikarus computer
program developed by Peter Karow in Hamburg, Germany, has been
utilized. Such programs will undoubtedly be increasingly employed
in the future rendering of new types, especially those for cathode-
ray-tube ( CRT) digitized typesetting.
It is a most hopeful sign that a composing-machine manufacturer
will promote the design of a new roman type useful in the produc-
tion of books. Galliard embodies a commitment to the future that is
praiseworthy, for it represents the combination of traditional con-
cepts with today's advanced technology.
Many readers of this volume will have noted that it has been set
in Galliard.
 GRANJON

The type currentlyicalled Granjon is one of the best modern recuttings

of the original Garamond design. It was produced under the direction
of George W. Jon¢s for Linotype and Machinery, the English manu-
facturer of the Met.genthaler Linotype machine.
During the tirn~ that Jones was a director of this firm he was more
notably the head of a very fine London printing establishment called
the press of George W. Jones at The Sign of the Dolphin. That he was
a printer of taste is evident from the specimen keepsake of Granjon
that he produced ip 1931 for Mergenthaler in the United States. It is
a distinguished piece of printing and has become a most desirable
acquisition for any collection of type specimens.
Robert Granjot1.'s career as a punchcutter lasted from about 1545
to 1588, during which time he cut punches on commission in Paris,
Antwerp, Lyons, and Rome. Although he also produced roman types,
his reputation is m~st secure in his skill with italic. Stanley Morison
has written of him, 'He is unquestionably the greatest master of
Italics of his age, and his Greeks and Romans are not inferior to
Garamond's.'
Granjon also designed the cursive Civilite types (1557), and his
arabesque fleurons have retained their popularity for decorative
typography. Book collectors have long prized the volumes designed
by Bruce Rogers that contain the Granjon typographic flowers; no
one has used them with quite the elan of Rogers in the decoration
of books. Their use will diminish now that hand-composition of
single types has b~come practically obsolete in bookmaking other
than by the private, presses. Even at the time of Rogers's death, in
1957, very few compositors were allowed the privilege of using these
so-called dingbats. But perhaps they will lend themselves to a com-
puter assembling te,;minal if some enterprising manufacturer cares to
write a program for :their inclusion in a book composed by a cathode-
ray-tube (CRT) typesetting device.

147
 Twenty-Four Point Granjon
C.24,610.?7> Lower case alphalJet. Z6J point:;. Code word, ZAZER

HOW CAN ONE EVALUATE AND

How is one to assess and evaluate a type face
in terms of its esthetic design? Why do the
pace-makers in the art of printing rave over
a specific face of type? What do they see in
it? Why is it so superlatively pleasant to the
eyes? A good design is always a practical de-
sign. And what they see in a good type de-
sign is, partly, its excellent practical fitness
to perform its work. It has a "heft" and bal-
ance in all of its parts just right for its size, as
any good tool has. Your good chair has all of
its parts made nicely to the right size to do
exactly the kind of work that the chair must
do, neither clumsy and thick, nor.'' skinny''
and weak, no waste of m ($,.:; ' -'? !fiflff ffiffi)

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Granjon (Linotype}
 · '' . this is a book face worthy
to rank with Caslon for usefulness, with Centaur for
beauty; sTh.arp enough for publicity, clear enough
for a dicti<;:mary. For some reason the face is called
'Granjon.~ It would seem that Garamont's name
having so :long been used on a design he never cut
is now by stern justice left off the face which is
undoubtedly his."
-Frorn "The' Garamond' Types" by Paul Beaujon, in The Fleuron, 1926

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ + ♦ ♦ + + + ♦ ♦

~~'.!~===.~2:!:3=~. =fHE Editor of The Fleuron, in a Notice

of The Linotype &Printing c..Afachinery
'l(ecord for July, 1926: "We await with
interest a definitive · specimen, worthily
printed, of all the sizes of the 'Granjon'
face of the Linotype & Machinery Ltd.
designed by Mr. George William Jones.
As Mr. Beaujon has pointed out in this
~~,;--,zr~~=,'SIJ'oi.=::::.- number the importance of this roman for
contemPorary book-work, it only remains here to report on the sizes

Granjort, in page composed by George W. Jones at The Sign of the Dolphin,

London

Little is hlown of Granjon's early life. His father was a printer

and publisher: in Paris who apprenticed his son to a goldsmith from
whom the boy no doubt acquired the degree of skill that eventually
made him an outstanding punchcutter.
Granjon ~gan his career about 1525, but his types date from about
1545. In 1547 ~e cut a nonpareil (6-point), the earliest known cutting
of this type size. It was in that year that he rook up his father's trade
of publishing, continuing until 1551 when it seems that he again became
involved in punchcutting and typefounding. In 1556, Granjon went to
the great printing center Lyons where he cut types for printers and in

149
.~ publishing venture of his own produced books set in the Civilite
type. A scriptorial letter based on a gothic cursive form, Civilite is
believed to be the first type that can be classified as a cursive, apart
from the more common italic forms.
Robert Granjon returned again to Paris in 1562, continuing as
a typefounder, but by 1565 he had entered a relationship with the
scholar-printer Christopher Plantin in Antwerp. Plantin was one of
those printers-and they have been legion since-who couldn't resist
acquiring new types; upon his death the type in his printing office ·
amounted to some 44,000 pounds, at a value of almost 9,000 guilders.
For Plantin, Granjon produced thirty-four fonts of matrices, thirteen
of which were noted in the Plantin inventory, along with correspond-
ing punches. In 1578 Granjon was called to Rome by Pope Gregory
XIII, where he remained for ten years, cutting numerous 'exotic' -
non-Larin-alphabet- types for the Vatican press. He is believed to
have returned to Paris in 1590, the year of his death.
When George W. Jones decided that the English Linotype com-
pany should have a Garamond, he used for his model the Historia
Ecdesiastica, printed at Paris in 1582 by Jean Poupy, and composed in
a type of Garamond origin. Owing primarily to the fact that several
other Garamonds were then in use, Jones elected to reduce the con-
fusion by naming his type Granjon.
His decision prompted Beatrice Warde, in the 1925 Fleuron essay
on Garamond types, to remark wryly, 'It would seem that Garamond's
name, having so long been used on a design he never cut, is now by
stem justice left off the face which is undoubtedly his.' Mrs. Warde
went on to say that Granjon was 'The first and immeasurably the best
of the modem revivals of this letter (the "true" Garamond) .... This is
a book face worthy to rank with Caslon for usefulness, with Centaur
for beauty; sharp enough for publicity, clear enough for a dictionary.'
The Jones 'Garamond' was an immediate success as a book type.
The Mergenthaler organization in this country very quickly made
Granjon available to American printers.
The popularity of Granjon as a book type may readily be attested
by the statistics provided by that barometer of type use, the Ameri~an
Institute of Graphic Arts' Fifty Books of the Year Exhibition. From
J927 through 1973 Granjon was used in a total of 135 books, whereas
from 1923 through 1973 Garamond in all its other versions combined
was selected for 148 books.

150
 SABON

In 1960 a group of German master printers formed a committee to

promote the man¢acture of a printing type that would be made
available in identical versions from three specific sources: foundry
type for hand-composition, matrices for machine-casting by Monorype,
and matrices for linecasting via the Linotype machine. In addition, it
was expected that this new type would 'be both legible and applicable
to the various printing processes.'
It is ironic that piis rather tall order was issued at a time when all
three of these methods of composition were experiencing a serious
decline, with the metal casting of type giving way to phototypesetting
procedures. But even as late as 1960 - a short time ago when one
considers the 500-y;ear history of printing-the adherents of compo-
sition in metal type were not to be persuaded that its demise was
imminent or at all certain. Naturally, the manufaeturers who met with
this committee were perfectly willing to fulfill the requirements as
stated, seeing them' as a boost to business. Furthermore, the specifi-
cations were comi:1letely rational, in fact long overdue, for it was
seldom that a typtjgrapher had the opportunity to use a particular
style of type that was identical in all the required sizes. The manu-
facturers of Iinecasting machines were primarily interested in producing
sizes for continuous reading applicable to keyboard composition, and
thus the display setting often had to be done with types of somewhat
different design, even though they carried the same name. Thus, when
representatives of tlie Monotype, Linotype, and Stempel firms agreed
to collaborate in II}eeting the specifications set before them, their
decision was received with much enthusiasm in the printing trade.
Still another desideratum had to be satisfied. The type was to be
based on those designs first cut in the sixteenth century by Claude
Garamond, but it had to be somewhat more economical in set width
(five percent) than existing copies. The reader of this volume will
already be aware that there is no dearth of Garamond types on the

151
 :1
• Die Kunst, ein Buch als Ganzcs schi:in zu gcscalten, hat niemals so hoch gestanden wie zu der
Zeir der Erfindung des Buchdruckes. Was Gutenberg und seine Genossen im engen AnschluB
an die sichere Tradition der gotischen Handschriften geschnitten, gegossen, gesetzt sowie ge-
druckt haben, hat keiner ihrer Nachfolger dahdm oder im Ausland an Kraft und Harmonie
iiberrroffcn. Einen weiteren Hohepunkt erreichte die deutsche Buchkunst zur Zeit der friihen
Renaissance, als Meister wie Diirer, Holbein und Cranach den auf eignem deutschen Boden
ENTSTANDENEN UND ERPROBTEN HOLZSCHNJTT FOR BILDER UND DEN

'.1
,o Die Kunst, ein Buch als Ganzes schon zu gestalten, hat niemals hoher gestanden als zu
der Zeit der ·Erfindung des Buchdrucks. Was Gutenberg und seine Genossen im engen
Anschluls an die sichere Tradition der gotischen Handschriften geschnitten, gegossen,
gesetzt sowie gedruckt haben, hat noch kein Nachfolger daheim oder im Ausland an
Kraft und Harmonie iibertroffen. Einen weiteren Hohepunkt crreichte die Buchkunst
ZU DER ZEIT DER FRO HEN RENAISSANCE,ALS MEISTER WIE DORER

]
, Die Kunst, ein Buch als Ganzes schon zu gestalten, hat niemals so hoch
gestanden wie zur Zeit der Erfindung des Buchdruckes. Was Gutenberg
und seine Genossen im engen Anschluls an die Tradition der gotischen
Handschrifl:en geschnitten, gegossen, gesetzt sowie gedruckt haben, hat
noch kein Nachfolger daheim oder im Ausland an Kraft: und Harmonie
0B ERTROFFEN. EINEN GANZ BESONDEREN HOHEPUNKT

Sabon (Stempel)

market, so this position represented a further challenge to any designer

who was selected for the task. The committee narurally entertained
the hope that the new face would eliminate the confusing variety of
available Gararnonds.
Such was the formidable assignment given to and accepted by the
eminent German typographer Jan Tschichold, then fifty-eight years
of age and a man who had achieved renown in two completely dis-
parate arenas of typography-the avant-garde and the traditional.
A son of a painter of letters, Tschichold had expected to follow a
similar career, but exposure to typography through his attendance at
the Leipzig Akademie and graduate work there under the noted type
designer Walter Tiemann brought him into a broader field. In 1924,
he visited a Bauhaus exhibition and came away completely converted
to the typographic possibilities inherent in the Bauhaus approach to
design.

152
 His enthusiasm led to a friendship with Paul Renner, the designer
of the Funmi. types, and further exposure to new trends in design.
By 1928, witj-1 the publication of Die Neue Typographie (•the new
typography') -which would influence typographic design for the
next generation- Tschichold had established himself in the forefront
of the youngFr European designers who were attempting to reform
German typ~graphy. Bur in 1933 the new designs, employing sans-
serif types in asymmetric arrangements, were condemned by the Nazis
as anti-German. Tschichold therefore took refuge in Switzerland,
where except! for a short postwar stay in England he remained until
his death in 1974.
Ironically, by the midthirries Tschichold himself had begun to
have second ,thoughts about his youthful avowal of the principles
expressed in his book. He now believed that the design concept he
had so ardently promoted in fact demonstrated, as he later wrote,
'shocking parallels with the teachings of National Socialism and
Fascism.' In 1935 he thus published Typographische Gestaltung ('typo-

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I53
WHEN JOBS HA VE THEIR TYPE SIZES FIXED QUICKLY
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When jobs have type sizes fixed quickly margins of
error widen unless all determining calculations are
based on factual rather than hypothetical figures.
No variation in the amount of copy can affect the
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Sabon; English Monotypc

graphic form'), in which he refuted some of the statements in Die

Neue Typographie. He now taught that good printing had above all to
be perfectly legible, 'and, as such, the result of intelligent planning.'
Tschichold's decision to recant his early ide·as was not at all well
received by his disciples. When he was called a renegade to his own
teaching, he answered by asking his critics if they would be happy if
he had gone on pretending that he had written a 'faultless book.'
After the war Tschichold's several years in England were spent
in overseeing the entire redesign program embarked upon by the
Penguin paperback series of books. The establishment of what be-

154
came a house style was an exhausting undertaking, covering every
production detail, in the printing of more than six hundred titles,
but it was brought off splendidly and greatly enhanced Tschichold's
reputation as an outstanding book designer.
In addition to his considerable skill as a typographer, Tschichold
brought to his commission for a new 'Garamond' a love of the classic
types, such as those of Jenson, Caslon, and Baskerville. He now turned
to the famous 1592 specimen sheet of Egenolff-Berner. From it he
selected a 14-point roman, Saint Augustine, which in the specimen
was attributed to (i:laude Garamond.
Tschichold by no means attempted a slavish copy of this type.
The original irregularities that occurred naturally from size to size-
owing to the fact I that in the sixteenth century each had to be cut
in steel independe,ntly- were not allowable in modern typography,
in which the pant<pgraph governs the proportions of each size from
a master pattern. Tschichold made his drawings to the dimension
of twenty times Id-point. (It may be noted that type designers have
their individual preferences for drawings; W. A. Dwiggins, for example,
drew to ten times h-point, and Frederic W. Goudy did his originals
freehand to seven and a half inches.)
Further restrictions affecting the design were imposed by the

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Saoo.n (Linotype)

155
 mechanical requirements of three distinctly different methods of
composition - foundry, Monotype, and Linotype. The economic
problems of rnacrix manufacture make it obligatory that character
widths be restricted for machine-composition, and though foundry
casting presents no such limitation, the foundry version of the pro-
jected new type had to conform to the requirements of the other two.
The most serious of the restrictions was the Linotype's lack of kerning,
since the system of matrix assembly does not allow for projections
from the body of a letter. (The Linotype manufacturers could provide
kerning only by producing logotype matrices, or two letters on a
single matrix, which was the common pi;actice for f ligatures, for
which keys were furnished. But other logotypes had to be inserted
into the line by hand, thus inhibiting rapid composition, and so
kerns were usually dispensed with.) Thus, the new type's design is
particularly noticeable in the lowercase f the f of the slugcasting
machine has always been the means by which the method of com-
position could be recognized, typographers frequently referring to
the unkerned letter as a 'buttonhook.'
For his italic Tschichold chose one that had also appeared on the
Egenolff-Berner specimen sheet, where it was attributed to Robert
Granjon. Here again mechanical considerations interfered with the
aesthetics of letter form. In the linecasting machine each matrix
contains either lightface duplexed with boldface or roman (upright)
duplexed with italic. Since in single types italic is normally of a
narrower set width than roman, the slug-cast italic appears to be
letterspaced. In addition, the matrix width interferes with normal
kerning (overlapping) common to the italic form. it may be noted
that in current automated typesetting this long-criticized fearure of
. machine typesetting has been eliminated.

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Sabon (Monophoto}
 The name selected for this first joint venture in typographic
harmony was Sabon, which tied the design to its French sixteenth-
century origins without adding to the confusion that surrounded
such names as Garamond and Granjon. Jacques Sabon was a punch-
cutter who had worked in Lyons before going to Frankfurt for em-
ployment wi~h Christian Egenolff, who maintained a typefoundry
in connection with his printing office. Following EgenolfPs death in
1555, his widow asked Sabon for help in running the foundry part of
the business. It is also known that Sabon worked at Antwerp for
Christopher J.1lantin.
In 1571, S~bon
I
married Judith Egenolff, the granddaughter of
Christian, and through this connection he was able to purchase the
foundry itself from EgenolfPs heirs in 1572. This marks the real
beginning of' one of the great typefoundries of the period. Upon
Sabon's death? in 1580, Judith married Konrad Bemer, who continued
the establishment.
In the design of Sabon, Jan Tschichold admirably met the stiff
requirements of the German committee of master printers. The design
has now been transferred to phototypesetting devices ( alas, the non-
kerningf has !;>een retained in this mode), and the type has continued
to grow in P9pularity. It is used particularly in European printing,
where it is begµming to edge out that perennial favorite Bcmbo-frorn
which, of coutse, it derives along with all the other Garamond types.

157
 e'¥. 14 ~-

JANSON

One of the most frequently cited examples of the misnaming of a

classic type is that of ATF Garamond, in which Jannon, its creator,
lost his identity. A similar error of attribution has occurred with
the seventeenth-century Dutch old-style type called Janson, a face
that has proved its usefulness over the past forty-three years since its
revival- indeed, it has become one of the most popular of book
types. Determining this design's provenance provides a complicated
tale.
Daniel Berkeley Updike, in his Printing Types of 1922, discussed
the Dutch types in great detail, but failed to properly identify the
Janson design, although he described it and showed examples of
both the roman and the italic. He simply captioned the illustrations
'Dutch Roman Types. Erhardt Foundry Specimen, Leipsic, 1739.' In
the second edition of his book (1937), Updike ascribed the types to
the Dutch punchcutter Anton Janson. In addition, he had included
the face in the bibliography of his Merrymount Press, published in
1934, in which he discussed a visit he had made to Leipzig during a
European tour in 1903. Unaccountably, however, he did not mention
that he had purchased 'Janson' types from the Drugulin foundry of
that city, which was then in possession of the punches and matrices
of the so-called Janson design, a fact noted by Stanley Morison.
Although Updike had purchased 'Janson' fonts as early as 1903, he
did not employ them for a book until 1918, even though he. had but
six roman types in his printing office before 1925. Updike had a great
fondness for Caslon, which he selected for about forty percent of his
books, and he also had a warm regard for Bell (also called Mountjoye),
bought the same year as the Janson. That he did admire Janson,
though, is evident from his employment of the letter in what is often
considered the finest product of the Merrymount Press, the Book
of Common Prayer, printed in 1930, a typographic masterpiece com-
posed entirely in Janson types.
r,: MONOTYPE JANSON
i[ & JANSON ITALIC, No. 401

Many Dutch types were based on those of French origin.

For example, alth0ugh the types ofJanson are more precise,
, narrower (particularly as applied to the roman lowercase),
and show a greater,dijference between the fine and heavy lines
than those of the Frenchman, Claude Garamont, there is never

Many Dutch types were based on those of French origin.

For example, although the types ofJanson are more precise,
narrower (particularly as applied to the roman lowercase),
and show a greater·dijference between the fine and heavy lines
than those of the Frenchman, Claude Garamont, there is never

Many Dutch types were based on those of French origin.

For example, althqugh the types ofJanson are more precise,
narrower (particu[arly as applied to the roman lowercase),
and show a greater difference between the fine and heavy lines
than those of the Fr,enchman, Claude Garamont, there is never

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Janson and Janson Italic {Monotype)

159
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Erhardt foundry specimen of Dutch roman type, Leipzig, c. 1739

One of the earliest descriptions of Janson by a leading typographic

historian appears in Stanley Morison's On Type Faces, published for ·
the Medici Society in 1923. Here are shown seven sizes, 8- to 36-point.
In the introductory essay to this specimen, Morison writes - after
discussing the seventeenth-century types purchased by John Fell,
Bishop of Oxford, for Oxford University Press - 'An excellent letter
of similar spirit but less archaic feeling is to be found in the roman
and italic cut by Janson: this Dutch letter is a generation or two later
in design and is more regular in its setting.' (Morison was referring to
the ragged alignment of the Fell types, approved by many modern
typographers but deplored by just as many others.)
However, in another small handbook, entitled On Type Designs
Past and Present (1927), Morison did not include any remarks about
Janson. Nor did the reputable A. F. Johnson of the British Museum
in his Type Designs: Their History and Development, printed in 1934,
a book conceived as an update of Updike's Printing Types, although
not attempting such broad coverage as the original volumes.
It is scarcely surprising, then, that when both the Mergenthaler
Linotype Company and the Lanston Monotype Machine Company

160
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Janson {Stempelf

announced their revivals of Janson in 1937, most American printers

had no choid: but to accept the historic information that was dis-
seminated by these firms.
Neither firm could offer many facts to accompany the first speci-
mens of the rt;:cuttings. Linotype's statement was simply: ' ... definite
information concerning Anton Janson is difficult to obtain.' The
Monotype promotional showing-a beautifully designed and pro-
duced twenty-eight-page book.let in three colors - contained an essay
on Dutch typfS written by Sol Hess, then associate art director-of the
company, wh9 had overseen the adaptation. (Frederic W. Goudy was
at that time Nfonotype's art director, but his responsibilities were of
a consulting nature, leaving to Hess the everyday decisions in the
production o( matrices. Hess was therefore quite independent, making
a separate cortribution to the American typographic scene.) Hess's
statement on the Janson specimen echoed that of Mergenthaler:
'Unfortunately, little definite information is to be found concerning
Anton J ansoh and his work.' Both companies, it may be noted,
perpetuated ~he erroneous impression that the types now named
Janson had been designed by him. The misconception was sustained

I6I
 into -the 1950s by a pamphlet distributed by the German Stempel
foundry, of Frankfurt-am-Main, owner since 1919 of the original
'Janson' punches and matrices. The Stempel account says that the
types had been created in 'the typefoundry of the famous Dutchman
Anton Janson, and show the mark of superior craftsmanship in the
firm stems and hairlines.'
During all these early years of confusion concerning its origin,
Janson was becoming well known, not so much by commercial printers
as by book typographers and collectors. A splendid example of its
early use was in Stanley Morison's Andres Brun, CaUigrapher ofSawossa,
hand-set in 1929 for the Pegasus Press of Paris by Giovanni Marder-
steig at his Officina Bodoni in Verona and greatly admired for its
lovely typography.
As of 1939, however, Morison had become sufficiently curious
about the true origin of the type and its designer to take the time
to make a more thorough investigation than had heretofore been
attempted. He disclosed his findings in an article in Signature, No. II,
in a discussion of Leipzig as a typefounding center. Morison proposed
that it was the Stempel foundry that had initiated the misconception
by attributing to -Anton Janson the types that it had acquired from
the Drugulin foundry of Leipzig in 1919.
A. F. Johnson, also in 1939, wrote an article for The Library, entitled
'The Gout Hollandois,' that shed further light on the mystery, and
in Signature, No. 1s, published in 1940, Morison came to grips with
Anton Janson himself, citing information sent to him by a German
scholar. None of these essays, however, illuminated the most impor-
tant missing detail of the Janson type-the name of its designer.
The answer to that question had to await postwar scholarship and
was finally supplied by Harry Carter and George Buday in England.
Equipped with a photograph of a type-specimen sheer located in the
National Library in Budapest (provided by Professor G. W. Ovink
of Amsterdam), Carter discovered that the types shown here were
the same ones that had reached Leipzig and finally arrived at the
Stempel foundry in Frankfurt. The designer of the so-called Janson
types, it turned out, was a Hungarian punchcutter named Nicholas
Kis (pronounced kish). Carter and Buday published their findings in
an article in the British periodical Linotype Matrix: 18 in 1954, and
later produced a definitive account in Gutenbew]ahrhuch, 1957, entitled
~Nicholas Kis and the Janson Types.'
Further information on the career of the Hungarian punchcutter

162
 EHRHARDT 453

And when this Power

of the City shall seem
grea:t to you, consider
that the same was pur-
chase~ by Valiant Men ... in imi-
tation of these men, therefore,
placing Happiness in Liberty,
Liberty in Valour, be forward to
ENCOUNTER THE Dangers ofWar. Such is
the City for which these men valiantly
fighting have died, and it is fit that every
man of you should be like minded to
underg~ any travail for the same.-
Extract from Thucydides, trans. B. Jowett

Ehrhardt (English Monotype)

has been publishc:;d by Buday in 'Some More Notes on Nicholas Kis

of the "Janson" Types; in The Library of March 1974. (The writer, of
Hungarian birth but now resident in Britain, gives full credit to Mr.
Carter for the ide1,1tificarion of the types. Buday's contribution was in
the Hungarian-language aspects of the research.)
Nicholas Kis was born in 1650. He took religious orders, and during

163
 ~ THE APPLICATION: This is levelled at that
numerous part of 1nankind, who, out of their
ample fortunes take care to accomplish them-
selves with everything but common sense.

71· The Old Hound.

An old Hound, whohadbeenanexcellentgood
one in.his time, and given his master great sport
and satisfaction in 111any a chase, at last, by the
effect of years, becatne feeble and unserviceable.
However, being in the field one day when the
Stag was almost run down, he happened to be
the first that came in with hin1, and seized hi111
by one of his haunches; but his decayed and
8;

The Fell type, in FnJJles ofAesop, designed by Bruce Rogers, 1933

164
 his theologic~ studies at the Transylvanian College of Nagyenyed he
attained a reputation as a Greek and Latin scholar. After three years:
as a schoolm~ster, he followed the pattern ofTransylvanian scholars
of his time by, traveling to gain experience. It was recommended that
he study typography, as knowledge in the field of printing was much
needed in H~gary. Kis therefore chose to visit Holland, a center of
publishing ~d printing, and arrived there in 1680.
He managed to secure the services of the well-known punchcutter
Dirk VoskenJ, who agreed to give Kis instruction in the cutting of
types for a period of six months, although he informed Kis that nine
or ten years ~ould ·be required to perfect his skill. Kis, however, was
apparently an, apt pupil, with the result that in a comparatively shon
time he was mdemand as a punchcutter, not only of roman and italic
types but also of Greek, Hebrew, and other exotic alphabets. He
received international recognition, and printers from several countries
requested his 1punches and matrices as well as his services as a trainer
of apprentices.
Kis's reputation continued to grow, resulting in a call from Cosimo
de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, to go to Italy to establish a type-
foundry for the ducal court. In coaxing Kis, the duke informed him
that he was considered to be the best type cutter in Europe. Kis,
however, refµsed the offer, as he was then planning to go home to
give his native land the benefit of his experience.
Kis returned to Hungary in 1690, determined to spend the rest
of his life in, the service of typography, panicularly the printing of
beautiful Bibles. Unfonunarely, however, the next decade ofreligious
and political' upheaval in Hungary, along with personal enmities,
frustrated Ki~'s ambitions and in fact so embittered him that his life
was considerably shonened. He died in 1702.
Thus the story was finally our, almost forty years after the type's
revival. Duri'ng this time the availability of Janson for both hand-
and machine1composition had very quickly established the face with
book design~rs in Europe ind the United States.
Citation of the Fifty Books of the Year Exhibition has become
controversial in the past few years, as the American Institute of
Graphic Arts;, which puts on the show, continues to experiment with
the rationaleibehind it. Nevertheless, the statistics of type use for the
books selected cannot fail to indicate the degree of acceptance of
cenain styles~ and in fact are very useful to typographers interested in
design tren~ over the past half century. :For example, since 1923 two
 types in 'The Fifty' stand out above all the rest: Baskerville, the most
widely used, and Caslon, a fairly close second (the old reliable Caslon
had very little competition in the early days of the show, when there
were far fewer good book types available-a factor, indeed, that
allowed it to hold its commanding position for a forty-year period).
Janson, as used by Updike, first appeared in The Fifty in 1929, and
it is now the third most popular type among these books, having
been selected by the designers of more than two hundred works there
honored. It is interesting to note that the Dutch old-style types, as
represented by both Caslon and Janson, have far outdistanced any
other classic-revival type.
Book typographers have long been conscious of the fact that Caslon,
unless firmly pressed into the printed page, lacks strong color. Com-
mercial printers have also discovered that in the smaller sizes this type
appears anemic when printed on coated papers. In addition, Caslon_
suffers similarly when printed by offset lithography.
Some of these problems have been corrected by Janson. It main-
tains the basic unobtrusive character of its Dutch old-style origin,
but has a slightly heavier weight, which achieves the close-textured
appearance that typographers expect of a book page.
Jack Stauffacher, the California printer whose love for Janson
resulted in the production of a beautiful little book about the type,
Janson-A Definitive Collection (1954), stated the case very well when
he wrote: 'It is truly remarkable how these early bookmakers under~
stood the merits of a page amassed in type. The total color of a page
was sustained in a harmonious image that blended with the contents.
Nothing was inconsistent with the end result of communicating the
author's thoughts.'
Janson is available today from numerous sources - in single type
(foundry and Monotype), on linecasting machines, and on photo-
typesetters. The typographic purists have generally maintained that
the version cast by the Stempel typefoundry in Frankfurt is the finest,
it being the original font.
These original fonts obtained by Stempel were not complete.
Thus in 1951 Hermann Zapf supplied the 24- and 48-point sizes for
the foundry, and at the same time redesigned for the German Lino-
type firm four sizes, 6-, 8-, 9-, and 10-point. Zapflater commented on
the difficult task of creating two large sizes that would blend into the
overall pattern of the existing fonts, since characteristics vary from ·
size to size when type is cut by hand with the steel punch.

166
 TO THE 'RIGHT HONO~A'BLE

Henrie Wriothesley
EARLE OF SOUTHAMPTON AND BARON
OF TITCHFIELD

R HT :HONOURABLE, I k;_nownot how I shall offend

n dedicating my unpo~isht lines to your l...,ords~ip,
nor h?w the worlde will censure mee for choosing
so ~trong a proppe to support so weak..e a burthen,
onelye ifyour Honour seeme but pleased, I account my selfe
highly praised, and vowe to tak..e advantage ofall idle houres,
till I have h01Ul1l,red you with some graver labour. But ifthe
first heire of my invention prO'lle deformed, I shall be sorie
it had so noble:a godfather: and never after eare so barren a
land, for flare it yeeld me still so bad a harvest, I leave it t.o
your Honourable survey, and your Honor to your hearts
content, which I wish may alwaies answere your owne wish,
and the worlds bopefall expectation.
Your Honors in all dutie,
William Shakespeare.

: Use of Janson by Bruce Rogers in The Poems of Shakespeare, 1940

 Linotype Janson was first produced in the United States in 1937
under the guidance of C. H. Griffith, the typographic director of
Mergenthaler; he used the Stempel original as the model for this
cutting. In the same year Sol Hess undertook for the American
Monotype firm a modification of the face, using as a pattern a version
in a seventeenth-century book. Both of these revivals found immediate
favor with the American printers, even though the rypes lack some of
the crispness of the Stempel foundry version, a factor that is most
noticeable in the display sizes. It is, of course, currently offered by
manufacturers of phototypesetting machines.
Finally, it may be observed that the Ehrhardt design for the
English Monotype Corporation is patterned on the same original as
the cuttings of Janson referred to above. A comparison of Ehrhardt
and Janson indicates the fascinating differences that may result even
between close copies of an original.

168
 CASLON

Although infrequently the case, one of the most widely known of all
historic printing types indisputably bears the name of its designer,
William Caslon. He was an English engraver who cut the face about
1720. It is also an indisputable fact that the reputation of the design
has been sullied byl too many eulogies on the part of the outstanding
typographers of a generation ago-Beatrice Warde, in her 1933 essay
'On the Choice of Typefaces: mentions the 'almost superstitious
regard for Caslon Old Face' that existed at that time.
Contemporary typographers, with the choice of a variety of
printing riches far greater than that of their predecessors (if we may
take as evidence die bulging current specimen books), are not to be
blamed if they express disenchantment with Caslon and the period it
seems to represent., Still, their disapproval runs counter to the opinion
of the more traditionally oriented type professionals, who point as
usual to such printing stalwarts as Daniel Berkeley Updike who in
1922 stated in his 5Fminal Printing Types, 'In the class of types which
appear to be beyond criticism from the point of view of beauty and
utility, the original Caslon type stands first.'
The typographers who grew to maturity before 1930 learned to
love Caslon and, more important, acquired expertise in its use. During
his formative years the eminent Bruce Rogers employed Caslon in
book after book, while Carl Purington Rollins, the estimable Printer
to Yale University, ;icquired an international reputation for his handling
of the type. Even: on Madison Avenue, the New York advertising
typographer Hal Marchbanks was widely known as 'a Caslon printer';
it was he who was responsible for bringing the type out of the library
and into the hectic world of commercial and advertising printing.
The result of all this activity by printers who had received their
initial inspiration from the English private-press movement - as
represented by the Kelmscott, Doves, and Ashendene presses -was
to place Caslon today in an ambiguous position. The contemporary

169
 Best Act
Rich Girls
KINGDOMS
exporting gold
HEAR VOICES
speaking rapidly
MODERN MACHINE
helps manufacturing
Caslon No. 471 (ATF)

-
170
 typographer may very well ignore the design, but at the same time
one feels uncomfortable rejecting it out of hand.
Certainly, Caslon is far from forgotten. It continues to tum up
regularly in national advertising. All of the manufacturers of photo-
typesetting equipment have transferred the type to their film grids for
both text and:display typography. In 1966, the American Type Founders
Company (tjien practically at the end of its existence as the most
important supplier of new types) brought out still another version,
Caslon 641, ~ven though the firm already had in its vaults matrices for
some three dozen variations·on the design.
The origi'nal Caslon was devised in the early eighteenth century
when a group of London printers and booksellers prevailed upon the
young engra,ver William Caslon to cut for them a font of Arabic-
language ty,RCS for a series of religious tracts then being planned.
(Through these tracts, it was hoped, the natives in newly discovered
lands would be induced to take up Christian1cy.) According to one
account, whqn Caslon had finished the task and was ready for proof,
he cut his n~e in pica roman (12-point), in order to identify the
proof. It w~ these few letters of his signature that attracted the
interest of his sponsors and which eventually resulted in Caslon's
devoting all of his energies to the cutting of non-exotic types.
In that pq:iod there was little typefounding being done in England;
for some tim~ printers had been dependent on Dutch sources for their
types. This was owing largely to the restrictions on printing engen-
dered during the preceding century by the censorial Star Chamber
which had severely limited competition in the field. Though by
Caslon's timF these obstacles had been removed, their effects were
still felt in th~ trade.
The prep<:mderance, therefore, of Dutch types in English printing
offices made it almost inevitable that Caslon would be influenced by
their characteristics. Indeed, although his types have been praised as
the embociir~ent of English typography, they were in fact modeled
on the earlier Dutch forms, albeit better fitted and cast. . ·
Caslon oompleted the work on his first fonts about 1720, but it
was not until 1734 that he issued his first specimen sheet, a broadside
that has since been widely reproduced in printing histories and is
thus well knpwn to all students of typography. In addition to the
roman and italic types, this sheet shows a number of exotics, such as
Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.
The success of these Caslon-designed fonts and the growing repu-
1

171
 A SPECIMEN
By W. CASLON, Letter-Founder, in Ironmonger-Row, Old-Street, LONDON.·

First broadside specimen of William Caslon, 1734

ration of this most competent English punchcutter no doubt contrib-

uted to the lack of appreciation by English printers for the typographic
developments then taking place on the Continent. Exciting things
were happening there, however. Although during much of the 1600s
the Durch types had dominated European printing, in the last years

172
 Two Lines Great Primer.

Quoufque tandem
abutere Catilina, p
~oujque tandem a-
butere, Cati!ina,pa-
Two Lines Englilh.

~oufque tandem abu-

tere, Catilina, patientia
noftra? quamdiu nos e-
~oufque tandem abutere
Catilina, patientia ntflra?
Two Lines Pica.
~oufque tandem abutere,
Catilina, patientia noftra ? qu
§jjtoujque tandem abutere, Ca-
tilina, patientia ngftra? quam-

Page from specimen book of William Caslon & Sons, 1763

173
 INC ONG RE s s, Ju LY 4, 1776.

A DECLARATION
13\' TBB REPRESENTATIVES Ol'•THB

UNITED ST A TES OF AMERICA,

IN GENE".R.AL CONGRESS ASSEMBLED.

ATT • aT.
CHAALES THOMSON, Sua•TuT.
••n••• . •••·•• P•n-••• ':.a• J••• D••••11,,

CasJon type in first printing of Tiu Dedm'IJtion ofIndependence by John Dunlap

Philaddphia, 1776 '

174
 of the century there took place a most interesting· experiment in
France, which was to have a long-range effect on the design of
printer's tyP,eS. About 1692 Philippe Grandjean, the French punch-
cutter, creatfd for the Imprimerie Royale the famous Romain du Roi,
a revolution¥}' design, the first to be drawn to mathematical principles,
that eventually led to the· type style now called modem. For though
these types were restricted to use by the French royal press, they had
considerabl~ influence on the styles developed by the commercial
typefoundets. One such, Pierre Simon Fournier 'le jeune: a younger
contempora17 of Caslon's, was profoundly impressed by these types
and later pr0duced several important variations on them. But despite
its impact i4 Europe, Romain du Roi had little immediate effect on
English typefounding, Caslon's excellence in his craft apparently
deterring experimentation with new forms in England.
WiUiam Caslon died in 1766, but his foundry remained in the
family for aI?-other century. The last of the Caslons to be active in the
firm, Henry WiUiam, died in 1874, yet the Caslon name has been
retained through subsequent changes of ownership. The firm later
was acquired by Stephenson, Blake & Company, ?f Birmingham,
which now appends to its name 'The Caslon Letter Foundry.'
Meanwhile, in the mid-eighteenth century the types of John
Baskerville had brought about the changes in English typographic
taste that resulted in the eventual decline of the Caslon types. Later
in the century the styles of the Didots in France and Badoni in Italy
radically affected European typography, with the result that the old-
style types, such as Caslon, which had been dominant for almost three
centuries, wi:re soon completely out of favor. In the 1805 Caslon speci-
men book, for example, not a single old-style type appears.
Then in 1844 Charles Whittingham produced at.the Chiswick Press
in London 'if'he Diary of Lady Willoughby, which was set in Caslon.
It is this voiume that is credited with rerurning the type to popular
esteem, regaining much of the reputation it had earlier enjoyed. By
1900 Caslori was being produced by typefounders on both sides of
the Atlantic, and it was ready to be elevated to the unique position
that prompted the aforementioned Updike panegyric.
In the l:(nited States, Caslon was an historically important type.
During the late-eighteenth century it was the principal type of the
colonial printers, most of whom depended on English sources for
the equipment in their printing offices. When first set in type, the
most important document of American history, the Declaration of

175
 So much of the DIARTof
LADY WILLOUGHBY
as relates to her Domeflic H iflory,
& to the Eventful Period of the
Reign of CHARLES
the Firfl:.

Imprinted for LoNGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, & LoNG-

MANs, Paternofler Row, over againfl: War-

wicl. Lane, in the City of

London. 1844-

The Caslon revival as shown in The Diary ofLady Willoughby, printed at the Ch.iswick
Press, 1840

Independence, appeared in those types cast by William Caslon. Thus

there is an old tradition of enthusiasm for Caslon on the part of
American printers, who were largely responsible for its popularity in
the years up to the Second World War.
In 1837, the American typefounder Peter C. Cortelyou displayed in

176
Caslon Old Face
ABCDEFGJ:IIJK.LMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ/£CE
QU& 123,4567890£$ ,.:;-!?([
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz~cefifffiffiffictQy
Old fashioned Ligatures as below Uniform figures are also
are also available obtainable if desired

f lb lh ft fi fk ~ ffi ill 1234567890

SMALL CAPS aiVailable in all sizes 3 6 to 6 pt. inclusive

And his half-sisters SARAH THOMPSON and MARY READ.

By payments amounting to nearly £11,000, all other
claimants to t~e estate were paid off within seven years,
while the freehold land on which the workshops stood
was acquired b;y the foundry on 29th April, I 845 in the
name of JOHN; STEPHENSON. The two remaining heirs,

Caslon Old Face (Stephenson, Blake & Co.)

his specimen book several sizes of a type called simply Old Style, but
which was in fact:Caslon, although not at all well produced. But the
great resurgence qfCaslon type in the United States can be dated from
1858, when the Philadelphia foundry ofL. J. Johnson (later Mac Kellar,
Smiths & Jordan) brought fonts from England and duplicated them
by manufacturingielectrotype matrices, a process by which a founder
could duplicate a competitor's type withour cutting punches.
The firm's peri~ical, The Typographic Advertiser, showed thineen
sizes of Caslon iµ its July 18.59 issue. The type later appeared in
Johnson's 186.5 specimen book under the name Old Style No. 1. This
face gained in popularity; so much so that in 1892, when Vogue
magazine was restyled in Caslon type, the Johnson version was chosen,
constituting the fo;undry's largest type order in more than thiny years.
The Caslon revival;took a huge leap.
The use of Caslon in Vogue was followed by its employment by

177
 A LADY OF
QUALITY
Being a most curious, hitherto
unknown history, as related by
Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff but not
presented to the World of
Fashion through the pages of
The Tatler, and now for the
first time written down by
Frances Hodgson Burnett

New Tork: From the Publishing House of

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
153-157 Fifth Avenue. MDCCCXCPII.

Caslon typography by Will Bradley in the 189o's

Caslon Openface (ATF)

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPORSTUV
W X Y z; ab Cd e f g hi j kl mnOp 4 rSt UV W X YZ
6 S l 234567890
Inventiveness tend to assume a wholesome crea-
tive moo, can go far to produce a specimen hook
of his types and borders which will be a posi-

ABCDEFGHI JKLMNOPQ
RSTUVWXYZ &$1234567890
ahcdef ghi jkl m nop qrs tu vw x y z
Positive: revelation of delight to all he-
holders.:and an inspiration to typographic
achievement in all users of it. And yet
Caslon Antique (~TF)

179
some of the nation's best typographers, including Will Bradley who
purchased fonts from the Dickinson foundry in Boston in 1895. As
an innovative young designer, Bradley further popularized the face.
Caslon was therefore an early candidate for the composing machines
then being introduced. The Monotype company was the first to make
it available in 1903 with a version based on the Johnson type, by then
the property of the American Type Founders Company through that
firm's amalgamation of the various American typefoundries.
There are now numerous versions of Caslon, all but one of which
bear similarity to one another. Caslon Old Face, owned by Stephen-
son, Blake & Company, is of course the original, but the ATF Caslon
471, based on the Johnson copy, is very close indeed. For advertising
printing, ATF shortened the descenders and named the new version
Caslon 540, and over decades of newspaper advertising R.H. Macy's
department store made 540 practically its private type, at least in New
York City.
The last Caslon to mention is that ubiquitous but unrelated Caslon
Antique, which possesses no similarity whatsoeVer to the original.
This old reprobate was a victim of bad timing when, late in the 1800s,
it was introduced by Barnhart Brothers of Chicago under the name
Fifteenth Century. Its negative reception lasted until about 1918,
when, with a simple name change to Caslon Antique, it became the
most commonly selected type for reproductions of colonial American
printing. It is now seen in everything from liquor advertisements to
furniture commercials.
Caston in most systems of type classification is known as an old
style (in England it has had the name Old Face, and more recently, in
the British Standards System, is listed under 'Garalde'). It represents
probably the final development of those romans that were first cut
by Nicolas Jenson of Venice in 1470. Among printers interested in
type classification, a fairly strong case can be made for calling Caslon
a transitional type, as it predates the Baskerville design of 1757.
However, most typographic historians have held that Caslon's depen-
dence on the seventeenth-century Dutch forms resulted in a letter
with more old-style fearures than modern. The wedge-shaped serifs
of the lowercase characters are a case in point.
Even in the original version, as well as in copies made by the
American Type Founders, Monotype, and Linotype, there are in-
consistencies in the fitting and the alignment of several letters. Most
typographers who work closely with types have learned to be aware

180
ABCDEFG HIJKLMN
OPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv
wxyz .,-;:'!? 1234567890
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRS
TUVWXYZabc
defghijklmnopqr
: _.. ,,
stuvwxyz ., ,... ?$
1234567890
Caslon Oldstylc No. 540 (A TF)

of such incongruities, particularly in the comparison of sizes. For

example,_the 24-point Caslon seems to lack the grace of the 18-point,
and in relation to the larger sizes appears to be considerably bolder.
Owing to this discrepancy, a 22-point was cut in order to provide an
in-between size.

-
181
ABCDEFG
HIJKLMN
OPQRSTU
VWXYZ
abcdefghij
klmnopqrst
uvwxyz
1234567890
Caslon No. 540

-
182
 . · Such variations produce the individuality that has apparently
; charmed many a typographer unhappy about the regularity of the
;~odern pantograph-designed typefaces. Others, however, take a dim
; view of such individuality, making it difficult to understand why the
:-type has been along-lived favorite throughout the world .
.But for whatever reason, Caslon persists, offering all the usual
. variants-bold, condensed, openface, swash-of any successful type.
· It seems that this design is bound to survive, although even well-
' ipforrned typographers are hard-pressed to explain why. In a period
so
: when much!that is traditional is viewed as suspect, Caslon's enduring
· Popularity is ehcouraging to any printer admiring the classic forms.
 EASKER VILLE

The roman types heretofore discussed in this book have been part
of the group classifit;d as old style; that is, they are in the spirit of
the first roman types developed in Italy between 1470 and 1500. The
reader will remember that by the latter date the earlier pen-dominated
styles were giving way to the more precisely cut romans of Francesco
Griffo. Further modifications took place during the sixteenth century,
under the influence of Claude Garamond and his contemporaries.
After that the Dutch punchcutters carried out more changes during
the next century, so that by the_ time of William Caslon the old-style
letter form, as expressed in a printing type, had reached its final
development.
In the last decade of the seventeenth century the first conscious
revision of old style occurred in France, with the creation of the fonts
for the Imprimerie Royale. These letters, cut by Philippe Grandjean
(at the direction of a committee appointed for the purPose by Louis
XIV), differed notably from the old-style pattern. The round characters
were given a perpendicular axis, as opposed to the incline of the old
style, and the serifs were both flatter and sharper, with less bracketing
than in the earlier faces. Some authorities have called the Remains du
Roi the first modern types, but they seem closer to the transitional
classification, which contains features of old style and modern in
equal degrees. Whatever theory is followed, ·however, this French
departure from old style greatly influenced designers of printing types
during the eighteenth century. There is general agreement that the
best-known of these designers, John Baskerville, an English amateur
printer and typefounder, be credited with the creation of one of the
earliest transitional types.
By every measure, Baskerville's types have demonstrated universal
appeal. The proof of this is their present availability throughout the
world in the form of single types for hand-composition and for all of
the typesetting machines from hot-metal to cathode-ray-tube (CRT).
BASKERVILLE IS OPEN AND CLEAR,
WITH DELICATE HAIRLINES AND SERIFS, AND
appears to the best advantage when printed on
smooth pa:Rer stock. The companion italic is
very narrow. Both $ 1234567890 $1234567890
I
i

IT WAS A WONDERFUL THING TO

CONCEIVE AN IDEA As REVOLUTION ARY As
that emboqied in Lanston's first Monotype
and to build it $12345678go $1234567890
Baskerville (Monotypc)

The current pPpularity of the type is comparatively recent, even

though the face was designed more than two centuries ago. The
Birmingham printer, underappreciated in his time, would have been
delighted to k.nowlthat his type had won full acceptance in the twentieth
century, surpassing in esteem even the well-loved Caslon styles of his
own era-which he was consciously trying to improve upon.
John Baskerville was about forty-five years old when he turned to
printing as an avocation following an extremely successful decade in
the japanning business. Earlier in his life he had been a writing master
and had also engraved headstones. In both these capacities he had
developed a high degree of skill in the definition of letter forms.
In 1750 Baskerville engaged the services of the punchcutter John
Handy and proceeded with ambitious plans for the establishment of
a press in which he intended to do fine printing. By 1754 he had
proS!essed to the :point of producing a prospeetus for his first book,
the Georgics of Vitgil, which finally appeared in 1757. In 1758 Basker-
ville used the preface of his second book, an edition of Milton, to
explain why he h~ become a printer:
Amongst the several mechanic Arts that have engaged my attention, there is
no one which I have pursued with so much steadiness and pleasure as that
of Letter-Founding, Having been an early admirer of the beauty of Lettei:s,
I became insensibly desirous of contributing to the perfection of them.
I formed to my self ideas of greater accuracy than had yet appeared, and

185
 P. VJRGILII AENEIDOS LIB. V. 214
300 Tum duo Trinacrii juvenes, Elymus, Panopefquc,
Affueti filvis, comites fenioris Acefhe.
Multi pr.eterea, quos fama obfcura recondit.
Aeneas quibus in mediis fie deinde locutus :
Accipite hrec animis Ia:tafque advertite mentes :
305 N emo ex hoc numero mihi non donatus abibit.
Gnofia bina dabo levato lucida ferro
Spicula, crelatamque argento ferre bipennem.
Omnibus hie erit unus honos. tres prremia primi
Accipient, flavaque caput neB:entur oliva.
3 10 Primus equum phaleris infignem vicl:or habeto.
Alter Amazoniam pharetram, plenamque fagittis
Threiciis; lato quam circum am plecl:itur auro
Balteus, et tereti fubneB:it fibula gemma.
Tertius Argolica hac ga!ea contentus abito.
315 H.ec ubi diB:a: locum capiunt, fignoque repente
Corripiunt fpatia audito, limenque relinquunt
Effufi, nimbo fimiles: fimul ultima fignant.
Primus abit, longeque ante omnia corpora Nifus
Emicat, et ventis et fulminis ocior alis.
320 Proximus huic, longo fed proximus intervallo,
lnfequitur Salius : fpatio poft deinde relicl:o
Tertius Euryalus.
Euryalumquc Elymus fequitut: quo deinde fub ipfo
Ecce volat, calcemque terit jam cake Diores,
325 Incumbens humero: fpatia et fi plura fuperfint;
Tran!eat elapfus prior, ambiguumve relinquat.
Jamque fere fpatio extremo, feffique fub ipfum
Finem adventabant; levi quum fanguine Nifus
Labitur infelix: c~fis ut forte juvencis
330 Fufus humum viridefque fuper madefccerat herbas.
Hie
Page from Bucoli&s and Georgia of Vi,gii, printed by John Baskerville, Birmingham,
I7j'J

186
have endeavoured to produce a Set of Types according to what I conceived
to be their true proportion.

The most papular types in England during this period were those
produced by William Caslon. Baskerville was at some pains to indicate
that he admired the Caslon designs, writing in the same preface:
Mr. Caslon ~ an Artist, to whom the Republic of Learning has great obli-
gations; his ingenuity has left afairer cory- for my emulation than any other
master. 1
In his great vari~ of Characters I intend not to follow him; the Roman and
Italic are all that I have hitherto attempted; if in these he has left rooin for
improvement, it is probably more owing to that variety which divided his
arcenrion, than ;to any other cause. 1 honor his merit, and only wish to derive
some small share of Reputation, from an Art. which proves accidentally to have
been the object, of our mutual pursuit.

Inadditioh to the design of a new type, Baskerville made a number

of other inno'(ations, all of which would today come under the heading
of quality control. Although his press, constructed of wood, followed
the standard model then employed by English printers, he invented
two important changes in its design. First, he made the bed and the
platen of machined brass, one inch thick. Next, instead of utilizing
a soft packini, which would have produced too deep an impression
of his types, Baskerville used a cympan of smooth vellum, packed
with superfine cloth. These improvements he discussed in a letter to a
contemporary printer: 'I have with great pains justified the plate for
the Platten a Stone [bed] on which it falls, so that they are as perfect
planes as it wip ever be my power to procure.... '
Since it w;as his scheme to produce perfect printing, Baskerville
also experimented with the formula for an ink that would not only
print blacker and more evenly than existing inks, but would also dry
faster, permitting the more rapid printing of the reverse side of the
sheet. T. C. Hansard, in his 1825 manual of printing, Typographia,
stated that the Baskerville ink formula was the first important improve-
ment in that ah in more than two hundred years.
Not satisfied with these upgradings of the printing process, Basker-
ville turned to the papermaker's craft. The paper for printing up to
his time was ],liid paper, in which the lines of the papermaker's mold
produced vertical ribs on the sheet. Baskerville attempted to obtain
a smoother p'age by experimenting with the mold. For a mold he
obtained a wo'ven screen, which produced a new kind of paper lacking
the laid lines;; it has since been called wove paper. The first use of it

187
was in the Ge01;gics, a book collected today both for its typography
and for its paper.
Finally, Baskerville built what was called a smoothing press, con-
sisting of two heated copper cylinders between which was fed each
sheet that issued from the press, after the ink had sufficiently dried.
This process of flattening the printed image gave the page a plate-
smooth finish. And to assure that the inking of all his pages would
appear uniform, Baskerville printed extra sheets in order to match
pages. Such perfectionism, needless to say, did not endear him to his
competitors.
Indeed, the combination of all these fearures in his method of
printing made Baskerville a most controversial figure among the pro-
fessional printers of his period: he was as roundly damned as he was
lavishly praised. In addition, the mixed reception by his colleagues to
his high-quality printing was exacerbated both by his amateur starus
and by his personal eccentricities, notable even in a period of deter-
minedly eccentric behavior.
Daniel Berkeley Updike mentions that, in the words of Macaulay,
Baskerville's first book 'went forth to astonish all the librarians of
Europe.' Indeed, it was on the Continent that Baskerville achieved
his greatest fame, both as a designer of type and as a printer. Pro-
fessionals and bibliophiles were alike amazed.
The noted French typefounder and inventor of the typographical
point, Pierre Simon_Foumier, writing in Manuel Typographique
(1764-66) said of Baskerville and his types: 'He has spared neither
pains nor expense to bring them to the utmost pitch of perfection.
The letters are cut with great daring and the italic is the best to be
found in any English foundry, but the roman is a little too wide.'
A young Italian compositor named Giambattista Bodoni, then
working at the Vatican printing office, became so excited about
the excellence of Baskerville's work that he determined to travel to
Birmingham to meet him. Even across the Atlantic, Benjamin Franklin,
the best-known American printer-who had bought six copies of the
Georgics- became a widely quoted admirer. Nevertheless, in England
Baskerville was vilified by his fellow printers.
Despite the many improvements John Baskerville introduced to
the art of printing, he did not profit by them. His standards of pro-
duction were so high that he was unable to compete with the com-
mercial printers for the work of the booksellers (booksellers acted
then as publishers), who complained that his prices were two to three

188
 Chrifl pra_1etl, for his apqflles : C H A P. XVIII. H, is bctrr,ycd by J11t!ns.
• At,oo they were. and thou ga'Vcfi them me; aud Lhcy O righteous Father. l the ,~orld h..,,h not Ann..
'J,S
_nor,nN•have kept thy word. known thee: but 1 1 han: l..110\~n thee~ ;mdDo~_isi
· _!!:._. 7 Now they have kn0:wn that all things wh.n- '" theft have known that thou hafi fcnt me. ...;,,..,__,
focvcr thou haft given nic arc of thee. 126 And I ha,·c declared unto them thy name.
8 For 1 have given; unto them the words and will declare ii: that the lm.-c n wherewith
I ,vhich thou gavcfi me ; i and they have received thou haft loved 1ue, may be in them. and I iu
them. 111 and have kn~t furcly that I came out them.
from thee. and they h,ave believed that thou C H A I'. XVIII.
didll fend me. ./udas ktrll]tth .Jcfio. 6 1"/rc olfun /,,IJ 111 tl,t uo,mt..
9 I pray for t~tcm: '" ~ pray ':lot for the world,
but for them which thou haft given me ; for they
1
JO l'der jnllttli ~,r .\lritddli en,.. 12 J"411J IJ laW I/Ht! lc,l
,mto Ati1u1.1 arul. C:1Mpl111J. 1-; /'d, ,.·,.,1,,u,d. 19 j'c{r11, ,.urmn/lll
are thine. /Jdort Cr11tp/1111: 2~ hil l!fY•llg,1'1101/ i.r/111c 1'1/rll,: 31i J:ic
to And all mine arc; thine. and O thine arc kingM111. 39 T1tt. Jt.11.11 njk Rnr(l/,lim la f.c £.t luij.•
mine; and I am glorifi.cd in them.
11 And now I am no i more in- the world, but
W HEN Jefus had fpokcn tlicfc '"ords. ~he
went forth with his <lifciple~ o,·cr b the
thcfc are in the world, and l come to thee. Holy brook Cedron. whcrc w:is 3. gar<lcn, into the
father, t•kcep through thi.ue own name thofc which he entered, .ind hi,;, difciplcs.
whom thou haft given rru:, q that they may be 'l And Ju<l.t"- alfo. which betrayed him, knc\,·
one, 'as we are. the place: ( for Jcfus oft-times rcfoncd thither
•~ While I was with them. in the world. s I with his difciplcs.
kept them in thy name;: thofe that thou gavcfi 3 "'Judas then, having received a band of m~n.
me I have kept. and I nOne of them is Jofi, " but and offic;ers from the chief priclls and Pharifc::cs,
the fon of perdition ; " lhat the fcripture might cometh thither with lanterns • .i.nd torches. :md
be fulfilled. weapon:!l.
13 And now come I to thc:c, and thefc things 4 Jcfus therefore, knm,•ing :ill thing:'i th:it
I fpeak in t!1c world, trac they might have my rhould come upnn him, went forth, and faid unto
joy fulfilled m thcmfclvcs. them, Whom feek re?
14 I have given thein thy word ; and 'f Ehc ; They anfwcred him, .Jcfus of Nazareth • .Jcfus
world hath hated them,; bc:caufc they arc not of faith unto them, I ani. lie. And Judas alfo which
the world, even as I am; not of the world. betrayed him. llood with them.
L.) I pray not that thou fhouldefi take them out 61 As foon then as he hadfaid unto them, I am
of the world, but I that thou fhouldcfi keep he. they went backward, and fell to the ground.
them from the evil. 7 Then alked· he them again, ¼"hom fcek ye?
16 They are not of the' world. cvc11 as I am not And they faid,Jcfus of Nazareth.
of the worl~ 8 Jcfus anfwcrcd. I hav~ told you tha, I am
17 a San8.ify them through thy truth = b thy he. Jf therefore ye fcck me. let thcfc go their
word is truth. way:
18 c. As thou hafi fent me into the world, even 9 That the faying might be folfill<d which he
fo have I aUO fcnt them' into the world. f~c. cof them which thou gavc:ft me have I
19 And d for their lakes l Jantlify myfclf. that Iofi none-.
they alfo might be • fantli6cd through the truth. 10 1 1Thcn Simon Peter, having a h,-ord, drew
20 Neither pray I fok° thcfc alone, but for it, and fmotc the high priefi's fcrvant, and cut
them alfo which lhall believe on me through off his right car. The fervant's name was Mal-
their word; chus,
21 eThat they all may be one; as r thou, Fa~ H Then fuid Jcfus unlo Peter, Put up thy
thcr, art in me:, and I in 1thcc, that they alfo may fi,.'Ord into the fhcath = ~ the cup which my Fa-
be one in us : that the 1world may believe that ther hath given me, fh::all I not <lrink it?
thou haft fent me. , 12 1 Then the band, and the captain and offi-
l:'l And the glory which thou gavcfi me, I cers of the Jews, tookjefw. and boun<l him,
have given them; 6 thali they may be one, even 13 And h led him away to i Annas firft (for he
as we arc one: was father-in-law to c;:i.iapha~. which was the
5'3 I in them, aud tliou in me, h that they f
high ricfi that fame year) . •
may be made perfefl in one. and that the world 14 Now Caiaphas was he which g-,,l\'C counfcl
may know that thou hafij fent me~ and hafi loved to the Jews, that it was expc:tlic:11t that one man
them. as thou haft loved! me. fhould die for d1e people.
~4 i Father. I will th.it they alfo whom thou 1.5 !. 1 And Simon Pctc:r IOllowcd Jcfus, and_/o
bafi given me be with ~c where I am ; that did another diCciplc. That difciple was known
they may behold my glo?'. which thou hall gi\·cn unto the high pricfr. aud went in withjcfus into
me: for thou lovcd!l me before the: fou11d:11ion the palace of the high pridl.
of the world. 16 "' But Peter fiood at the door without. Then
11'1ii:OC •· ,7. 'o:h. IJ, .... &: ,Ci. l• 1d,. J• 1!J. !:,;. 8. j~- "',o.•,.,.
"'va. 8. ch. 16. tt, "'ch. •l• !)• • Mault. 16. 36. !.luk. •-1. ]1.
luh1'l,~ "1S:lm. •~"J· •Lul.cn.39- •Mauh..16,-1;- Ma■ L
14- -ll• l11\c n, O• Alls 1. 16. c~h. 17. 11. r¼1tl1. 11ti.51. U"'I.: '-I•
41· Lu1.cn. ◄ !J,jO. a?.b«.h. -to.111. $.: 11fi._19. 4:. "S~lL"1l;l1. t<•.
i::. ~~c 1~: :,:~~~ ~:i,~J. :t~~: ~:nt;'. t:,tl!!f.~
., "41th, ~6. Gg,
1 1

II Q.

Page from The Holy Bible, printed by John Baskerville, Birmingham, 1763

189
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU
VWXY-Z abcdefghijklmnopqrstu
vwxyz .,-;:'!?$&fffiflffl 1234567890

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ
RSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijk
lmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
.,-;:'!?$&fffiflffifll
Baskerville (ATF)

times as much as they paid elsewhere for the same kind (though not
quality) of work. In 1762, writing to Franklin about his problems in
maintaining his printing office, Baskerville stated, •Had I no other .
dependence than typefounding and printing, I must starve.' But he
persevered, and a year later he produced his masterpiece, a folio Bible
printed for Cambridge University. Although indifferently received at
its appearance, -this edition today is considered one of the finest books
not just of the eighteenth century, but since William Caxton estab-
lished the first English press, five centuries ago.
His beautifitl Bible notwithstanding, Baskerville reached the
opinion that his hobby of printing was a luxury. He thus spent the
rest of his life attempting, fruitlessly, to dispose of his· punches and
matrices, along with the rest of his printing equipment. It was not
until 1779, four years after his death, that his widow was able to find
a purchaser, in the person of Caron de Beaumarchais, the French
dramatist, who wanted the Baskerville equipment for the printing of
an edition of the works of Voltaire. When this work-seventy vol-
umes in octavo and ninety-two volumes in duodecimo -was off the

190
 EA.RLY PAPERS
INTRODUCTION

LIE earli:est of the papers in Boswell's hand, which we find

to have been' preserved at Malahide Castle, takes us back to July
1754 when he was thirteen years of age,~a date four years be-
fore that of his first published letter to Temple. We catch for
the first time, if only for an instant, an authentic image of Bos-
well's boyhood: of Boswell in miniature. From that date the
present volume extends to August 6, 1763 when, leaving Dr.
Johnoon on tpe shore at Harwich, he set forth ori his Continental
adventure. This day is decisive for Boswell's destiny: the seal is
set on the ne}'V friendship with Johnson; the die is cast for a legal
career; and (he journey begun which will lead him to Paoli.
Up to his; departure from England the juvenility, which to
the last may be considered a distinguishing feature of Boswell's
character, is extremely marked. He is still more or less under
tutelage, and' uncertain as to his profession: it is not until a few ·
months before his departure that he renounces his desire ·to ob-
tain a commission in the Guards. His Continental studies and
travels, culminating in the Tour to Corsica, are an interlude
apart, from which he returns with habits of independence, a
knowledge o~ the world and some fixity of ambition. Thus we

Monotype and f~'undry Baskerville combined in page designed by Bruce Rogers

191
 Cefi le fujet de cette Medaille. On y voit Pallas, tenant un Javelot
prefi a lancer; le fleuve de l'Efcauld effraye s'appuye fur fon Urne. la
Legende, HtSPANIS TRANS SCALDIM PULSIS ET FUGATIS~
fignifie, /es Ejjagnols difaits & pou.ffez. att-del£i de [ E_fcatt!d. L'Exergue,
CoNDATUM ET MALBODIUM CAPTA. M. DC. XLIX. prife de
Conde &de Maubeztge. Io4,9.

Grandjean's Rumain du Roi, engraved between 1694 and 1714

press at Kehl, Germany, in 1789, Beaumarchais took the punches and

matrices to Paris, where he established a typefoundry.
His undertaking was short-lived, however, as he died just one
year later. It is not known how many times the Baskerville matrices
then changed hands before their eventual acquisition by the Paris
typefoundry Bertrand in 1893. Their exalted lineage during this period
was neither known nor suspected, but even had it been known, it is
doubtful that this would have made much difference to printers. For -
typographic tastes had undergone numerous changes over the nine-
teenth century, and the classic letter forms were neither as admired
nor as utilized as in earlier times. However, it was at this point, the
turn of the century, that the private-press movement was poised to
initiate its great regeneration of the art of the printed book.
The revival of the Baskerville types was prompted by the dis-
tinguished American typographer Bruce Rogers. While serving as
adviser to Cambridge University Press in 1917, Rogers discovered in
a Cambridge bookshop a specimen of a type that he instantly recog-
nized as Baskerville. After some typographic sleuthing, he traced the
letter to the Fonderie Bertrand in France. When he became printing
adviser to Harvard University Press in 1919, he recommended the
purchase and use there of the Baskerville types that had been cast
from the original matrices.
Thus the type again became known, and when the Lanston Mono-
type Corporation of London began its program of reviving a number
of classic roman types, Baskerville was one of the first to be considered.
It was cut in 1923. In 1926 the Stempel typefoundry in Frankfurt,
Germany, produced a copy, which was also used by the German
Linotype company a year later. Mergenthaler Linotype in England
and the United States brought out; a version in 1931. Intertype Easker-

192
Plate, probably engrave!:! by Louis Sirnonneau, as a model for the type cut by
Phillippe Grandjean

193
 ville, as well, became available that year. Book typographers rapidly
made the revival a resounding success, and they have continued to
favor the type.
Produced so generally, before long Baskerville became one of the
most wid~ly used types. Making its first appearance in the American
Institute of Graphic Arts' Fifty Books of the Year Exhibition in 1925,
it has been absent from the annual list just once (in 1927). In three
different years Baskerville was used in fifteen selections, and it is
now the type that has appeared most frequently in all the books ever
selected for exhibition.
In a most generous action, Charles Peignot, representing the Paris
typefoundry Debemy et Peignot, the last commercial owner of the
historic font, returned the original punches to English soil in 1953,
making them a gift to Cambridge University Press, which happily
accepted them as representatives of the English national heritage. ·
The modern recuttings of Baskerville discussed up to this point
have all been very close copies of the original, but there is another,
quite distinct Baskerville, also well known and deservedly popular,
but principally as a display type. In Europe this version is called the
Fry Baskerville, whereas in the United States it is more commonly
known as Foundry Baskerville.
John Baskerville, though reviled by most English printers in his
lifetime, after his death achieved admiration for his types among the
typefounders of England. In fact, even before he died ( in 1775), some
of Baskerville's compatriots were already imitating his work. In 1764
Joseph Fry ( a doctor) and William Pine established a typefoundry in
Bristol under the direction of the punchcutter Isaac Moore, whose
name was given to the firm. Moore then cut a copy of Baskerville's
letters, the first showing of it appearing in a 1766 specimen sheet of
the foundry. Two other founders of the period also emulated the
Baskerville design, Alexander Wilson in Glasgow and the Caslon
foundry in London. It is the Fry cutting, however, that has come
down to the present day, constantly changing ownership over the
years until becoming the property of the famed Birmingham firm
Stephenson, Blake & Company, which reissued the type in 1910. In
the United States the American Type Founders Company brought
out a copy of this face about 1915 in a cutting devised by Morris
Benton.
The basic difference between the original Baskerville and the Fry,
or Foundry, imitations is in the serif structure, which in the latter is

194
almost needle sharp, as opposed to the flat endings of the former. In
addition, the Foundry type has much greater contrast between the
thick and thili strokes.
Foundry Baskerville is at its best in the larger sizes, above r8-point.
It did not ree?:eive much attention in the United States until it became
a 'trend' typ,e in national advertising in the r95os. Since that time
it has seen frequent use, in this country mostly for display (to ac-
company a version made by American Monotype, which was never
cast larger than 36-point), and it has been adapted to the phototype-
setters. But c).espite its modern commercial affinity, Fry is nonethdess
a rendering pf the original, classic Baskerville, so beloved for book
composition'.

195
 BODON!

The numerous types that today bear the name of Giambattista Bodoni
are a tribute as much to his reputation as a printer as to his ability as
an engraver of punches. M05t of them, in fact, tend to be more in the .
style of Bodoni than exact copies of his letter forms. Nevertheless,
the faces that Bodoni cut represent the ultimate development of the
Roman letter form c1S expressed in printing types. Working in the late
eighteenth century, Bodoni carried forward the interpretations first
rendered by the Venetian punchcutters about 1470 and continued
through three hundred years of type design.
During this long period, the stamp of national characteristics had
gradually modified the original humanist style of Italy. Garamond in
France in the sixteenth century, the Dutch typefounders in the seven-
teenth, and William Caslon and John Baskerville in England in the
eighteenth century all contributed to the ideal of perfection that
Giambattista Bodoni held before him in his work. It was Baskerville,
in fact, who made the immediate impact on Bodoni, causing the
Italian to develop into the most widely admired printer of his time,
and to be considered as among the finest in the history of the craft.
Giambattista Bodoni was born in Saluzzo, Italy, in 1740. As a
boy, he learned his art from his printer father, in addition to develop-
ing skill in the cutting of woodblocks. At the age of eighteen he
became a compositor in the Vatican printing office, which possessed a
notable collection of types representing most of the world's languages
(assembled for the purpose of bringing the Word of God to the lands
then being colonized by the Europeans).
Bodoni studied the Oriental languages and was assigned the task
of cataloguing the exotics that had originally been cut two centuries
earlier by such noted French punchcutters as Granjon, Garamond, and
Le Be, and which by the eighteenth century were in a sad state of pi.
It was this assignment that excited Bodoni's interest in the cutting of

196
ABCDEFG
HIJKLMN
OPQRSTU
VWXYZ .

abcdefghijk
lmnopqrstu
vwxyz
1234567890
'
Bodoni (Monotypc 375)

-
197
 MANUALE
TIPOGRAFICO ·
DEL CAVALIERE

GIAMBATTISTA BODONI

VOLUME PRIMO.

PARMA

PRESSO LA VEDOVA

MDCCCXVIII

Title Page, Manual.e Tipografico, Parma, 1818

 punches, resulting in his designing several ornaments which received
favorable comments from his fellow Vatican compositors.
After serving in Rome for ten years, Bodoni decided to travel to
England in the hope of visiting John Baskerville, whose types and
books, despi~e the skepticism of his compatriots, were at the time
receiving the :hearty approval of European printers and bibliophiles.
But on the; very first leg of this joumey,.at home in Saluzw, Badoni
became ill. The trip was thus canceled. During his recovery he was
sought out by the duke of Panna, who - having founded a library and
an academy 6f art - wanted in addition to establish a fine printing
office in the ~anner of other royal houses in Europe. Bodoni accepted
the duke's offer to become its director, and in February 1768 he arrived
in Panna to ~egin the accumulation of materials necessary for estab-
lishing a press devoted to fine printing.
The typographical aspects of fine book printing had been in decline
during the e~rlier years of the eighteenth century. Bibliophiles then
were more ertthusiastic about a book's engraved illustrations and or-
naments than.the design of its text -the success of a book was judged
only by its decoration. With book buyers' attention thus focused,
printers had become lax about the selection of type and the quality of
presswork. Bqdoni was to change this approach radically.
For his first types he copied those cast by Pierre Simon Fournier,
the Parisian typefounder whose designs owe their inspiration to the
Romain du Ri.oi ordered by Louis XIV for the Imprimerie Royale in
1692. With th'.ese types Bodoni produced his first half-dozen books.
His admiratio,n for the Frenchman is well illustrated in the first speci-
men book he printed, in 1771, where he closely imitated the ornamental
title pages of Fournier's Mll,'J1,uel Typographique of 1764-66.
But the Italian printer soon broke away from his dependence on
Fournier. It is probable that he had also become aware of the books
then being printed in France by the Didots, whose designs competed
with Fourniers. In any case, Bodoni established his own foundry
and began to;cut punches for types that represented a considerable
departure from the ones he had been using.
Bodoni's ideas as a printer and punchcutter are best expressed in
his own words. In the preface to Manua/,e Tipografico-his magnificent
specimen bocpk, published posthumously by his widow- Bodoni
writes: 'It is proper here to offer the four different heads under which
it seems to me are derived the beauties of type, and the first of these
is regularity-conformity without ambiguity, variety without disso-

199
 ABCDEFGHIJKLM
NOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1234567890
Bokstiiverna far sitt sanna behag inte nar de skrivas i bradska
och med olust, inte heller nar de kommer till blott genom flit och moda,
utan forst da de skapas i karlek och gladje. Giambattista Bodoni

Bodoni (Bauer)

nance, and equality and symmetry without confusion. A second and

.not minor value is to be gained from sharpness and definition, neat-
ness and finish. From the perfection of the punches in the beginning
comes the polish of the well-cast letter which should shine like a
mirror on its face.'
D. B. Updike speaks of Bodoni as having two periods. In the first
Bodoni printed with old-style or transitional types, with the addition
of numerous ornaments; in the second he 'depended on his own type
designs and unadorned typography for his effects.' This latter, really
a nineteenth-century style, Updike deplored, calling it 'as official as
a coronation and as cold as the neighboring Alps!' He was not alone
in his criticism. William Morris believed Bodoni's types to be 'shatter-
ingly hideous.' It is nonetheless the later period of the printer of
Parma that represenrs his great contribution to typography, for it
represented a radical departure from earlier traditions.
Further treating his concept of design, Bodoni wrote of 'the
beautiful contrast as between light and shade which comes naturally
from any writing done with a well-cut pen held properly in the hand.'
The pen referred to__ is no doubt the chisel-pointed instrument of his
period, rather than the broad pen that had influenced the old-style

200
ROMAN STUDIO
DAILY WORKER
GUTENBERG
CALIFORNIA
PLEASURE
FRIENDS
Bodoni Title (Bauer)

types. Bodoni thus created in his letters the crisp contrasts of the
engraving burin, reflecting a style that was artistically prevalent.
The forty-five years that Giambattista Bodoni spent as director of
the Duke of Panpa's Stamperia Reale established him as one of the
great printers of all time. For Bodoni indeed lived up to his statement
'Beauty is founded on harmony, subordinate to the critique of reason.'

201
 Bodoni's patron certainly had reason to congratulate himself on the
founding of a royal press and tlie selection ofits director, who brought
worldwide fame to Parma. In response to demand, after 1790 the Duke
allowed Bodoni to accept commissions from outside Italy, affording
the printer the opportunity to express himself in the typography of
other languages, such as German, English, French, and Russian.
The measure of Bodoni's independence, as the duke's printer,
from the. usual economic strictures of the printing business may be
observed from the anecdote told of the French writer Stendhal, who
visited Parma and was enchanted with Bodoni's printing. Upon being
asked by the printer which of several French Bodoni books he pre-
ferred, Stendhal responded that they seemed equally beautiful. 'Ah,
Monsieur,' said Bodoni, 'you don't see the title of the Boileau?' The
writer confessed that he could see nothing finer in that particular title
than the others, at which the printer cried out, 'Ah, Monsieur!
Boileau-Despreaux in one single line of capitals! I spent six months
before I could decide upon exactly that type.'
Indeed Bodoni did go to great lengths with his typography, some-
. times cutting several variations of one size just to fit the copy of
a particular title page. An inventory of this output, made in 1840,
showed 25,735 punches and 50,994 matrices, an incredible total for
one printer when it took upward of four hours to engrave a steel
punch. Unquestionably, Bodoni received some assistance in this
monumental undertaking, but he was frequently angered when this
extraordinary capacity fur industry was questioned.
It may be noted that although Bodoni's reputation as a printer
and type designer is secure, his standing as a scholarly printer has
long been in doubt. This is primarily owing to careless proofreading,
and during his lifetime he was criticized, quite logically, on this point.
The Bodoni types were widely copied during the early years of
the nineteenth century while the printer was still alive, but most of
the imitations were less inspired and more mechanically rigid than
the originals. For example, whereas the Bodoni serif in the capitals
was of the same weight as the thin stroke but joined with a very slight
fillet (bracket) and the lowercase serifs were slightly concave, copies
cut by his French rivals, the Didots, featured straight-edged serifs
that were unbracketed.
One of the earliest types of the period to imitate the Bodoni letter
was cut about 1800 by Justus Erich Walbaum in Germany; a recent
writer has called Walbaum's roman 'one of the most important vehicles

202
 ARIEL
What woµld my potent master? here I am.
PROSPERO
Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service
Did wort~ily perform: and I must use you
In such another trick: go, bring the rabble.;
(O'er wh<j>m I give thee power) here, to this place:
Incite them to quick motion, for I must
Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple
Some va1ity of mine art: it is my promise,
And they expect it from me.
ARIEL
Presently?
PROSPERO
Ay: with :a twink.
ARIEL
Before Y<?U can say come'' and ' go,"
44 4

And breathe twice; and cry 4'so, so' 4 •••

Each one, tripping on his toe,
Will be qere with mop and mow ....
Do you love me, master? no?
PROSPERO
Dearly, my delicate Ariel ... Do not approach,
Till thou1 dost hear me call.
n3

Page from The'Tempest, printed at the Officina Bodoni, 1924

.203
 SUMMER. 838 91

The mighty *Orellana.Scarce the Muse

Dares stretch her wing o'er this enormous mass
Of rushing water; scarce she dares attempt
The sea-like Plata; to whose dread expanse,
Continuous depth and wond'rous length of course,
Our floods are rills. With unabated force,
In silent dignity they sweep along,
And traverse realms unknown, and blooming wilds,
And fruitful deserts, worlds of solitude,
Where the sun smiles, and seasons teem in vain,
Unseen, and unenjoy'd. Forsaking these,
O'er peopled plains they far-diffusive flow,
And many a nation feed, and circle safe
In their soft bosom, many a happy isle;
The seat of blameless Pan, yet undisturb'd
By christian crimes and Europe's cruel sons.
Thus pouring on they proudly seek the deep,
Whose vanquish' d tide recoiling from the shock,
Yields to this liquid weight of half the globe ;
And Ocean tremhles for his green domain.
BuT what avails this wond'rous waste of wealth?
This gay profusion of luxurious bliss?

-----------------------
• The river of the Ama~ons.
u.

Page from Gray's Complete Poems, printed by Badoni, Parma, 1793

204
 of typographic expression in the German language during the 19th
century.' In addition, the English type designed in 1791 by William
Martin for the $hakspeare Press of William Bulmer has definite
Bodoni characteristics, although still maintaining some of the warmth
of the transitiona,1 style.
Following Bddoni's death in 1813, his widow continued the print-
ing office, prodtjcing the great two-volume Manuale Tipografico in
1818. This work is; rightly considered among the finest specimen books
ever produced. ni. 1842 the Bodoni punches and matrices were sold
and placed in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma; though the library
was bombed in 1~44, the punches and matrices had fortunately already
been moved to a ~onastery south of the city.
In the twentit:;th century, interest in the Bodoni type_s was renewed
with a cutting issued by the Italian foundry Nebiolo in 1901. But
probably the most important revivai of the style was that of Morris
Benton for the American Type Founders in 19n. Henry L. Bullen,
the printing histprian who was ATF's librarian, wrote that Benton
had received guidance from Italian sources in his recutting. It is
obvious, however, that Benton did not attempt an exact copy of the
original Bodoni type, as his version is closer in spirit to the Didot
letters; this is particularly noticeable in the unbracketed serifs.
Undoubtedly~ the ATF Bodoni influenced subsequent copies
produced by the .composing-machine manufacturers. The European
foundries also prpduced copies, but they too were inclined to freely
adapt the Bodoni idea of high contrast without following through
on his details of serif structure.
In 1923, when 9iovanni Mardersteig established the Officina Bodoni
in Switzerland, hf received permission from the Italian authorities to
recast some of the original Bodoni matrices. When he moved his
private press to Verona in 1927, Mardersteig turned out printing in
the spirit of Bodpni's. Later, however, Dr. Mardersteig broke away
from his dependep.ce on Bodoni types, designing faces in the fifteenth-
century traditioniof Italian letter forms, an era to which he was more
sympathetic.
Despite his later printing, Mardersteig's original use of Bodoni
was instrumental1 in awakening further interest in the Parma master
printer, which n;sulted in several new cuttings of Bodoni type. Of
these the versioJi). made available by the Bauer Type Foundry of
Frankfurt seems to come closest to the feeling of the original and has
thus long been admired.

205
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-
206
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of phorotypesetting

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Die Buchpruckerei ist eine so edle und niitzliche Kunst, da.B man hei denen,
l

welche sie ausiiben, einen gewissen Grad von Kultur vorausset.zen sollte.
JOHANN FRIEDRICH UNGER

Didot (Ludwig & Mayer)

207
 The standard series of weights in Bodoni includes the variants
book, regular, and bold. Only one supplier (Bauer) has ventured into
an extra-bold version, which is surprising, since the type lends itself
better than most romans to changes in weight without loss of character.
There are, in addition, a number of other types that trade on the
Bodoni name, including Ultra Bodoni and Poster Bodoni, but these
are revivals of nineteenth-century modifications and bear no relation
to the prototype.
It is difficult to imagine how advertisers and commercial printers
could get along today without Bodoni. It has been used for more dis-
play typography than any design other than sans seri£ It is also beloved
by newspapers: in most American two-paper cities, one will feature
Bodoni heads and the other sans serifs. As a book type it continues to
fare quite well, particularly in the weight called Bodoni Book.
Although Giambattista Bodoni would probably not willingly claim
fatherhood to most of the types currently bearing his name, he would
certainly find no fault in still being a household word in the printer's
craft two centuries after he began his vericure in Parma.

208
 BULMER

Type designers, po matter how successful in their art, are all too
frequently doom~d to a loss of identity in the larger world of print
where they have ~o compete for the limelight with typographers and
graphic artists. Certainly, the general reader is seldom aware of the
creator of a typeface, or even of the type itself, no matter how well
(or perhaps becaufe of how well) it performs its function of conveying
the author's message. It doesn't appear that the status of the type
designer will change, either, even in the printing of books. There is
in fact but a sing!e American publisher who has consistently given
credit to the type designer: Alfred A. Knopf, by the simple device of
including 'A Note,on the Type' as a fixture in every book he publishes -
upholding the venerable tradition of the colophon - informs the reader
about the origins' of printing types. And David Godine follows in
this tradition.
Many of the great classic 'types, of ~curse, do bear the names
of their creators - Caslon, Baskerville, Badoni - but even these are
known, for the most part, only to printers.
A punchcutter named William Martin is a case in point. He
produced a type in 1790 for the English printer William Bulmer
that was lavishly rraised in its own time and after being recur in the
1920s again becani;e an established favorite. Martin's type was aided
immeasurably in its original popularity by being the property of one
of the great printers of his period, but there is not much doubt that
the type itself contributed largely to the esteem in which it was held.
As is often the 95e, however, the type created by Martin is now
known as Bulmer., Be that as it may, twentieth-century printers are
fortunate to have it under any name.
With few exceptions, English printing up to the time of John
Baskerville was not particularly distinguished. Even after the intro-
duction of Caslon:ls fine type about 1720, it remained for Baskerville

209
 to take the lead in the 1750s by improving the quality of the entire•..
printed product-type, paper, and ink-and, by implication, the press.
Whereas the progress achieved by Baskerville, as we have seen,
was duly noted and made use of on the Continent, it was not until '
after his death·in 1775 that English printing generally improved. This
was primarily through the accomplishments of three great person-
alities: the publisher John Bell and two printe~, Thomas Bensley and
William Bulmer, the three B's of English printing at that time.
William Bulmer, born in 1766, cam~~ London from Newcastle··
and worked in Bell's printing office before being asked by George ·
Nicol, bookseller to King George III, to aid him in the establishment •
of a press for the purpose of producing a new edition of Shakespeare. ,
Nicol was a member of a group of artists who had proposed a new
'national' edition of the poet, to be illustrated by British artists and
printed in a matter fitting to the hallo"".ed subject. As Nicol was the
most knowledgeable in the group about printing, he was charged
with selecting the printer.
Bulmer was Nicol's choice. In an advenisement entitled 'A Cata-
logue of the Pictures,' printed to promote the project, Nicol wrote:
'The Printing is at present under the direction of a Gentleman who
had already contributed much to the improvement of his profession,
and who will now have the opportunity of showing the World that
we can print as well in England, it is hoped, as they do in Parma,
Paris, or Madrid.'
The project was undertaken in 1790, the new firm W. Bulmer &
Company, The Shakspeare Printing Office, having been established
for the purpose. (Note the spelling of Shakespeare, which was followed
by Bulmer throughout his career.) The type for the press was cut by
William Martin, whose brother Robert had been apprenticed by
Baskerville and later was foreman of Baskerville's printing office
in Birmingham. It is probable that William, too, had learned punch-
cutting in Baskerville's foundry.
The Shakespeare began coming off the press in 1791, but Bulmer
then became involved in numerous other projects. He was anxious to
'raise the Art of Printing from the neglected state in which it had
long been suffered to continue; as he forthrightly stated in the preface
to his splendidly printed Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell of 1795. His
recognition of the importance of a fine type in his scheme was indi-
cated when he wrote: 'The whole of the Types with which this work
has been printed are executed by Mr. William Martin . . . a very

210
 POEMS
BY

GOLDSMI'rH
AND

PARNELL.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY W. BULMER AND CO.

~~sprare }0tinting ®ffice,

CLEVEL.-1.ND-ROW.

1795.

Tttle page, Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell, printed by William Bulmer, London, 1795

2II
 ADVERTISEMENT

1~o raise the Art of Printing in this country

from the neglected state in which it had long
been suffered to continue, and to remove the
opprobrium which had but too justly been at-
tached to the late productions of the English
press, much has been done within the last few
years; and the warm emulation which has dis-
covered itselfamongst the Printers of the present
day, as well in the remote parts of the kingdon1
as in the metropolis, has been highly patronized
by the public in general. The present volume,
in addition to the SttAKSPEARE, the MILTON,
and many other valuable works of elegance,
which have already been given to the world,
through the medium of the Shakspeare Press,
are particularly meant to combine the various

Advertisement from Poems of Goldsmith Rnd PRrnell

212
 THE

DRAMATIC WORKS

OF

SHAKSPEARE.
REVISED

13r GEORGE STEEVENS.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY W. BULMER AND CO,

.f,{lakgpeare Ptintings@ff'icc,
FOR JOHN A:ND JOSIAH BOYDELL, AND GEORGE NICOL;
From the Types of W. Martin.

1791.

Tttle page of Bulmer's edition of Shakespeare, London, 1791

213
 The Shakspeare Printing Office owes its
origin to the publication of' that great National
Edition ~f the Works ef Shakspeare, which you
are now, so much to the honour ef our country,
happily conducting toward its completion; I

Original version of the italic cut for the Shakespeare Press by William Martin

ingenious young artist who is at this time forming a Foundry, by

which he will shortly be enabled to offer to the world a Specimen of
Types, that will, in a very eminent degree, unite utility, elegance, ancf
beauty.... '
Factors other than an outstanding font of types also contributed
to Bulrner's success as a printer. A boyhood friend from his New-
castle apprenticeship was Thomas Bewick, the most famous of all
English wood engravers, who was prevailed upon to illustrate many
of Bulmer's titles. In turn, Bewick could congratulate himself on
having so competent a printer. The technique that Bewick employed
in making his engravings demanded a high degree of skill for their
reproduction, and this he received from Bulmer. Collectors of Bewick
cite the Goldsmith-Parnell volume as the best printed of the engravings
during Bewick's lifetime, although the artist was seldom happy with
the printing of his blocks. It may be added here that Bulmer was also
one of the first fine printers to adopt the improved iron press of Lord
Stanhope when it became available after 1800. The sturdy frame of
this press was a marked advance over the earlier wooden presses, for
its metal structure permitted greater precision in the printed image.
An examination of the type that William Martin cut will disclose
two strong influences. First, there is the relationship to Baskerville's
design, which, while in the tradition of Caslon, had exemplified those
characteristics (refined serifs and greater contrast of srroke) that were
to result in the type of Giambattista Badoni of Parma some thirty
years later. Second, by the last decade of the eighteenth century the

214
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Bulmer (Monotype)

types of Bodpni were becoming extremely popular ( as were those

of the Didots in France); in incorporating these styles Martin was
obviously following the instructions of George Nicol, who had adver-
. tised that the hew type would employ 'approved models in imitation
of the sharp and fine letters used by the French and Italian printers.'
These Co~tinental faces, with their strong vertical stress and hair-
line serifs, were the forerunners of the style now called modern. They
were so successful that the old-style types on which printers had
depended for'almost three hundred years became virtually obsolere.
But rather than creating just another modern, Martin attempted to
bridge the gap between Baskerville ·and Bodoni-Didot, and he was
thus more successful than most of his fellow punchcutters who tried
to mix the oldtstyle forms with the modern adaptations.
The Bulmer type designed by Martin is more condensed than
Baskerville and has a greater contrast of stroke. The serifs are slightly
bracketed, in the manner of the old style, so that although the overall
appearance of; the design favors Bodoni in its color on the page, it
avoids the mechanical starkness of the Bodoni-Didot forms. Typo-
graphic historians have praised Martin's type. Even Updi.ke, who had
little enthusiasm for the modern styles, wrote of the Bulmer types
that 'they were very splendid of their kind.'
After Bulmer's death in 1830, English printing suffered a general
deterioration,. owing largely to the Industrial Revolution whose
mechanizing influence put an end to many fine crafts. An exception is
the printing of the Whittinghams, who revived Caston about 1840,
' -
REFRESHED
Splendid Plays
QUIET FIELDS
Delightful Grove
MUSIC STUDIOS
Proper Atmosphere
Bulmer (ATF)

and of the publisher Charles Pickering. It was not, however, until the
closing years of the nineteenth century, with William Morris's revival
effort, that attention again turned to the earlier historic types (although
Morris himself would in all probability have rejected Bulmer for being
too dose in spirit to the Bodoni types which he detested).
It remained for Morris Benton, of the American Type Founders

-
216
Company, to return the Martin design to popularity. Possibly inspired
by the program of the English Monotype firm in its revival of classic
types during the twenties-and certainly influenced by ATFs librarian,
the typographic historian Henry Lewis Bullen-Benton sought out
the books printediby William Bulmer.
Naming this r:ecutting after the printer who had used the type,
rather than its de:signer, ATF issued Bulmer in 1928. The type met
with immediate acclaim. During the 1930s it was axiomatic that if a
book was hand-sec in Bulmer it would make the Fifty Books of the
Year Exhibition. Later the type became available for machine-casting
on the Monotype in a version based on the Benton copy. It was issued
for the linecasting;machine in 1953 by the Intertypc Corporation.
I
In the United States Bulmer is today most frequently employed as
a display type rather than for continuous reading. When it is used in
book printing, it is primarily for title pages and chapter headings,
particularly for volumes composed in Baskerville. Bulmer has, how-
ever, turned up as, the text type for more than thirty-five works in the
Fifty Books show since 1934.
Bulmer has no'l"' been converted to film and has also been digitized
for CRT typesetting. It is to be hoped that this fine old type will
be around for a long time. Apart from its beauty, its association with
a great period in English printing-specifically, with the names of
William Bulmer and Thomas Bewick- is one that can only inspire
the designer who turns to it.

217
 BELL

The World newspaper of London contained on June 9, 1787, the

following advertisement for the publication of a book entitled The
Way to Keep Him:
J. Bell flatters himself that he will be able to render this the most perfect and
in every respect the most beautiful book, that was ever printed in any country.
He presumes to promise this excellence from a confidence in the supremacy
of his lerrer foundry which he is now establishing at his own premises and
under his own direction. He is at present casting a new type for the purpose
on improved principles; and he hopes it will challenge the arrention of the
curious and the judicious.
John Bell, English publisher and bookseller, had apparently de-
cided to add the craft of typefounding to his many accomplishments.
He was to give up the venture just two years later, but not before
producing a highly notable typeface, one that continued the tradition
of fine English types begun in 1720 by William Caslon and later ex-
tended by John Baskerville.
In 1788 Bell announced the opening of'Bell's British Letter Foundry'
in 'an address to the world' in his second specimen sheet. Among his
reasons for establishing a typefoundry was that the art of printing
was then held in low esteem in England, whereas 'France, Spain,
Italy, and Germany are contending for the honours of the Press, under
the sanction and encouragement of their respective Sovereigns.'
It is evident that the competition of Continental printers was also
disturbing to other English practitioners of this period. William
Bulmer, a contemporary of Bell's, wrote in a similar vein in the
introduction to one of his books, in which he offered to 'raise the Art
of Printing in th<; country from the neglected state in which it had
long been suffered to continue .... ' The contributions of Baskerville
notwithstanding, the English printing trade had permitted the Conti-
nental printers to become the typographic innovators and pace setters.
The new type that John Bell was promoting stemmed from the

218
 JOHN BELL

Much admired, these types have presented

something of a mystery. Prior to 1926 they
were thought to have survived only in this
country,, as two privately owned 14 point
fonts of, unknown origin. It awaited dis-
covery 0f a type specimen of 17 88 in the
National Library, Pans, to trace them to the
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219
publisher's own advanced ideas on type design. The final result,
however, undoubtedly owed a good deal to the very considerable
skills of the punchcutter whom Bell had commissioned for the cutting
of the type - Richard Austin.
Richard Austin was a talented engraver in wood and metal. This
first essay into the creation of a printing type for Bell resulted in a
letter of advanced design, particularly in the sharpness of the serifs.
Following his association with Bell's British Letter Foundry, Austin
continued his career as a punchcutter for both his own and other
foundries. Over his lifetime he produced a number of excellent types,
including a roman for the Edinburgh foundry of William Miller about
1809 - a letter that was to be most influential in the development of
the type that came to be called Scotch Roman.
The essential changes in the Bell type from the pure old-style form
were the narrower set width and the more precise serif structure.
These elements, along with the stronger contrast of stroke and vertical
stress in the round letters, resulted in a type that represented a con-
siderable departure from the romans of the period.
Unforrunately, however, Bell's type emerged at a most inopporrune
period for a letter containing features of the old-style types. The new
trend in letter forms - as embodied first in the fonts of France's Firmin
Ambroise Didot in 1784, then in those ofltaly's Giambattista Bodoni
about 1787 - had begun to influence both typefounders and printers
throughout Europe, including England. By the end of the century,
these so-called modern types were in such demand that typefounders
were producing them in quantity, while curtailing their manufacture
of old styles.
Thus, John Bell's design, excellent though it was, enjoyed but
a short life before it gave way to such modern excesses as Robert
Thorne's Great Primer No. 1 and similar blown-up romans by Euro-
pean typefounders. The modernized roman also became immensely
popular in the United States, where after 1800 it was frequently
imitated by newly established American typefoundries.
Nevertheless, though there is little evidence of English printers'
turning to the Bell type with any degree of enthusiasm, in the United
States it was copied as early as 1792. Indeed, the Boston firm of
Belknap & Hall published a newspaper, The American Apollo, that
was an undisguised imitation of the periodicals from Bell's Apollo
Press; this publication followed John Bell's typographic style in every
detail. Belknap & Hall also produced a virtual facsimile of the entire

220
 JOHN BELL,
Of the BRITISH LIBRARY, Strand, London,
being engaged in the establishment of
A NEW
PRINTING LETTER FOUNDRY,
He begs leave to present the Public with a
SPECIMEN of thejirft
SET OF TYPES
which have been completed under his directions
By William Coleman, Regulator,
And Richard Austin, Punch-Cutter.
PRINTERS may be supplied at present with
Types agteeable to this Specimen, and after-
wards with every other sort which shall be com-
pleted by Ji. BELL,however superior they may be,
on terms usually observed by other Founders.
May, I 788.

Announcement of the establishment of John Bell's Letter Foundry, 1788

text of Belfs The British Album, to the extent of using Bell's press-
rnark, though with a change of initials. Another early use of Bell·
in the United Stat~ was in the almanacs published in Washington,
Pennsvlvania, for the vears 1796 and 1797, each of which showed the
Engli;h face in its titl; page. In addition, the 1797 edition displayed a
typographic bordeuthat had been cast at Bell's British Letter Foundry.
Perhaps appropriately- given the original's warmer reception in
America than in England (where it was all too quickly forgotten after
18oo) - the revival of Bell in our time was partially due to the efforts
of a keen and discerning American book publisher, Henry 0. Hough-

221
 ton. An ambitious program of book printing that Houghton wished
to inaugurate at the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
was his prime reason for a voyage to England in 1864. It was during
this visit that he purchased types cast from Bell's matrices, which
were then in the possession of the Birmingham foundry Stephenson,
Blake & Company.
The Bell fonts were subsequently listed in the catalogue of the
Riverside Press - where they were named English Copperplate - but
they were little used, except for books written by the Boston author
Martin Brimmer. It happened, however, that two young typographers
who were later to become world-famous received their initial contact
with book production at Riverside: Daniel Berkeley Updike, em-
ployed there from 1880 to 1893, and Bruce Rogers, employed from
1896 to 1912. Both of these influential figures in printing therefore
became acquainted with the Bell fonts early in their careers.
Rogers so admired the face that he purchased the 14-point size
and began to experiment with it in his home, the final result being
the setting of two text pages and the title page of a translation of the
Georgics. In 1899 these samples were selected for showing at the Arts
and Crafts Exhibition in Boston (although the book was not published
until 1904). Rogers renamed the face Brimmer, since it was through
this author's books that he had learned of it. Following the experimental
use of Brimmer, Rogers selected it for his second Riverside Press book,
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, published in 1900. Thereafter, he
employed the face for at least one book a year in the famous Riverside
Editions, a series that initiated his reputation as a great designer.
Meanwhile, Updike had embarked on his career at his own Merry-
mount Press, an undertaking that established him as the finest American
printer of his time. Intrigued by the so-called English Copperplate/
Brimmer type, he traced its source to Stephenson, Blake, and in 1903
purchased a large casting for Merrymount, renaming the face Mount-
joye. He first used it in a privately printed book entitled Saudades, by
Frances Dabney. The following year Updike selected the font for a
fourteen-volume edition of the Bible printed for the R.H. Hinkley
Company of Boston. During the next thirty years, Updike produced
seventy-six titles in Mountjoye at his famed Boston press.
So little was recalled in England of the original Bell type that
when in 1887 the English typefounder Talbot Baines Reed wrote his
authoritative text, A History of the Old English Letter Foundries, the
book contained not a word of information on it. In 1952, when A. F.

222
 ENGLISH ROMAN.
Quo~ue tandem abutere, Catilina, patien-
tiano§ira? quamcliu nos etiam furor i§le tuus
eludet? quern ad finem sese effrenatajafubit
audacia? nihilne te no8:urnum pr..esidium
palatii~ nihil urbis vigili..e, nihil timor populi,
nihil consensus bonorum omnium, nihil hie
munitissimus habencli senatus locus, nihil ho-
rum ora vultusque moverunt? patere tua con
silia non sentis? con§irictam jam omnum ho-
rum c,onscientia teneri conjurationem tuam
non vides? quid proxima, quid superiore,noc-
te eg~ris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid
consilii ceperis, quern no§lrum ignorare ar-
bitr~? 0 tempera, o mores! Senatus hoc
intelligit, consul viclit: hie tamen vivit. vivit?
imo vero etiam in senatum venit : fit pub-
lici consilii particeps: notat & designat ocu-
lis ad uedem unumquemque no§irum. Nos
autem viri fortes satisfacere reipub~ videmur,
si i§lius furorem ac tela vitemus. Ad mortem
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Specimen .of Bell type, 1788

Johnson revised this monumental work, he added an account of Bell's

contributions.
Meanwhile, in 1931 the type had finally become available to printers
generally. Its revival was due to the efforts of Stanley Morison.

223
 It was during the 1920s that England's Stanley Morison had/
emerged as an important typographic scholar. His career dated froffi~:
1913, when he wrote an article for The Imprint, an English typo~'.:
graphical periodical that had been founded for the redoubtable pur, 1
pose of benefiting 'the printing and allied trades, to afford a friendly.
medium of intercommunication, and to show the place for craftsman-.··
ship in the printing trade.'
Following the First World War, Morison took up the practice of
typography. In 1922 he was appointed adviser to the Lanston Monotype
Corporation of London. Here he was allowed full scope for his varied_·
talents, his principal contribution being the selection of a number of'
historic types for the innovative program of revivals to be cut for the··
Monotype machine.
It was by accident that Morison came to add John Bell's type to-··
the Monotype list. In 1926, while doing research at the Bibliotheque:
Nationale in Paris, Morison happened upon the first specimen of.
Bell's foundry, no copy of which was then known in England. Morison,i
immediately recognized the type both through its use in the United•
States by Updike and Rogers and from books produced by William:
Bulmer, a· contemporary of Bell's. Morison, inspired by his discovery,.
was prompred to the investigations that resulted in the important. ,
monograph published in 1930 which returned the name of John Bell
to its proper place in the pantheon of English printers.
The reason for the long-term neglect suffered by the original ~ell •
type was the ever-changing typographic taste during the nineteenth
century- a factor that has continued to plague even distinguished
designs up to the present: many a type has gathered dust in printers'
cases because fashion has passed it by. In the instance of Bell, the .
competition from the more 'modern' Vincent Figgins, who established
his foundry in 1792, and Robert Thorne, who began in 1794, was
simply too strong. In addition, the growing demand for commercial
(or, as the English term them, jobbing) types turned interest away
from book types in general, no matter how fine.
Stanley Morison considered Bell to be in fact of the modern classifi-
cation. Type classification, however, is frequently less than precise,
and the term modern is a rather general one in regard to letter forms.
Most typographers today consider the types of Didot and of Bodoni,
with their unbracketed serifs (particularly noticeable in Didot, less so
in the original types of Bodoni), as representative of modern. If
such is the case, then truly Bell is more a faithful rendition of the

224
::'-----------------~---
AN

ALMANACK
FOR

:z THE YEAR 1796,

BEING

3 Bijfextile; or Leap Year:

CONTAINING

Theuf~ ASTRONOMICAL CALCULATIONS, a brief

Account of the UNITED STATES, abftraa from the
CoNSTI~TION ofPENNSYLVANIA,CouRTs ofLAw,
Rates of PpsTAGE throughout the UNION, LISTS of
the CONGRESS of the UNITED STATES, and of the
OFFICERs of the FEDERAL GovERNMENT1 &c. &c.

ALSO,

Plain an~ eafy Rules for the attainment and prefervation

of HEALTH, curious Receipts, Anecdotes, Poetzy, a re-
markable inllance of AH'eclion between Brutes, Aphorifms
on Man, an~ feveral ufeful Tables of Intereft, Coins, &c.

WASHINGTON:

PRINTED:BY COLEIUCK, HUNTER & BEAUMONT,

PRINTERS AND BOOKSBLLBRS.

1 79S·

Use of Bell type in the United States., 1795

225
 TO LISBON
so that his necessity, as his pillager well under-
§tood, was absolute. Again, many others whose
indignation will not submit to such plunder, are
forced to refuse the assistance, tho' they are of-
.ten great sufferers by so doing. On the latter
side, the lowe§t of the people are encouraged
in laziness and idleness ; while they live by a
twentieth part of the labour that ought to main-
tain them, which is diametricallyoppositetothe
intere§t of the public; for that requires a great
deal to be done, not to be paid, for a little. And
moreover, they are confirm'd in habits of ex-
action, and are taught to consider the distresses
of their superiors as their own fair emolument.
But enough of this matter, of which I at fir§t
intended onlyto convey a hint to thosewhoare
alonecapableof applyingthe remedy, tho'they
are the la§t to whom the notice of those evils
would occur, without some such monitor as my-
self, who am forced to travel about the world in
the form of a passenger. !cannot but say!heart-
ily wish our governors would attentively con-
sider this method of fixing the price of labour,
and by that means of compelling the poor to
work, since the due execution of such powers
will, I apprehend, be found the true and only
[ 125 ]

Use of Brimmer type by Bruce Rogers in The Jqurna! of a V,ry~e ro Lisbon, Riverside
Press, 1902

226
 CHAPTER X
..____...._..___

THE HISTORY OF THE

PRINTING PRESS
BY

DAVID T. POTTINGER

TI the composing room of a modern

printing_. Gutenberg would find
himself almost at home; his keen mind
proved by Isaac Adams of Boston in 1880
and 1886. Meanwhile Friedrich Konig, a
German working in London, invented a flat-
would doubtless lead him to comprehend at bed and cylinder press in 1812-1818. With
once what the compositors and the correo- the introduction of the cylinder the way was
tors were about.' In the pressroom, on the open for all the refinements of detail that
other hand, he would find nothing familiar. have resulted in the machines ofour own day.
Whereas the c:astptg and setting of type, not
to mention the idea of type itself; have re- The Fift,eenth arui Sixteenth
mained essentially the same as in the earlieot
days, the metho4,s and principles by which
Centuries
ink is transferred from the printing surface WHAT the first printing press looked like
to the sheet of paper have been utterly revo- is, in the absence of contemporary descrip-
lutionized. Gutehberg' s presses, according tion and of all relics, a matter of conjecture;
to a very conseri"ative estimate, tum.ed out and even its much later successors were dis-
not more than five hundred sheets in a twelve- missed with only a crude sketch by Moxon,
hour day, an a=implishment that is equaled the first English writer on the printer's trade.
in about as many seconds by a newspaper Roben Hoe, who knew a vast deal about
perfecting press 1of our time. The turning modern presses at least,.thought that it was
course
points in the of this development were a simple affair embodying the mechanical
so salient as to :be easily recognized. The principle found in the old cheese and linen
first significant 1mprovemerits have tradi- presses ordinarily seen in the houses of me-
tionally been associated with Willem Jan- dia,val times. Karl Dieterich, asserts, with
szoon Blaeu of Amsterdam and the year 1620. much more probability, that the model for it
After another h</o centuries, Earl Stanhope was the papennaker•s press, with the funda-
constructed an all-iron press with a series of mental difference that the platen was made
levers to increruie the action of the screw, to come down with less pressure and with
and in 1816 Geoi-ge Clymer of Philadelphia greater steadiness. He has calculated that
abandoned the Jse of a screw entirely. In the platen probably measured about nineteen-
1822 Daniel Treadwell of Boston made the and-a-halfby fourteen inches, that the diame-
first power-driven press of the bed-and-- ter of its wooden screw was eight inches, and
platen type, an ~vention that was much im- that as in all later presses up to the end of
323

Bell types as shol/ffi in The Dolphin, Vol. III, de5igned by Carl Purington Rollins,
1938 .

transitional styles, which borrow from both old-style and modern

forms, than ~t is a modem type. Certainly the design is closer to
Baskerville, w,hich is widely recognized as a transitional form, than to
the so-called dassic romans ofBodoni and Didot.
 Whatever its classification, Bell deservedly became a popular type
for book composition immediately after its revival by the English
Monorype firm in 1931. (Stephenson, Blake had fortunately retained
the punches and-matrices of the original, in the pica size, and this is
what Morison used as the model for the Monotype revival.)
Later, a version of Bell was cur by the Lanston Monorype Machine
Company in Philadelphia, thus making the type available to American
printers. Naturally enough, Bell's availability only for single-type
composition has been a restriction in its use in the United States:
many American book designers who have wished to employ it have
had to substitute a slug-machine type, although they have frequently
used Bell in display sizes for title pages and chapter openings.
The first example of the recur Bell was in one of Morison's own
books, The English Newspaper, published by Cambridge University
Press in 1932. Quite possibly the finest American book to be printed
from Bell types is the folio A History of the Printed Book, edited by
Lawrence C. Wroth and published by the Limited Editions Club in
1938. The volume was designed by Carl Purington Rollins and printed
at Yale University Press.
It is to be hoped that Bell's transfer to phototypesetting equipment
will broaden the use of this fine English type in American typography.
In England, where Monorype is still extensively employed, it continues
to be widely used.

Stanley Morison

228
 OXFORD

Were America's private-press printers allowed the choice of a type

that could once again be made available in quantity for distribution
into the standard :'California' job cases, it is quite possible that the
prime selection wquld be a design called Oxford.
The rationale df such an option would include its singular appro-
priateness for American printing and its excellence as a roman letter,
not to mention the ;approbation of some of the finest craftsmen-printers
during the last eig!J.ty years.
Historically, tqe choice would be most apt, as Oxford began life
as the Roman No. 1 of the first commercially successful American
typefoundry, the Philadelphia firm Binny & Ronaldson which opened
its doors in 1796. Following several changes of name, the firm in 1867
became MacKellar; Smiths &Jordan, the most important typefoundry
of its period. From that dominant position it finally lost its identity
when it was amalgamated into the American Type Founders Company
in 1892.
Archibald Binny was a Scots typefounder who, with the tools of
his trade, had arrived in Philadelphia from Edinburgh about 1795.
Here he met an Edinburgh acquaintance, James Ronaldson, whose
biscuit bakery in Philadelphia had recently burned down. This was a
most timely meeting, as it led to the agreement between the two men
to combine their ~alents in the operation of a typefoundry: Binny
would apply his rp.echanical skills to the craft and Ronaldson his
business knowledg¢ to the management of the establishment.
At that time the young American republic was in great need of
local sources of printing types. For too long American printers had
relied on European supplies, despite the high cost and delays in
shipment that had prevented the printing industry from meeting the
ever-increasing detnands of a rapidly expanding economy. Several
attempts had been!made to produce types in the United States, but

229
as of I795 there were no typefounders who could supply printers
with a sufficient quantity of type on a regular basis.
After the new Philadelphia firm had op:ned in November 1796, it
issued, on demand, specimen showings of its types, though none of
these early samples seems to have survived. It is nonetheless evident
that Binny & Ronaldson types were popular, for they began to appear
in the printing of the era with increasing frequency. The first specimen
book to be produced by the partners did not come out until 1809,
almost thirteen years after business was formally begun. Only metal
ornaments, however, were displayed in this catalogue; most of them
were the illustrations commonly used in advertising, along with mor-
tised borders and headbands. Many of the ornaments had obviously
first been cut in wood and presumably were cast as stereotypes at the
foundry.
The second specimen book from Binny & Ronaldson, bearing the
date 1812, shows several types in addition to piece borders and fleurons.
This was the first such catalogue ever to be issued in the United States.
In it were listed two roman types, with their accompanying italics, two
black letters, a Hebrew, a Greek, and four ornamented styles.
The :first roman type, which in the sizes of pica and smaller is
labeled 'No. 2,' in the larger sizes is simply styled 'Roman' up to
'Seven Lines Pica' (84-point). This type is a typical modem roman,
then very popular in England and Europe; it is illustrative of the
degradation of roman letter forms then beginning to take place owing
to the rapid industrialization of the printing craft.
The second roman type in the 1812 catalogue, named Roman No. 1,
is another matter ent_irely. Here is a book type that compares favorably
with the classic romans. It is a transitional letter; that is, it ccmtains
features ofboth the old styles, as represented by the types up through
Caston, and the moderns which had reached their apogee in the styles
ofBodoni and Didot.
Although John Baskerville had, of course, popularized the tran-
sitional type styles some forty years before Archibald Binny cut his
Roman No. 1, the exact provenance of the Binny design remains
uncertain, for very little information has come dQwn concerning
Binny's punchaming before his arrival in the United States.
Born about r762, Binny must have been apprenticed to a typefounder
by 1775 (thirteen was the standard age of a beginning apprentice),
and thus he would have practiced his craft for some eighteen years
before leaving Edinburgh. Since he was an innovative and resourceful

230
man, it is probable that he was acquainted with the transitional types
being cut in England during this period: these included the copies of
Baskerville made by the Fry foundry and that of Alexander Wilson,
the face cut by Richard Austin for John Bell, and the fonts of William
Bulmer that had been cut by William .Martin. Of these influential,
types it is the, Austin face to which Roman No. 1 is closest in spirit.
Still, lacking ~ocumentation, we can only conjecture what Binny was
thinking of wpen he cut his type.
The 1812 Binny & Ronaldson specimen book shows the face in what
I
they called p~ca (u-point), small pica (n-point), and bourgeois (9"
paint). Former Princeton University Press typographer P. J. Conlc-
wright, who ~tu.died the Binny types in depth stated that the early
versions of Roman No. 1 differed from those listed in 1812. He
identified, for example, a roman issued before that date, in 14-
paint (the size then called English), that he believed adhered more
closely to the 'style of the Scottish typefounder John Baine. However,
the only 'English' appearing in the 1812 specimen book is the
aforementioned modern roman, which 'Paul Beaujon' (Beatrice
Warde), writing in Signature in 1936, called a 'semi-fat modem of
Latin influence.'
The typefounder Baine, who in 1787 had also made the crossing to
America, hadi previously been a partner in Glasgow of the eminent
Alexander Wilson, before setting up on his own in Edinburgh. Ir
is not known why, in his seventy-third year, Baine chose to go to
Philadelphia to begin a venture. It is suggested, however, that he
wished to help establish his grandson in a location that would offer
great prornis~ for the future. But the younger Baine showed little
inclination t:01 be a founder, and after his grandfather's death in 1790
he decided to fsell his interest in the business, finally disposing of it to
Binny & Ronaldson in 1799.
The march: of progress had by 1812 influenced the Binny & Ronald-
son foundry tp favor the modern styles. Most of the types they now
offered for salb were modem romans. Indeed, the firm used them for
the setting of the title page of its specimen book and also the introduc-
tion, which declared: 'The very liberal encouragement the Proprietors
of this Found~ry have received, while it has stimulated their exertions
to deserve it, has also put it in their power co extend and improve
their establishfnent on the grand scale, of which this Specimen exhibits
a proof;·nor spall their endeavours stop here: as they are determined
never to relax their assiduity, while there remains any thing useful or

231
 PICA ROMAN, No. 1.

Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nos-

tra? quamdiu nos etiam furor iste tuus eludet?
quern ad :fi.nem sese eftrenata jactabit audacia? ni-
hilne te noctumurn prresidium palatii, nihil urbis
vigilire, nihil timor populi, nihil consensus bono-
rum ornnium, nihil hie munitissimus habendi se-
natus locus, nihil horurn ora vultusque rnovenmt?
patere tua consilia non sentis? constrictam jam
ornniurn horum conscientia teneri conjurationern
tuam non vides? quid proxima, quid superiore
ABCDEFGIDJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY
1234567890

Pica Roman No. 1 as shown in specimen of Binny & Ronaldson, Philadelphia, 1812

ornamental to be added to their Foundery which can be found in the

first Founderies of Europe.'
Thus Binny & Ronaldson joined the parade that for the next half
century resulted in the virtual extirpation of the old-style types from
the printing offices of the world. Nevertheless, because the first modern
romans of Binny were not very well designed. it is possible that the
founder, in spite of the need to supply the more popular moderns,
wished in his fine transitional type, Roman No. r, to improve on
them. In addition, the Bell types had met with some success in .Boston
and their reception could have influenced Binny in his choice of style.
Whatever the derivation, Roman No. I certainly is a type that upholds
the great tradition of letter forms begun by Baskerville and carried on
by Austin and Martin.
In 1815 Archibald Binny sold his share of the foundry to his partner,
James Ronaldson, and became a gentleman farmer, taking up residence
in Maryland. A year later Ronaldson issued his own specimen book,
in the introduction of which he paid tribute to Binny: the types shown
were, he wrote, 'the product of [Binny's] genius and labour,' and 'the
Letter Foundery owes more of its improvement and simplification to
him than to any other individual.'

232
 Ronaldson was here making reference to Binny's mechanical skills,
for along with typ,e designing, Binny was credited with inventing the
first important improvement in the construction of the hand mold,
which doubled thf output of the typecaster. Statistics on early output
are not reliable, QUt generally a caster could produce an average of
3,000 characters ih each day's work (even this average figure is not
dependable, as the length of the working day varied according to
season). Binny's improvement consisted in the attachment to the mold
of a spring lever that permitted a faster return movement.
Ronaldson alsp wrote that the. 1812 specimen book had been the
result of twenty-five years of labor by Binny (which presents the
possibility that Binny had begun the accwnulation of punches and
types even before leaving Scotland). In addition, Ronaldson outlined
the improvements in typography that Binny had achieved over his
thirty-five-year career, such as the elimination of the longs. Ronaldson
did add, however:1
In the spirit of improvement, some things were carried beyond propriety;
but experience alon~ could discover what was nearest perfection. To your
polite attention B., & R. were indebted for specimens of the European
improvements as fas,t as they came to the United Scates. The example of that
quarter, having gre<}t influence, and in some cases, strong partialities in its
favour, it became necessary for B. & R. to imitate the Europeans, and, in
some instances, contrary to their own judgment: examples of this exist in
Long Primer No. 2 apd Small Pica No. 2.
Ronaldson re~ained active until 1823, when his brother Richard
took over the foundry. His last innovation, in the production of
the 1822 specimen ,book, was the elimination as old-fashioned of the
famous quotation from Cicero-'Quousque tandem abutere, Catalina,
patientia nostra?' -that had been used by foundries since the days of
William Caslon to illustrate straight-matter composition. The quota-
tion occasionally turned up in later American specimen books (for
example, in the .Alexander Robb volume of 1846), but its use was
severely curtailed ~fter Ronaldson dropped it.
After 1822, the year of its final catalogue appearance, the Binny &
Ronaldson Roman No. 1 was considered dead. It was not to be revived
for seventy years. Two other early American founders, Elihu White
and David Bruce, who issued specimen books respectively in 1812 and
1813, also followed 1the trends by casting only modern romans. But as
neither of these men had been trained as a typefounder- as had
Archibald Binny - they could not be expected to create styles of type

233
 160 HIST01rY OJ;' PlllNTING

and this practice continued a long time after the art

was introduced into England.
The first essay at printing Greek was tnade by
Fust and Schoeffer, in Tully's Offices1 anno 1465.
They used only a few characters, and those were
very rude. Some were made and intr09.uced into
Lactantius's Institutes, printed the same year at a
monastery in the kingdom of Naples, which were
much better executed than those of Fust and Schoef-.
fer. The Italian printers made use of very decent
Greek types about the year 1470 ; and they were
brought to a high degree of perfection by the Ste-
phani in Paris, before the year 1540.
About the year 1465, types of a kind of semi-
Gothic character, far more elegant than the old Ger-
man, or the blatb used at the present time, were
introduced at Venice. They, in shape, approached
near to the Roman types, which, in less than two
years after, were invented and used at Rome.
The Roman type, which is now, and for nearly
two centuries has been, in general use in Italy,
France, England, Spain, Portugal, and America,
made its first appearance in the capital of his holi-
ness the pope, in an edition of Cicero's Epistol~
Familiares, printed by the brothers Sweynheim and
Arnold Pannartz, in 1466. This type was improv-
ed in Italy, and brought to nearly its present degree
of perfection, as early as the year 1490.
The Italic character, anciently called by some
cursive, and by others Aldine, was invented by Aldo
Mannzio, at Venice, about the year 1505.
Printing with Hebrew characters, appears to
have been first performed at Soncino, in the dutchy

Roman No. I as used in The History ofPrinting in America, by Isaiah Thomas,

Worcester, 1810

234
 based on a long familiarity with letter forms, as represented by Roman
No.1.
It is surprising that the typographic historian Theodore L. De Vinne,
America's first great scholar of the craft of printing, did not recognize
Roman No.fas a superior type. He certainly was acquainted with
The History of Printing in America (written and printed in 1810 by
Isaiah Thomas, of Worcester, Massachusetts), which affords the best
example of the original type, produced under comemparary printing
conditions. ~t, while mainly praising the quality of early American
types, De Vi.mne stated in a lecture (delivered at the Grolier Club in
1885) that 'Their workmanship was good, but not one style of the
many they cast can be offered as original or even really characteristic.
No one tried to originate new forms or features.'
De Vinne, believed that the changes in type styles initiated in the
early years o~ the nineteenth century were due more to the mechani-
cal considerations of printing than to aesthetic ideals. He cited the
improved presses, constructed of metal rather than wood, which,
together witn better ink and finer paper, permitted the use of types
with thinner !Strokes and more refined serifs. Although p)ey printed
well in boo~, these adaptations of the Bodoni-Didot style suffered
under the necessarily faster production speed of the ever-growing
newspaper industry, thus prompting typefounders - anxious to please
their most iinpartant customers - to thicken the strokes of their
moderns, resulting in the so-called fat-faced romans so sternly con-
demned by cy;pographers of a later era.
The late-I).ineteenth-centu.ry revival of Roman No. 1 is generally
credited to Joseph Warren Phinney. He was a principal in the S. N.
Dickinson Type Foundery of Boston at the time of the amalgamation
of most American foundries, including Dickinson, into the American
Type Founders Company in 1892.
Phinney was a Nantucket boy who became an off.islander when
he was appremticed to a printer on Cape Cod. His period of indenture
being interrupted by enlistment in the Union forces in 1864, Phinney
subsequent!}'. completed his training as a compositor in Taunton,
Massachusetts, and then joined the ranks of itinerant primers for
three years. By the early 1870s he had returned to the Boston area and
was employed in the sales department of the Dickinson firm. It was
here that Phipney began his serious involvement with printing types,
which resulteµ in a partnership in the company by 1885.
Upon thefformation of ATF Phinney became a vice-president and

235
 OXFORD

full range of sizes from 8 point to 20 point,

with all fonts complete, including italic
and special characters. Where space is
limited the odd sizes, 9 point and 11 point,
are particularly useful. Taylor & Taylor
were the first in California to install the
Oxford type complete in all available sizes.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU
VWXYZ
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ..RSTUVWXYZ &

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1234567890
&. '; :- '!? [] ()fffiflffiffi£$
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST
U/7WXfZ
ahcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
&.,;:-'!?jffijl.ffijfl
Oxford (ATF)

236
 manager of the Boston office. It must be presumed that he therefore
had some responsibility in the decisions of the new firm concerning
the disposal of vtst accumulations of punches and mauices, acquired
through the consplidation of twenty-three separate foundries.
The largest of these amalgamated foW1dries was MacKellar, Smiths
& Jordan, the firm that had grown out of the original Binny & Ronald-
son. Thus, Roman No. 1 must have turned up in the ATF inventory,
in which Phinney doubtless played a part. Moreover, as Boston was
at that period a: center of fine book printing, Phinney probably
believed that th~re would be a market for the revival of the classic
Binny type. It is known that he ordered trial castings of the face and
issued specimen sheets, in all likelihood to promote the design to the
Boston publishers. Unaccountably, the name he chose in place of
Roman No. I was Oxford, even though one of the Cleveland Type
Foundry faces -an advenising style also among the matrices acquired
by ATP-already possessed that name. (The Cleveland type later
turned up in ATF's 1898DeskBook ofPrinting Types as Oxford No. 2.)
The recasting·ofthe Roman No. 1 seems to be quite close to the
original, an indiq1.tion that most of the Binny & Ronaldson matrices
had survived. And for the replacement of inevitably damaged or
missing matrices~·the Dickinson foundry was fortunate in having on
its staff the pundjcutter John Cumming of Worcester, who was fully
capable of duplic:;ating Binny's work. Bruce Rogers, who later em-
ployed Cumming for the cutting of his Montaigne punches, called
him the best punchcutter of his day.
It is a pity that the American Type Founders Company preserved
no documentatiori of its revival of Oxford, particularly concerning
matrix replacemept. Because of Cumming's duplicating skill, it will
probably nevet be determined how many punches were recut at this
time. It is known that no small capitals of the Roman No. 1 were
available from Binny & Ronaldson, so that those in ATF's Oxford
were undoubtedly cut by Cumming; they follow the standard cap
font in all respects except for the Q, which is supplied as a kerned
letter. In addition, Oxford offered the longs and its ligatures, which
had been eliminated in the 1812 Binny & Ronaldson catalogue. (It
had, in fact, been: a boast of Ronaldson's that the foundry had taken
the lead in droppµig this old-fashioned character. But as Phinney no
doubt was reviving Roman No. 1 as a 'period' type, he must have felt
printers would request the longs for colonial reproductions.)
Oxford thus became available in 1892, although it is difficult to

237
find specimens of it or evidence of its early use. The new type was not :
even advertised. In 1895 ATF printed its Blue Books, followed in 1896 ','.
by the first •collected' specimen book, showing many of the older ·
American types and the foundries from which they came. But though ·
Phinney was active in the production of these catalogues, particularly
the 'Collected' book, neither of them lists Oxford. How, then, did
printers learn about the face? One must assume by word of mouth.
An early admirer of Oxford was Bruce Rogers, who was hired by
the Cambridge, Massachusetts, Riverside Press in 1896. In 1900, .
having begun his full-time work as a book typographer, he was asked
to head a department for special book production, and in this capacity
he first made use of Oxford in 1905. In 1907 he began employing it
more regularly.
Daniel Berkeley Updike, proprietor of Boston's Merrymount
Press, had always expressed his enthusiasm for Oxford, although he
did not acquire fonts until 1906 and did not actually use them until
1910. By 1932, however, when he published a bibliography of the first
forty years of his press, he had employed it in more than forty titles.
Unfortunately, he doesn't disclose how he became acquainted with
the face or why, after buying it, he waited four years before using it.
In the chapter on early American specimens in his Printing Types
of 1922, Updike took issue with the statement of Binny & Ronaldson
in 1812 concerning the grand scale on which they conducted their
foundry. He averred there was little grand about the enterprise
except its pretensions, but he did, late in the book, list Oxford with
those types •that seem indisputably standard, on which there is no
possibility of going astray: or, ifl may call them, "types of obligation?''
As Caslon and the nineteenth-century Scotch were the only other
faces in this category, this was praise indeed.
Updike also wrote: •For books where the old-fashioned air of
Caslon would be too obtrusive, and yet which call for a letter more
interesting in design than the somewhat bald Scotch face, there is
nothing better [than Oxford].' He ended the paragraph by calling
Oxford a type •of great distinction.' The proof ofUpdike's assessment
was that he had selected it as the face in which to hand-set both
volumes of his monumental book, which made Printing Types itself
the best single source for furore scholars on the appearance of the
revived Roman No. 1.
Collectors interested in acquiring books composed in Oxford can
also tum to the work of Edwin and Robert Grabhorn, the San Fran-
 184 PRINTING TYPES
vers Caracteres Vignettes et Fleurons des Fonderie et Stbf:o-
typie de L Leger, Graveur, neveu et successur de P. F. Didot,
which, according to its compiler, represented the results of
twenty-fiye years' labour. The ornaments and borders are
distinctly light in effect, black backgrounds having mostly
disappeared (fig. 324). The types, less excellent than the
ornamen~, are still in the Didot style.
An extremely characteristic showing of types in popular
use in th~ first fifty years of the nineteenth century i~ made
in the Spe,ci.men Typographi.que de l' Imprimerie Royale. These
two folio!volumes (I, 1845; II, 1851), display a number of
fonts mo{lelled on the Didot plan, and also make a distin-
guished showing of exotic fonts ·by Jacquemin. An index at
the end of the first volume tells who cut the various types
displayeq-Firmin Didot, Marcelin Legrand, and Leger
Didot figuring among their designers; while among ancient
fonts are: those from Garamond, the Propaganda and Me-
dici offices, and Savary de Breves.
The :Qidot foundry remained in· the possession of the
family ul)til sold by .Anibroise Finnin Didot, when its types
became part of the F onderie Generale of Paris. In this house
were consolidated the establishments of Firmin Didot, Mole,
Crosnier, and f:verat. The 1839 specimen of the Fonderie
Generalel issued by E. Tarbe, who presided over it, shows
text types in the "classic" Didot style, and many of the or-
naments designed to accompany them -as well as vignettes
in the "romantic manner" which are very characteristic of
that time and very amusing in this. Another important spe-
cimen of the F onderie Generale, then managed by Biesta,
Laboulaye & Cie, issued in 1843, showed, in addition to the
collections mentioned, those of Lion, Tarbe, and Laboulaye
Freres. The preliminary Avis supplies references by which
the types cut by different designers may be identified. The

Use of Oxford in Printing Types, by Daniel Berlceley Updike, Merrymount Press,

Boston, 1922 '

239
 cisco printers. The Grabhorns first used the type (most appropriately)
in Early Printing in America, their thirtieth book, published in 1921.
The innovative brothers evidently were very fond of the type, for it
then turned up in fifty-two other titles that bore their imprint. After
Edwin's death in 1968, Robert continued the press, selecting Oxford
for seven more titles, and when he and Andrew Hoyem combined
forces as Grabhorn-Hoyem, it turned up yet again in four books.
Another well-known San Francisco printing firm, Taylor & Taylor,
also promoted Oxford. In 1939 the company claimed that it was the
first printer in California to offer the type in all the available sizes.
During the thirties and forties Oxford gained a host of friends,
but its availability as a type for hand-composition only- and in a
limited range of sizes - manifestly diminished its appeal to publishers.
This situation was then rectified by a collaboration between Princeton
University Press and the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.
In 1943 Princeton commenced the publishing of all of the papers
of Thomas Jefferson,"an enormous project, which is still ~peered to_
take decades to complete. P. J. Conkwright, then Princeton's director
of design, had long been interested in early American typefounding,
and Binny & Ronaldson in particular. Citing that this foundry's
formative years were during Jefferson's presidency, Conkwright pro-
posed Roman No. I as an excellent choice for the text ofthe papers.
It so happened that C.H. Griffith, who headed Linotype's type-
design department, was also a longtime admirer of the Binny face
and had actually put in a great deal of thought on the possibility of
converting Roman No. I for machine-composition. It was thus agreed
that Linotype would provide fonts for the Jefferson project, issuing
the design under the name Monticello.
Another fine printer, Fred Anthoensen, of Portland, Maine, also
thought highly of Roman No. 1/Oxford. He therefore supplied
Griffith with specimens of printing on various papers of the sizes of
Oxford in his possession. In addition, Griffith studied the five-volume
edition of Marshall's Life of George Washington, prip.ted in Roman
No. 1 between 1804 and 1808, in order to acquaint himself with the
appearance of the type under original printing conditions.
Rather than simply copying the original, Griffith took into con- ·
sideration such factors as the heavy appearance of its lowercase, due
to excessive use of the ink balls on the hand press; Griffith therefore
had to thicken the capitals slightly, so that they would not be dis-
proportional. He also made note of the redesign of several characters

240
 ijprnm dblhk
These enlarged' letters reveal the rather lively variation in serif treat-
ment and bra&eting which contribute to the inherent readability of
Monticello. Note the subtle distinction in treatment of the i, r, n and k,
among other letters. tf Transitional in character, MoNTICELLO em-
bodies in its letter-structure certain design characterisitics of Basker-
ville and Scotch, along with some of the movement and informality of
Caslon. Its in~iration was the pica size of the celebrated Binny and
Ronaldson Rom'.an No. 1, cut by Archibald Binny in Philadelphia about
1796. The ltaliq, originally cut as a companion of the pica roman, was
discarded in f~vor of the small-pica design, which discriminating
authorities rega,rd as superior. CJ Each of the half dozen sizes of Lino-
type MoNTicE;a:.Lo (7 to 14point) \Vas drawn separately and modelled
on the original pica design. The careful grading for optical harmony,
so essential for mixing sizes in contemporary printing, is apparent at a
glance at the i~ide spread. Here the refinement characters and Recut
Italic provided for discriminating typography are also detailed.

LIST OF MAJOR CHARACTERS

AVAILABLE

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ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&
ABCE>EFGHIJ KLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&
Lung Descenders

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abcdeifghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz gjpqy
ahcde}ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz Recul It,Hc

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1231-567890$£,.:;'-'? !(J*1"tff §[]%
Monticello (Linocypej

241
in the Oxford revival, possibly owing to matrix damage or loss (whether
or not these were among the 1892 replacements cannot now be deter-
mined).
The first volume of The Papen of Thomas Jefferson was published
in 1950, and it was promptly selected for inclusion in the Fifty Books
of the Year Exhibition of 1951. By sheer coincidence, another selection
in that show was Jacob Kainen's George Clymer and the Columbian
Press, in the Typophile Chapbook series, which was hand-set in
Oxford. Since then, however, the Roman No. 1 design has not turned
up in this annual exhibition.
At about the time that Monticello was beginning to be used,
Oxford, itself a revival, had a tiny revival of its own, thanks to the
efforts of Steve Watts. Having retired in the early 1950s after a lifetime
with ATF in several positions, including manager of the typefoundry,
Watts continued to be happily occupied with printing. He prevailed
upon his former employer to resurrect- the matrices of Oxford and
cast him twenty complete fonts which he then offered to friends in
what he called 'kittypot' casting. The huge corporation, of course,
would never have undertaken the sale of the type to small purchasers,
so Watts now made it possible for private-press operators to acquire a
limited number of fonts of a type that had previously been considered•
most desirable but completely unobtainable.
Roman No. 1 in its Linotype Monticello incarnation has been
very well received, becoming a standard type for the text of books of
every description. With further conversion to film and CRT, it is
probable that this earliest American contribution to the large-scale
manufacture of first-class book types will prove an enduring success.
To end this account on an upbeat note, it is a most happy circum-
stance that the Oxford matrices are now safely in the possession of
the Smithsonian Institution. There they reside with countless others
that several years ago were saved from destruction when interested
typographers persuaded ATF to withdraw its plan to melt them down
for brass and instead offer them to the museum as a national legacy. .

242
 CALEDONIA

The nineteenth century has long been considered by traditionally

oriented printing historians to have been a period of aesthetic de-
cline. Accor4ing to this viewpoint, we are led to believe that little
significant p~inting was produced between that of William Bulmer
(1757-1830) ~d the artist William Morris (1834-96), and that the only
era of print4i,g worth remembering is the one, four hundred years
ago, when the printed book was the primary product of the press.
Although it ,is true that the nineteenth century is not particularly
noted for fin~ printing, the innovations of industrialization can by no
means be dis~egarded - and indeed, they made their own contributions
rothe art.
Technologically, in fact, the nineteenth century was one of the
most exciting periods that printei:5 have ever known, particularly in
the United ~tates. Every phase of the craft was being subje,cted to
the scrutiny ~f inventive minds, and it was then that the first steps
were taken to bring the industry to its present stage of automation.
The typefounders were emerging from their status as mere suppliers
of types for straightforward, relatively unimaginative printing: they
· began to prct:iuce distinctive faces that could be utilized to advertise
.the myriad q.anufactured goods that were being-churned out by the
Industrial Revolution. That art deparnnents of the founders obviously
had a glorious time developing these new types may be readily observed
in the numerous catalogues that were prepared during that era of
typographic innovation. Nevertheless, a survey of these same specimen
books does sq.ow that very little space was given to text types, indicating
that they wer~ of secondary importance to the foundries, even though,
ironically, diey represented the bulk of the foundries' production.
Types for cohtinuous reading were most used in sizes much smaller
than is coomion today. P~sibly the difficulty of supplying distinction
to 6- and 8-ppint types discouraged both designers and founders. By
contrast, the development of modern advertising seemed to spark a

243
competitive urge among typefounders who found aesthetic expression:~
in the profusion of display types that, reinforcing this effort, were-,;
in continual demand throughout the century. Another factor, and;
one based on economics, was the high initial cost to the printer of:I!
acquiring a sufficient supply of text sizes, compared with the fewd:5'
fonts display type required. :;_
The grand period of the classic roman types -the types of fine:
book printing -was past. Caslon and Baskerville and their derivatives _
were sadly neglected. Bodoni and Didot had made their impact, the~
sorry effects of which demonstrably changed roman types popular}
after 1800, whose forms were not at all comparable to the originals.
The finest early types combining the spirit of old style with that?
of the Bodoni-Didot forms dated from the end of the 1700s. Cut by :
Richard Austin for John Bell, this deservedly popular letter was printed.:
at the Shakspeare Press of William Bulmer. Although the Bell and;
Bulmer types themselves were used primarily by their originators, the ;
concept they represented of combining features of both old style and)
modern became well established. Numerous foundries in England ·.
and the United States developed standardized letter forms of this
nature for straight-matter composition.
But by midcentury there no longer existed the demand for anything -
but the lighter and more condensed variations of Bodoni-Didot.
Although printers of the twentieth century find these types dreary
and monotonous, they presented to printers of the time a logical
expression of typographic distinction. Dissenting from this view,
however, was Theodore Low De Vinne (1828-1914), the first impor-
tant American typographical historian, who, as a practicing printer,
was also at the forefront of technological innovation. With this 'bi-
focal' perspective, De Vinne termed the modern romans 'effeminate:
and in his Plain Printing Types (1900) articulated the growing oppo-
sition of experienced printers to such faces.
The best-designed of all the nineteenth-century romans were those
produced in Scotland by Alexander Wilson and the firm of William
Miller. The term Scotch face was first given to a type cut by Wilson for
the S. N. Dickinson Foundery in Boston about 1837. However, the
present-day type called Scotch Roman stems from the Pica Roman
No. 2 of Miller & Company; it was cut (according t(! T. C. Hansard)
about 1809 by Richard Austin for an edition of Dryden edited by Sir
Walter Scott. A number of characters were redrawn, including the
lowercase t -which was given the flat top reminiscent of the Didot
~·'------------:--------
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~:or steel; recen~ly he has been drawing them great!)

;,enlarged so that the machine may engrave them fm
him, and now he is starting to work with film so that
·his letters may, be set photographically. However h€
works, the purpose of a book-type does not change.
:Apparently thi~ discipline keeps the serious designe1
_of book-types within the broad tradition. The conser-
.vativ-e nature of book-type design has obvious advan-

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Caledonia (Linotype)

design- but the revision did not extend to the overheavy capitals. It
was this recutting of Roman No. 2 that was copied by the New York
foundry, Farmer, Little & Company, and which in rum became the
model for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company's Scotch Roman.
The English Monotype firm followed the same style in 1907, but in

245
 1920 it revised it yet again. This fifth version stands today as the best
extant reproduction of the Miller & Company type of 1813.
With the advent of machine-typesetting, the Scotch letter remained
in favor, and up to the 1930s it was widely used for both book and
commercial printing. But following the appearance of numerous re-
vivals of the classic typefaces it declined in popularity. The basic fault
of the American version of Scotch, in the opinion of most typog-
raphers, lies in the excessively bold capitals which present an uneven
appearance in a book page. But though it has never been considered a
beautiful letter, its large x-height and open counters contribute greatly
to its legibility.
It was a combination of these factors that prompted the Mergen-
thaler Linotype Company in the late 1930s to plan a replacement for
Scotch Roman. The firm persuaded William A. Dwiggins of Hingham,
Massachusetts, to explore the redesign of the face in order to make it
more adaptable to contemporary typographic ideas. Dwiggins had
already produced the sans-serif Metro series for Linotype, in addition
to the esteemed Electra, a book type with distinctly modern features.
Both designs had established him as a type designer of solid accom-
plishment and considerable promise.
Dwiggins had good credentials as a graphic artist-calligrapher,
illustrator, book designer-which he had gained before his exposure
to type design. Born in Martinsville, Ohio, in 1880, he had been a
student of Frederic W. Goudy's at the Frank Holme School of illus-
tration in Chicago. When Goudy moved his Village Press to Hingham
in 1904, he persuaded Dwiggins to accompany him. Shortly thereafter,
Goudy continued on to New York City, but Dwiggins remained in
Hingham until his death on Chrisnnas Day, 1956.
For more than half a century this 'black and white-smith,' as
Dwiggins called himself, proved to be one of the most versatile de-
signers of his time. As a book designer he was one of the best, attested
by hundreds of volumes bearing his inimitable style and particularly
those embellished with his stencil decorations. Unquestionably, he
helped raise the standards of trade-book design which comprised the
bulk of his work ( as opposed to the production of limited editions).
In 1928 Dwiggins wrote Layout in Ad-vertising, probably the best
text on the subject that had ever been published in America. Despite
some ephemeral material, much of this book continues to be valuable
to contemporary designers, for it is written with style and without
dogma.
Attempts in the line of Scotch:. Attempts to blend:
BASKERVILLE AND SCOTCH

mnlil)tjohf ldonegia
DIDOT AND SCOTCH

mfupJoiat tfn a de
MARTIN AND SCOTCH

amnifeupt et napr
On the trail: The final effort:

hamile nt mhnjuf
amulet pi dbosrt ag
mhnjup ---,. final_,, h
Steps in the devel9pment of Caledonia

When offe~ed the challenge of improving Scotch Roman, Dwig-

gins began by drawing each character of the new font- to the size of
120-point. A rurnber of these letters were put through Linotype's
design departJtn.ent, and trial matrices were manufacrured from which
type was cast apd proofed. From these results Owiggins -after 'living'

247
 PI CA-Old Style.
Founts of any weight with or without I talii:.
ScENES IN SouTH AFRICA.-As you penetrate
into a secluded valley in South Africa, the white
washed farm hou~es gradually unfold themselves,
scattered at short intervals along the skirts of
the hills, each mansion surrounded by plantations
of oak and poplar, intermingled with groves and

SMALL PICA-Old Style.

Founts of any weight with or without Italic.
SCENES IN SOUTH AFRICA.-As you penetrate into a
secluded valley in South Africa, the white washed farm
houses gradually unfold themselves, scattered at short
intervals along the skirts of the hills, each mansion sur-
rounded by plantations of oak and poplar, intermingled
with groves and avenues of orange and lemon trees, and
with orchards producing in exuberance almost every va-

LONG PRIMER-OM Style.

Founts of any weight with or- without Italic.
ScENES IN SOUTH AFRICA.-As you penetrate into a secluded
valley in South Africa, the white washed farm houses gradually
unfold themselves, scattered at short intervals along the skirts
of the hills, each mansion surrounded by plantations of oak
and poplar, intermingled with groves and avenues of orange
and lemon trees, and with orchards producing in exuberance
almost every variety of fruit, European and Tropical ;-while,

BOURGEOIS-Old Style.
Founts of any weight wi·th or- without Italz"c.
SCENES IN SOUTH AFRICA.-As you penetrate into a secluded
valley in South Africa, the white washed farm houses gradually
unfold themselves, scattered at short intervals along the skirts of
the hills, each mansion surrounded by plantations of oak and
poplar, intermingled with groves and avenues of orange and lemon
trees, and with or<;hards producing in exuberance almost every
variety of fruit, European and Tropical ;-while, amidst and around
the whole, appear the extensive and well dressed vineyards, sloping

Scotch types, in the specimen of Miller & Richard, Glasgow, r876

 When, in the course of human events,
it becmpes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to
assume; among the powers of the earth,
the sep~rate and equal station to which
the laws of nature and of nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind require that they
should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation. We hold
these truths tO be self-evident; That
all men are created equal; that they
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When, in the course of human

events, it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the politi-
cal bands which have connected
them with another, and to as-
sume, among the powers of the
earth, the separate and equal
statiou to which the laws of na-
ture and of nature's God entitle
them, a decent respect for the
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First showing of ATF ix:occh Roman, 1909

249
 When jobs have their type sizes fixed
quickly margins of error will widen
When jobs have the type si,zes fixed
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When jobs have type sizes
ABCDEFGHJKLMNOR
The bank recognizes this claim as quite valid
and just, so we are expecting full payments
The invitations were printed in jet black
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Scotch Roman (English Monotype)

with the proofs for a few days-decided whether he was on rhe right
track, and then proceeded to redraw, in pencil outline, his own working
drawings to a size of ten inches. Rudolph Ruzicka, another American
artist of note, called Dwiggins's approach an unparallded tour de force
of type design.
'Why modify Scotch?' Dwiggins had asked He did admit that
there was a 'wooden heaviness' about the type - particularly after
it had gone through so many recuttings since its first appearan<:e -
and his impulse was to redesign the face in the feeling of the early
nineteenth century when Scotch had first surfaced. This, however,
proved to be unsatisfactory. 'It appears that Scotch is Scotch,' he
wrote, 'and doesn't stay Scotch if you sweat the fat off it.'
He next looked carefully at the antecedents of Scotch, the types of
Baskerville, Bodoni, and Didot. But any restyling of that eighteenth-
century triumvirate turned out to be 'merely a rehash.'· He then studied
the Bulmer type, and it was here that he found rhe inspiration that
when applied to the basic structure of Scotch Roman resulted in one
of the most admired book types ever produced in the United States.

250
 The Text Tgpes of the 'DeVirine 'Press
SCOTCH-ROMAN

T ~IS is the face and the size of the type selected

by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for their Ken-
singt0n edition (octavo) of Thackeray's Novels, Poems,
and other work, in thirty-two
.Meaav~ment l11 12-point ems volumes. It was also used. by
CAPITALS 20¼ them for Miss Hapgood's trans-
SMALL CAPITALS 14 lation of the Novels and Stories
Lower-case . . 1212 of I van Turgenieff in seven-
IT...i~IC CAPS 211s teen. volumes, in large octavo.
Italic, lawer-ccue 1234. The typographical appearance
128456789 234567890 of these , limited editions was
commended by discerning book
revie~ers as entirely satisfactory and as a wise return
to th~ simplicity of early nineteenth-century printing.
Of th,is size we have two pairs of cases for roman, and
rom9¥ and italic matrices for linotype machines.

Books are not made for show.

B OOKS are written to be read and read easily, without discomfort
or!annoyance. The conditions of printing that favor easy readin,i
are pUin types, clear print, and freedom from surprises. An7 pecu-
, liarity in the letters or in their arrange-
Meaaurement in 12·P0 int ems ment that turns aside the reader from
CAPITALS • 1494. following the written thought is a sur-
B!IIALL ,;:.u'ITALS • 10 prise and an annoyance. It was not
Lower.fcaee • • 10 for a study of the caprices of a desigµer
ITALIC CAPS 1ss4 of letters, or of the ingenuity of the
]t,dic lotr,er-c,ue 11 compositor who has rearranged types
1284567890 1234667890 by new or old methods, that the book
was bought. · The reader reads for in-
formation or for amusement, but not for the study of typographical
eccentricities. 11 Of this size we have two pairs of cases for roman,
and roinan and italic matrices for linot:;ype machines.
10-polnt. Farmer

Scotch Roman ~ shown in specimen book of the De Vmne Press, 1907

The new face; ready by 1941, was given the ancient name of Scotland,
Caledonia.
About the only character in the font that is still recognizable as
Scotch Roman is the lowercase t, which retains its Didot roots in its

251
lack of a beginning serif. The Caledonia capitals are greatly improved
over those of Scotch by being shorter than the lowercase ascenders,
thus allowing them to blend easily with the. lowercase. There are no
quaint or rrick characters in Caledonia. The type therefore measures
up to the first requirement of a successful book type: that nothing
interfere with the ideal relationship of reader to text.
No statistics are available on the number of books set in Caledonia
each year, but the type is the first choice of many publishers. The
index of the Fifty Books of the Year Exhibition does provide some
information - the design now ranks fifth in popularity among the
books chosen for that show; as its first appearance was only in 1941,
this indicates how quickly the type has risen to eminence. (It is
interesting to note that old Scotch Roman itself has been used for
more than seventy-five books in the exhibition since 1923, an excellent
showing in its own account.)
In addition, in the important area of paperback-book production
Caledonia vies with Times Roman as the most widely used type for
the setting of mass-market editions. This is a real tribute to its out-
standing legibility even under the most trying of printing conditions.

252
 CHELTENHAM

The history of American typefounding really begins with the firm

established in Philadelphia in 1796 by the two Scotsmen we have al-
ready met in chapter nineteen, Archibald Binny and James Ronaldson.
Their company ev<;ntually became MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, the
largest and most s1.1ccessful of the nineteenth-century typefounders.
During that centurY, there were upward of seventy-five different manu-
facturers of printing types, for the burgeoning typefounding trade
rould scarcely keep: up with the demand for the printed word. By the
1890s an enormous 1number of types had been designed and produced
in an effort to satisfy that market. With the further development of
typesetting by machine, which came into its own at the turn of the
century, the nwnber of types available to American printers had pro-
liferated to the po~t where a volwne of encyclopedic proportions
would have been necessary to list and display them all.
Of this vast output over a period of 180 years, one type seems to
stand above all the rest as the embodiment of type design that is
thoroughly American: Cheltenham. {Its very English name was of
course far too rich for the practicing typos, who simply called it Chelt -
the independent-minded American compositors seldom bothered with
the niceties of literary pronunciation, as in their rendering of bourgeois,
the old term for 9-p'oint, always 'burjoys.') Cheltenham is, in all prob-
ability, the most widely known type designed in the United States.
One of the reasons for the fame of Cheltenham-or notoriety,
as some practitioners would have it- is that for more than half a
century it has been :a most controversial typeface. In the post-World
War II era, when its use declined, it became the subject of numerous
articles in printing-trade periodicals, most expressing divided opinions
on its pedigree as a good letter form or its usefulness as a typeface.
During the 1920s, when advertising typography came into its own,
the typefounders expended a great deal of effort on the creation of

253
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nopqrstuvwxy
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Cheltenham Bold (ATF)

types specifically for that market. The new professionals, feeling

themselves especially knowledgeable about what constituted a 'good'
typeface, habitually denigrated Cheltenham - even though for the
preceding two decades the agency typographers could scarcely have

-
254
 managed wit;hout it. To attract these demanding consumers, the
· manufacture of printing types became extremely competitive.
· The typography of the twenties enjoyed its own version of the
. Jazz Age; exdtic letter forms proliferated, and most of them, form-
nately, lasted /or only brief duration. Rivaling the Americans were
the Europeanfoundries, eager to cut into this big market, particularly
after the inno,'vations of the Bauhaus had made the American adver-
tising professjon aware of the advantages of typographic sophisti-
canon.
With all die fancy competition, Cheltenham's plain-Jane features
stood little d~ance, and it became fashionable to relegate Chelt to
the country ptintshop. Most ad typographers were extremely pained
if a client pushed the matter, such as by praising the type's 'rugged
characteristics:' This was borne out by the late Stevens L. Watts, who
spent his care91" with the American Type Founders Company, retiring
as manager ofithe typefoundry. Himself an ardent advocate of Chel-
tenham, he stated at one rime that 'to publicly call a man a Cheltenham
printer would be on a par with telling a master mariner to go and buy
a farm.'
Yet back ih 1902, when ATF brought out its first version of
Cheltenham, ¢.e type became a veritable gold mine for the foundry,
eventually being produced in more than two dozen variants. There
was not a printing office in the land that didn;t proudly accommodate
one or more fonts of Chelt. Nevertheless, even during this heyday
the use of Ch~ltenham was always questioned by those designers
seeking a reputation for typographic savoir-faire. One of the typo-
graphic gods of the period, Douglas C. McMurtrie, put it succinctly:
'The appearan~e of most magazine and commercial printing will be
improved by the simple expedient of denying any variants of the
Cheltenham design to compositors.'
The original development of the type remains a matter of conjec-
ture, typefounders' records being as casual as they are. The chronicle
of Cheltenham is additionally obscured by its simultaneous introduc-
tion to the trad~ by both ATF and Mergenthaler Linotype.
What is defipite, however, is that the face was first conceived as a
book type by Bertram Goodhue, a considerable American architect
who also happened to be active in the production of the semimonthly
Chap Book, fourlded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894. Goodhue,
always interestefi in the graphic ans, had already cut the Merrymount
type for D. B. l.)'pdike's press of the same name and had executed for

255
 THECHELTENHAMFONT
f] It is in charatlers not differing in any
material item from these (the designer
trusts) that this new font will be cut.

THE CHElTE'J\[_H.fl'M TYPE

~ainl enough will be this type lacking
exacll-y what cbiefl')) gi'\Jes the Italic, ifs
qualities of dash & zip; i.e. tbe l{erns. J.
Original sketches of Cheltenham by Bertram Grosvener Goodhue

printers numerous designs in the spirit of the Kelrnscott Press artist

Edward Burne-Jones.
Also connected with the Chap Book project was Ingalls Kimball
of the Cheltenham Press, a New York printing firm. At Kimball's
suggestion, Goodhue prepared a type for the private use of the press.
Goodhue later sold the design to the Mergenthaler firm, while retain-
ing his right to the single-type version. In 1902, ATP also purchased
the design.
It was Goodhue's intent to create a rook type in which legibility
would be the dominant element. He therefore designed an alphabet
of rather monotonous construction, including serifs similar to the
Clarendon styles of fifty years earlier. It was in the treatment of the
ascenders and descenders that Goodhue's premise was most evident.
Believing that the upper half of a line of type is the more important
for recognition, the designer lengthened the ascenders and shortened
the descenders of the letters. This feature also allowed for economical
composition, since leading could be dispensed with, even in longer-
than-average lines. Goodhue's theory has been borne out by more
recent studies of typographic legibility, but Cheltenham nevertheless
 SCARE
ustHeld
FENCED
Clear Bend
DESIGNER
Useful Letters
First showing of Cheltenham by American Type Founders Co., 1903

was not to become ,a popular type for straight-matter composition as

employed in book~ and periodicals. It was as a display type that it
would develop its reputation, primarily because of the large number
of variants that appeared during the next two decades.

-
257
 Cheltenham Oldstyle CHELTENHAM Bol.D ExTRA CONDENSED Tm.E
Cheltenham Wide Cheltenham Bold Extended
Cheltenham Medium Cheltenham Extrabold
Cheltenham Bold
Clheiltenham Hnlline
Cheltenham Bold Condensed
Chellenham Bold Extra Condensed Jinlme Ema Condensed
~lltt.eirallmmm &l«ll <Outifurn<e
lnlliine JEx11:ended
Cheltenham Oldstyle Condensed Cheltenham Medium Expanded
Cheltenham Italic Chellenham Medium Condensed
Cheltenham Medium Italic Cheli ExtraboRd Shaded
Cheltenham Bold Italic Cheltenham Bold Italic Shaded
Cheltenham Bold Condensed Italic Chehenharn Bold Shaded

The Cheltenham "family" of Types, c. 1918

By the turn of the century, ATF had shaken off the growing pains
it had been enduring as the new typefounding conglomerate of the
early nineties: the growls from the trade about the 'Type Trust'
were dying out. Under dynamic new leadership, the firm was about
to embark on a great period in the marketing of types. Although
earlier styles-notably De Vinne and Philadelphia Lining Gothic-
had proved the success of the so-called 'family idea in printing types
(variants in both weight and width), it was with Cheltenham that the
theory really blossomed. By 1915 Morris Benton, ATF's director of
type design, had cut twenty-one variations of the original Cheltenham,
and the name was now almost a household word, certainly reaching
far beyond the confines of the nation's composing rooms.
The Linotype firm, beginning about 1904, eventually brought out
ten Cheltenham variants plus special advertising figures. The Mono-
type company followed with fifteen varieties of Cheltenham, Ludlow
Typograph Company produced thirteen, and a dozen variations were
marketed by the Intertype Corporation. Thus by 1920 every American. '
supplier of printing types was producing Cheltenham. It was inevitable __
that: its style would dominate the period's typography.
Foreign typefounders quickly followed suit, selling Cheltenham
 A HAPPY FACE IS A FACE
THAT GIVES JOY, AND THE
CHELTENHAM-SOAP~
SO FITTING-IS THIS KIND
I

·
I T is undoubtedly the m03t popular type face
that has been brought out in recent years.
Judging by the satisfaction with which it
was received the design was a most fortu-
nate one, and it came at an opportune time
measured by the demand which immediately
sprang up. Scarcely had the American Type
Founders Company finished the fourteen sizes
in the Cheltenham 0/dstyle series when requests
came for an Italic series to go with it. The pres-
ent series of Cheltenham Italic was the result.
Its introduction met with an immediate success.
and orders came in from the largest publishers
and job printing offices, until now it is hardly
possible to pick up a publication of any merit
without a showing of the complete series of both
the Cheltenham 0/dstyle and the Cheltenham
Italic being prominently displayed therein. A
still further demand necessitated designing the
other Cheltenhams shown on following pages.
In fact, many among the most prominent adver-~
tisers in the country have requeskd that this face
be the one used to display their matter as it so
fittingly challenges the eye of the reading public.
The distinguished character of the Cheltenham
family is so pronounced that the first glance re-
veals a design of decidedly unusual character
that shows qualities never before attained in any
other type face. It is in a class by itself In
!
Cheltenham Oldstylc: cutting the other Cheltenhams t.o complementthe
aml Cheltcinham Cheltenham Oldstyle the same lines that gave
halic in com ..
1

bination distinction to the first series were followed, and

, all have been as satisfactory as the original one.
: ,The Cheltenham family has been the type
'.
sen-r
· sation of the year. and their necessity ir. every
properly equipped printing plant is quite ,.pparent

A typical Chelte~am advertisement by ATF, 1906

259
Cheltenham as used in Thoreau's Friendship, Roycroft Press

260
 Goodhue's earliesl: book decorations were made while he was still in New
York before his a~ation with Ralph Adams Cram in the firm of Cram,
Wentworth & Gooclhue in Boston, where he was drawn into the companion-
ship of a group of y,oung men interested in good bookmaking, and where he
produced those fine drawings which are found often in the publications of
Copeland & Day, a~d less often in those of other publishers. Many very beau-
tiful book decoratio~s. as well as a distinguished fount of types, were designed
for D. Berkeley U~ike in the early days of the Merrymount Press.

Cheltenham medium ~d as a book type in Goodhue biography

under several different names. The English firm Stephenson, Blake &
Company called it Wrnchester; English Monocype listed it as Glou-
cester; and a Dresden foundry named it Pfeil Antiqua. Steve Watts
loved to tell of a version he found in a Japanese specimen book called
Chentury Bold.
Two or three American founders, still outside the ATF fold,
picked up the type while it was in its prime, so even up to the present
it is possible to ruh across fonts of Inland Foundry's Kenilworth or
Western Foundry's Chesterfield in the cases of country printers.
By any name, Cpelt is going to be around for a long time. Naturally,
it has been rransferred to the phototypesetting devices and is therefore
continuing its life .i,n that medium. Undoubtedly, given typography's
addiction to type trends, Cheltenham will have its ups and downs,
but whenever a vigorous, legible display face is needed, this type will
prove as useful as :ever. And though it is rarely selected for books,
Time-Life Books recently made an interesting experiment in choos-
ing Cheltenham for its series on the Old West: Cheltenham Medium
is employed for the text of each volume, thus being returned to
Bertram Goodhue's original reason for designing it.

261
 BOOKMAN

The revival of historic printing types is a continuing process which in

many instances can be attributed to nothing more than a search for
novelty. Obviously, display type with its function of catching the eye
is more subject to such resurrection than is book type. Occasionally,
however, a face that serves both media is subject to a regeneration.
Bookman is a case in point. About 1968 this turn-of-the-century
typeface was selected for an advertising campaign of United Airlines,
appearing in all the important consumer magazines. Exactly what
prompted the use of Bookman is problematical, but perhaps the fact
that the font featured a number of decorative letter variants met the
·particular requirements of the type director of the advertising agency.
The restoration also coincided with a small rebirth of art nouveau in
advertising circles, and given Bookman's roots in that style, it no
doubt appeared to be a logical choice.
Bookman has had a curious history, which can be likened to that
of Cheltenham; that is, it has been both damned and praised at the
same time. Every instance of its use over the years could almost
guarantee controversy. Daniel Berkeley Updike, dean of typographic
orthodoxy in the United States, did not even mention it in any of his
books. Yet fellow-Bostonian William A. Dwiggins, one of the best
of American graphic designers, considered Bookman a candidate for
'reasonable human perfection' as a display rype, and very close to that
standard for 'grace in the mass.' Another New Englander of great
typographic accomplishment who agreed with Dwiggins was Carl
Purington Rollins, Printer to Yale University. He considered the
design 'a simple and honest and self-effacing type.' Among the most
charming editions of Walden is the one Rollins designed for the
Heritage Press in 1939, in which he coupled Bookman with the wood
engravings of Thomas W. Nason to create an almost perfect match of
type and illustration.
Another distinguished use of Bookman was in the Tom S~er

2{)2
 REGARD j

NewShop
QUESTION
UfeJobOffice
RANCH BAR..,
Signal efQuality
!

MODERN ®CHIC ,,

Great displays typify

Bookman Oldstyk (ATF)

-
263
Benevolent Men1bers
GENEROUS
Granite Received Monthly
MONUMENTS
International Societies Celebrate
DEMONSTRATION
Frolicsome Excursionists in Snowstorms
LOVINGLY WAITING
Old Style Antique of MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan foundry

printed by Elmer Adler in 1930, which received the accolade of being

chosen for the Fifty Books of the Year Exhibition. Going still further
back, a wide 4Se of Bookman occurred about 1900, when Elbert
Hubbard decided that it was about as close as he could come to the
typographical style of William Morris, whom he emulated at his
Roycroft Press. In thousands of rural American homes the Bookman-
composed Roycroft volumes, bound.in suede, represented the ulti-
mate of sophistication in the accumulation of a modest library.
However it was its commercial use that kept Bookman active as a
standard type during the first quarter of this century. When a designer
of that time was confronted with reproduction by offset lithography
or gravure, the specification of Bookman seemed de rigueur- it didn't
appear necessary (or possible) to bother with typographic niceties
when faced with the imprecision of early photomechanics, so the
rugged Bookman was the choice for any such printing processes in
which hairlines were reproduced haphazardly if at all. For many years
the best example of this approach was the week1y edition of Collier's
printed by the gravure process.
In 1925 J.L. Frazier, longtime editor of the Inland Printer and
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Photo version of Bookman, with swash variants

the typographic authority for a majority of small printing shops,

surveyed the adv<;rtising in four national magazines of that year for
type use. He discovered that out of 404 ads, 125 were composed in ,
Caslon and 78 in Bookman (he didn't disclose the number set in
Cheltenham, but! quite possibly it was the other 201, that being
the state of advertising typography in 1925 just prior to the advent of
the 'Jazz Age' types and the sans-serif revolution generated by the
Bauhaus).
Theodore L. De Vinne in Plain Printing Types, which was pub-
lished in 1900 (and is still an excellent source of information on types),
discussed some of the reasons for the popularity of heavy faces· for
book composition at the turn of the century. He stated that the book
critics had 'rightfully complained of a deficiency in blackness of ink
in recent [nineteenth-century] books' - this comment, of course,
echoes the fundariiental criticism of William Morris when he estab-
lished the Kelmscott Press. The reason for the 'deficiency in blackness'
in the 1800s is articulated in 'Nineteenth-Century Reactions Against
the Didone Type .Model' (in Quarendo, 1976), by the astute typographic
historian Professor G. W. Ovink of Amsterdam. Ovink pointed out

265
 A USEFUL TYPE
For Variety_ Of Fine
printing and $67890

UNIFORMITY
Was The Motive
in the creation of

VERY NICE
In Books, Ads
and job work
IN ADS IT
brings sales
New Bookman, designed for Monotype by Sol Hess

-
266
 that the modern faces had become increasingly condensed, and that
'a reaction against these crawling masses of heavy, parallel lines was
inevitable.'
It was the exigericies of mid-nineteenth-century typography that
had called fot complementary types of greater weight than possessed
by the stan~d old styles. This siruation resulted about 1858 in the
cutting by tjle Scottish foWldry Millc;r & Richard of a type that
was named Old Style Antique. The first American firm to produce a
similar face was MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, which issued its Old
Style Antiqu~ in 1869. Many other typefoW1dries followed suit within
the next few years, making Old Style Antique one of the most popular
designs. Tra<;ing the transition of Old Style Antique to Bookman is
particularly confusing, partly because of the reorganization of the
many American foWldries into the American Type Founders Com-
' the subsequent amalgamation of matrix production
pany in 1892 and
into a single ~tandard.
It appear~, however, that Wadsworth A. Parker is responsible for
the name Bookman, about 1900, and it is the Old Style Antique No.
310 of the Btjiee FoWldry that became the ATF version of Bookman.
(Parker had had the responsibility of producing the specimens for
the Bruce Fohndry, and he continued in the same capacity at ATF.)
He is also cr~dited with the innovation that has undoubtedly con-
tributed to Bookrnan's current popularity- the addition of the swash
characters and logotypes to both the roman and italic fonts. The italic
supplied to ~ookrnan is an oblique, or sloped, roman style, which
retains some rof the legibility of the roman when used in the mass;
this departure; from the normal italic is a feature that endeared Book-
man to many typographers confronted with copy containing an
abundance of italic.
The earliest ATF showing of the type, under the name Bookman
Roman, occurs in the American Line Specimen Book, of 1903. The italic
was initially shown in a supplement to that volume, issued in 1905.
Old Style Antique continued in use for many years, thanks to a
mechanical improvement added to the Linotype machine about 1900.
This was the ~uplex (two-letter) matrix, which could contain both a
roman and afl italic, thus simplifying the composition of roman and
italic type in the same line. However, in the typography of news-
papers italic i~ not widely used in the news columns, editors preferring
boldface in its place. Confronted with this requirement, the Mergen-
thaler firm supplied an Old Style Antique as the second character on
 D I R E PROPHECY 0 .. T H E HOWLING DOG

C H A P T E R X "What's the reason he don't know it?"

The two boys flew on and on, toward the village, "Because he'd just got that whack when In-
speechless with horror. They glanced backward jun Joe done it. 0' you reckon he could see any-
over their should= from time to time, appre• thing? D' you reckon he knowed anything?''
hensive!y, as if they feared they might be foJ. "By hokey, that's so, Tomi,.
lowed. Every stump that started up in thcir "Andbesides,look-a-here-maybe that whack
path·seemed a man and an enemy, and made done for him.!"
them catch their breath; and as they sped by "No, 'tain't likely, Tom. He had liquor in
some outlying cottages that lay near the village, him; I could see that; and besides, he always
the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed has. Well, when pap's full, you might take and
to give wings to their feet. belt him over the head with a church and you
"If we can only get to the old tannery before couldn't phase him. He says so, his own self. So
we break down!" whispered Tom, in. short
catches between breaths, "I can't stand it much
longer."
Huckleberry's hard panting• were his only
reply, and the boys fixed their eyes on the goal
of their hopes and bent to their work to win it.
They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to
breast, they burst through the open door and
fell grateful and exbaust.ed in the sheltering
shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed
down, and Tom whispered:
"Huckleberry, what do you reckon 'II come
of this?"
"If Or. Robinson dies, I reckon hanging ?l
come of it.•'
"Do you though?''
"Why, I know it, Tom."
Tom thought awhile, then he said:
"Who'll tell? We?"
"What are you talking about? S'pose some• it's the same with Muff Potter, of course. But
thinghappenedandlnjunJoedidn't hang?Why if a man was dead sober, I reckon maybe that
he'd kill us some time or other,just as dead sure whack might fetch him; I dono."
as we're a-laying here." After another reflective silence, Tom said:
"That's just what I was thinking to myself, "Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?"
Huck." "Tom. We Aat to keep mum. You know that.
"If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if That lnjun devil wonldn't make any more of
he's fool enough. He's generally drunk enough." drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was
Tom said nothing-went on thinking. Pres- to squeak 'bout this and they didn't hang him.
ently he whispered: Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take and swear to
"Huck, MuffPotter don't know it. How can one another-that's what we got to do-swear
he tell?" tokeepmwn.,.

Bookman as used in Pynson Printers edition of The Ad11entures of T<nn Smryer, New
York, 1930

268
the matrix. In later years, of course, it became necessary to design
a proper match~g boldface for more sophisticated use, but the use
of the term antique for this purpose continued for the earlier styles
which were not modernized.
The two-letter matrix, though accepted as a practicality, was never
approved of by cypographers. Normally an italic is of narrower set
width than a roman, as a comparison of alphabets of single type will
disclose. But a slug-machine italic had to be the same width as the
roman as it occupied the same matrix. The italic therefore appeared
deficient. In the matter of boldface, a similar difficulty was apparent,
as normally the tjold letter would be wider than the normal weight.
Nevertheless, in the United States typesetting by the slug machine
became the mainI method of composition, so the two-letter matrix
was employed. The advent of phototypesetting will alleviate some of
the earlier mechanical constrictions of the older machines, bur no
doubt there will shll be problems in maintaining purity of letter form.
Bookman today is generally thought of as a type for advertising
and commercial use. Present typographic taste in book design being
what it is, it is doubtful that the old-style antiques will ever return to
general favor. In pie future, therefore, we can expect to continue to
see Bookman mo~tly in advertising. And given the vagaries of that
world, it is difficult to predict when Bookman may be returned to
honest retirement:,
 TIMES ROMAN

Of all the typefaces developed during the past seventy years, Times
Roman is the one most frequently singled out as typifying the twen-
tieth century. The design is currently available to printers from all
the standard sources - foundry type, Monotype, Linotype, lntertype~
and Ludlow - in addition to· most of the phototypesetting machines,
both keyboard and hand-operated. Times Roman has even been digi-
tized for the cathode-ray-tube typesetters. It is a universahype. -
The design of the font is credited to Stanley Morison, the noted
English typographic historian, who·was asked by the management of
The Times of London to restyle that newspaper in 1929. The circum-
stance that prompted this move was Morison's brusque article 'News-
paper Types: A Study of The Times: which was written for a special
number of that paper devoted to twentieth-century printing issued
on October 29, 1929. In it Morison severely criticized The Times for
being both badly printed and typographically out of date. The com-
mission to redesign it was a challenge that pre-empted his censure.
In his article Morison had said that the Times's typeface (a nine-
teenth-century modern roman) was 'cut off from the mainstream of
typographic endeavour.' Continuing, he stated, 'For, whereas the
history of the craft is that of letter-cutting and founding as applied to
the printing of books, the history of newspapers is that of mechanical
development of the typesetting machine and the power press -the
newspapers being left untouched, either by the aesthetic movement
of the nineties or the arts and crafts movement represented by William
Morris.' At a meeting of a committee of important staff members of
the newspaper, Morison went on to say that in his opinion the types
employed for The Times should 'be brought to the standard obtaining
in the average book as brought out by London publishers.'
It so happened that during the 192os there had been an increasing
interest in the study of legibility factors in type design on the part
of both typographers and psychologists. There also exisred a wide
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Tnncs New Rorpan (English Monotype)

divergence of opinion on whether continued research in the legibility

of printing type should follow aesthetic or mechanical concepts. One
of the most iplportant of the early studies of the subject had recently
been published, by His Majesty's Stationery Office, R. L. Pyke's The
Legibility ofRrint (1926)-
A further,stimulation to Morison's thinking was the 1926 cutting
in America qf Ionic by the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. Ionic
was the first 1 of a series of so-called legibility types produced for
newspaper u~. It had immediate and enormous success, for it was
designed specifically to meet the mechanical requirements of modem
newspaper p~oduction.
As early :i.s the last decade of the nineteenth century, the noted
American pri;nter Theodore L. De Vinne and Linn Boyd Benton of
the American Type Founders Company had jointly produced a 'type
for a purpose' in the Century design, created for the specialized printing
requirements! of Century magazine. The Cheltenham type of Bertram
Goodhue, i~ued by ATF in 1902, was also originally conceived as
a legibility type for the printing of books. In addition, the French
Alphonse Legros and the English J.C. Grant_ in their authoritative
manual on the mechanics of typesetting, Typographical Printing Sur-
faces (1916), included a chapter on legibility. All of this activity in the
area of typographic legibility provided impetus to the perception
that the style pf The Times was due for a complete revision.

271
 THE TIMES FlllDAY DECEMBE& 2 1932
dorts wbidl dUI hu ·10Y01wd 10 dtie
Britiah nation. c:omina u they did aftCf
the Joues nsulllna Crom the Wu. comti-
WASHINGTON RENT CONTROL
tuae. iA 1he .-icw of his Majaly 1 Gowm-
VIEWS
0

lDffll. a 11ron.s daim to C'Oftlidcration oa.

Ille""""' tho Uaikd SWcs Ciov....-OL CHANGES IN NEW
sHis
.n . - .... -
Majesty's CrOffl'llll'lfflt also call
lllttenlioll to· the chanps of circumstance BILL
whkh ha.,. incna,,d tho burdm of thaf DISCUSSIONS AT
0
~.:fint ploa tho Brililb debt Is
a,......i i• UffllOof aold.bul tho. burdco WHITE HOUSE RIGHTS OF TENANT
an the Britilh people it measured m tcmK
of sterlina. The payment dUe on AND LANDLORD
Dccan.ba- IS d owins to dtit circurrtSlanm
.......... flOIII £19,7,0.000 •• appro,u.
~l'i.. £30..!'!t°';;,.. ,be ...,... whole·
THE EFFECT ON
.
..... ow...._ c.......-
knpona,uchon... ia t h e - - of
sale price index in ih• Uniral s,.,.. of CONGRESS nnl rlSlrielion and .....,.., arc eo""1ned
ArMrica durins I.he period when the debt in the Ciovernmca..,•• new llmt and Mort-
was ineurrcd was 189. and is DO"' under ft0IC out OWN COUUl'OND£HT PIC lnlercst Rettricuom (Ammdment)
94 (lakin1 l91J •• • bu.a in each c:.P!>- WASHINCiTON DIC. I Bill. th. tnt of whielt 1111111 be iuumdi to,.
~• 0~ ~~°.:, i ~ :!>' ,: A copy of the ..cond Britiat; Nace wu ~y.. ltiahoped' ~oolMain • 1CCOOII ....,._
amount which wu borrowed. ICflt • 8.30 this mornin1 to the midcDCa •na befo~ tbeC?9n1,imu ~
In the third place the ctfcct of 1M of Mr. Stim10n and by him was at°"" ~B1lteamaou11homa1nNCOmmea-
Anwricaa Tllffff hu been &o resUict tbe iall.ea. 10 Praidcnt Hoover al tilt Whiu dauom of lbc report of ~ Deparanental
::'uru~~~~:in~ House. Mr. Mills, SrcfcWl'
when I.he British War Debt was funded; ~"':caa=:n~•~~crc:a:-
o( Iha e::.iuao:r~=~=~
M!p of Lord Marley. It nco,niza ~t
die War Debt alltlui!Y amounled 10 lenJlh. Lacer in lhe morDins Mr. Scimsoa pm-ace c1ucrprile hu-now c:11u1bt. up Wida
OJ.000,000. or approllim.Uel)- half tho. Went to the State Department where ha lhe ·demand for tbe bat type of ~
value o( the- British· domesUc expom to
the United States (£6'?,0l:'().000). From
1933 0111111arda lhe aamulY 1n respect of lhe
le wu then :na~
was joioed t, lho 8 .tisb: ~buudo

I.be Note would be .

thal the ten :,
to the • Prca
whieh were controlled under tbe ons;iul
lqisbaion. It is npidly ca1ehin1-ua, willl
the ~ lypc ~r home. fot the bettera
Wu Debt would amount at present nles IOOn after rhe Stock E ~ was closed clau artssan, bu! , hu oot yet solved 1he
=':'"a:~'::'~~ for,:There
U. d_.y.
"
!he UniredStau::sor America 11m yuc.ue no reason lo doubt lhlt Mr.
::':;.o~~~aL~~.Jt~
WhetehOUR"&ollhis1ypeansdecontrolled
ooc likely 10 cxcu:d £Iii 000 000 Strmson. was able to COIJVCY to Si!·Romld the rm, may jumpup·la BO per cenl. above
The im_poru in10 lhc'Uaited°Kinsdom Lindsay lhci canclus1ons 9!:hic.h M_r. 1he pre-War fl,ure. a"nd·lhe Governmcnl
from the United Sta.la show .an ~•Uy Hoover had reached aad_Jo •nd ~ 10 •0 nmpize1haeforlhcseho"9Clfullcootrol
acncnl lhe _.11aiure of tbe Prcsklat s •
remarkable: fall fro,n £211 000 000 in 1923
0
10£S!JJlOO,OOOinlbetirsl ni~monlhsor
l932. _The ,ocaa t ~ bct'M:ca the ~
::::::::.":~?3'«1~~:::.
men11
musi eoaliouc.

of the British GovernfflClllt. It is

PLAN FOR FIVE YEARS
co1m&r11:s from the ume of the Fund1111 common know!ed;e th&l. iftdq,cn- The Bill accordinaly propo,cs that thera
~~ has faUen from abaul dcntly of lbcir prcxnlalioa by 1.ondao. lhall be immediate decontrol o[ hoUla
--~Jl00.000 a ynr 10 £100,000,000. 1hcx ar,urne~ are in ;i larae wUh a rateable "alue whida in 1931 wa1
6; E.coaoaalr Readloal .or llt,aama War sense found· corwiCJcina not only more 1b;1.n £4j in the Metropolitan Police
~ Paymeats by M!". Hoov.:r. but by a11 -those whose l>istrie1 O:S in. tlM rest of Enpand aad
The United Kingdom has up 10 th-I exc:cu.trvc posilion here ,aivis them • Wales. ind (,45 in ScolJand. A period of
pt"C1,cn1 generally t>ccn lhc bc!,1 C"Us1omct know1cd1c "' and a concern in "lhc. •orld &ix molllh:f. will clapae before mor.ppa
of 1hc United States. but, if War Debi p■)'a situation. What ~er:t the Brilish Nol:C, on. the~ h~l&Jb are dson1r0Ued. Houw:s
m.cnts had lo be resumed. lhc very heavy 1hc recornmcnda&.inns Mt. Hoover will with a nteable VUUO t,enwecn .£20 and £,&S
.adverse balance of visible trade between make, and· &he p-owlft.s mus of opinion in &he Metropolitan" Police Dis.iricl, £1)
lhe United Kingdom :and the Unned favoun.ble 10 friendly adjusrmmt will and £3ji in the re11 of Enaland and Wala
States o[ America (£78.000.000 in 1931) hava upon Conar~s is still doubtful and C6 h. and £4S in Scotland will still
would have t_o be rcdtK'Cd by adopli!1,I almost to 1he potbt of detpair. be subject 10 dec:on1rol when they become
~i~~r~~:!'s J~~rf:!:ah~~r~
t~ c,;lenl, 1hettforc.. that payments were
AGRICULTURISTS" VIEWS
11 i<s true thal some hold IO the beiief
:.C::'ih! ::~:!'ru :c_: :t;: ,;:!U,:
0 1
uoUcd when tky bec:omic vacan1. but
resumed 10 the United States Treasury a lhar a det:pcr impression •as made upon houses which arc already deconuoUed will
det:in,te loss rnusl follow to 1he lJru&cd 1hosc members of the Scna1c Finat1cc and rem.in dec:onlroUcd. A retbtcr will be
SU.tes prOOUccr. Hou~ W.1)-s and Means commirlCc:li whu- kert b)' 101:..1 authorities of ho~ fallin1
Moreover, hts Majc~1y·$ Gov":mment j were called 1n by the Prcstdcnr some time wi1hin these limils which are already
would aJ!;.O ha.,,c to .suard ag1un<iol lhc ac'"' 1han could di<crccdy appe.1r in the
dfc..--is which would follow if the uniQUC : st.item..-nt or views issued br Mr. Hoover
dCC\lllCrolli:d. and if a, l:a.ndlorrl does not
reaisacr a house vrithitt a ,pccificd 1imc i1
~:~i~:~1d~;~~!~ ~it't~::~h!~ J :~::: ~~~C:.:!'~:a:a~:• ~u!' :::~: : !!:_=~•1~~::'t:!~e;a~~c:1~1;•::
1

c.leb1ors of America 10 ob1a1n !\lcrlang I mukc 1h1,

c.,·idcnl. It i~ true a.llO that the as n01 renewed rent C'C$1r1ct1on "A11l then
which 1hcy would then >ell act(I~~ 1hf: l asr~cultura.l 1n1crcs1,. for the relt.:r of come to an end.

Times New Roman as used in The Times (London) edition of December 2, 1932

Part of the popularity enjoyed by Linotype Ionic, a design of

Clarendon origin, was due to its rich color, a feature contrasting fav9r-
ably with the rather anemic modern romans then widely used in
newspapers. Morison disapproved of these romans, believing that
the 'colorful' juxtaposition of stroke differences as represented by the

272
old-style letter forms was preferable to the monotony of the antique
style.
In his report to the publisher Morison wrote:
The Times will not be recommended to introduce anything remotely resembling
the aesthetic faces of the private press movement of the 19th century, nor one
of the mass produqion faces which American newspapermen have recently
brought out, but rather . . . by articulating the problem of a new type with
relevant detail of past and present practice, to assist the Committee towards
the adoption of a (ont which shall be English in its basic tradition, new,
though free from cqnscious archaism or conscious art, losing no scintilla of
that 'legibility: whil!:h rests upon fundamental ocular laws, or that of'read-
abiliry; which rests upon age-long customs of the eye.

There have be,en several accounts of the provenance of Times

New Roman, the name of the type created for the restyling of the
newspaper. Moris,on is, of course, listed as its designer, but it is
obvious that since; he was not a draftsman he could not have drawn
the type himself. Rather, he brought his ideas to an artist, who pre-
pared the drawings from which the type was cut.
Although Mor~son had commended what he called the -technical
superiority of Ionic, he stated that for the Times's purposes it would
be more producti'('e to redesign a nineteenth-cenrury modern type
albeit with an approach similar to Ionic's. It is therefore perplexing
that he in fact turned to the old-style form once he was charged with
preparing a new type. One must assume that in arriving at his decision
Morison was impressed by R. L. Pyke's praise in his legibility report
for three Monotyp~ faces, two of which were old-style. Whatever the
case, Morison selected Monotype Plan.tin n3 as the model for the
new newspaper type.
Morison then asked Victor Lardent, an artist employed in the
Times's advertisingj department, to srudy a photographic copy of a
page printed by Cl\ristopher Plantin, the sixteenth-cenrury Antwerp
printer. The type stjown on this page had been identified as a Robert
Granjon cutting and had already been used as the source of Mono-
type Plantin. Lardent worked up alphabets from this model, which
were subsequently revised by Morison until his desired effects were
attained. Basically, [these were maximum legibility and economy of
space, displaying th~ salient attributes of the finest book types.
The design that emerged from the Morison-Lardent collaboration
resembles its PlantiJ?. model in outline, but its sharp serifs and higher
degrees of contrast: lend it a sparkle never achieved by Monotype

273
Plantin. As the type already employed by the newspaper was called
Times Old Roman, the revision became simply Times New Roman.
American manufacrurers of the type have dropped the 'New.'
On October 3, 1932, The Times appeared in its new typeface. The
newspaper held exclusive rights to the type for just one year, after
which the design was released for copies produced by the Linotype
and Intertype firms.
The new face was very successful for The Times, but it never gained
popularity with other newspapers, particularly in the United States.
The reason for this lies in the procedures of newspaper production.
The Times was unique in its use of newsprint that was a good deal
whiter (and, of course, more expensive) than that of other periodicals;
the paper held a stronger impression than lower-quality newsprints,
carrying more ink on the page. To most newspaper publishers such
printing was a luxury not to be imitated. Thus Times Roman, which
for its success required higher-quality newsprint, never replaced the
standard legibility types in American newspapers. But it soon came
into favor as a type for book and commercial printing.
W ricing in 1953, Stanley Morison said of his design, now flourishing
outside the world of newsprint: 'Morris would have denounced the
heresy of the original cutting immediately. As a new face it should,
by the grace of God and the art of man, have been broad and open,
generous and ample; instead, by the vice of Mammon and the misery
of the machine, it is bigoted and narrow, mean and puritan.' Con-
temporary critical opinion, nevertheless, favors Morison over Morris
(although it should be pointed out that without Morris's impact on
th~ consciousness of printers, there would have been relativdy few
with sufficient typographic sophistication to have an opinion of any
kind concerning type designs).
Perhaps an indication of the value of Trmes Roman as a book
type of the first order was its purchase by the extremely conservative
D. B. Updike of the Merrymount Press in Boston, who became the .
first American printer to employ the design. Indeed, Updike's own ·
last book-Some Aspects of Printing, Old and New, published in 1941
(the year of his death)-is set in the Morison type.
The American use of Times Roman increased when David Silve, as.,
consultant to the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, recommended-
the face for the restyling of the firm's magazines. The December 1941 :
issue of Woman's Home Companion accordingly published a spread in .
Times New Roman (set by the Merrymount Press), and by August-

274
 THE TIMES NEW ROMAN 21
behind a change of type face, serious for any newspaper, are
doubly so for a journal of this scope.
Fortunately, in addition to its individual experience,
The Times cpuld draw upon a rich fund of knowledge derived
from the comprehensive printing supplements which it issued
in 1913 anq 1930, and the special supplement dealing with
the printing ; of books which was presented with its Literary
Supplement pf October, 1928. With such an accumulation
of data it 'Yas possible to design with some confidence the
three new b?<1y founts, 5½, 7, and 9 point; to design, also, a
complete series of heading founts ; ·and to prepare every detail
in Printing ijouse Square.
The new designs, controlled by the specific requirements
of the case, ;differ from the text and heading founts of every
other press, 6r newspaper, or book printer in the world. "The
Times New Roman" (as it is called) is new; but while it is
an il'Hlovatiqn, it is also something of a reaction. The
"modern" ;type characteristic of the English newspapers
is, as has been said, a version. of the design which, invented
between 1780 and 1790, came to full development between
1800 and 18~0. By the time Queen Victoria ascended the
throne it hap completely supplanted, whether in books or
in newspapers, the early Georgian " old face " cut by William
Caslon and u~ed in The Times until November, 1799. Caslon's
design stems directly through Garamond to a roman first
used by Aldus in 1495. "The Times New Roman" possesses
many structuralI
features to be found in this distinguished
archetype. l'fevertheless, it is not exactly an "old face," for
its sharp serifs are tokens of "modem face." It is a news-
paper type-apd hardly a book type-for it is strictly appointed
for use in short lines-i.e., in columns. A modified design
will be cut for book-work. Typographical pundits will pro-
bably classify the design as a " modernized old face." Ordinary

Tunes New Roman used as a book type in Pnnting the Times, by Stanley Morison

275
ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWX
abcdefghijklmno pqrstuvwxyz
Plantin (English Monotype)

1942 the entire magazine employed the type. Following suit were the
American magazine in October and Collier's in December.
However, the wide use of Times Roman in American printing
did not take place until the close of the Second World War. Since
then it has been chosen primarily for commercial printing, magazines,
and books ( a few newspapers use it, but it has never been able ro
compete with other legibility types designed for ordinary newsprint).
Its popularity constitutes solid proof of Morison's dicrum 'For a new
font to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few recognize
its novelty.'
The universality of the acceptance of Times Roman has in turn
served to enlarge its usefulness. The English Monotype firm has
adapted the type to Greek and Cyrillic, provided long descenders for
book work, added several weights, and supplied the countless extra
characters necessary in the various printing specialties but so rarely
provided in types brought out for general use.
Alas, despite all this, The Times in 1972 abandoned the type it had
spawned. The paper went over to a new letter, named Times Europa,
which lends itself more favorably to the newest methods of newspaper
production-phototypesetting and web-offset reproduction.
 N!EWSP APER TYPES

In the days before f Baltimore mechanic-watchmaker named Ottmar

Mergenthaler invented the machine that industrialized typesetting in
1884, most nineteenth-cenmry newspapers were compGsed in type-
faces that can be loqsely termed modern romans.
The origins of such types stemmed from the innovations in the
latter years of the eighteenth century of Giambattista Bodoni in
Italy and the Didot dynasty of printers in France. By 1800 English
rypefounders were I beginning to produce types resembling these
Continental styles but with an admixture of Caslon and Baskerville.
The resulting adulteration was not at all distinguished, but the types
were reasonably leg~ble in the sizes called nonpareil, minion, brevier,
and bourgeois (tod~y referred to as 6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-point), those
sizes commonly used. for newspaper compGsition.
The modern romans also bore up well under the wear and tear of
printing on newspript, a low-grade paper, and readily survived the
rigors of stereotype f110lding for both newspaper and book printing.
By the mid-nineteeo,th cenrury the stereotype duplicate plate was a
great help to the book printer, who always seemed to be running out
of type in his cases. Its wide use probably precluded a more rapid
development of the ,composing machines, since types lasted longer
when it was not necessary to print directly from them. In fact,
Mergenthaler first qperimented with a typesetter that produced a
stereotype- molding,, but it was not until the development of the
rotary press, in the 1860s, that stereotyping became common in the
larger newspaper offi~.
Typographic hist~rians have tended to disregard the newspaper
typefaces. Since inventive inspiration in the great expansionist period
of the post-Civil War era was diverted in printing to mechanical de-
vices, the aesthetics of type design were rarely considered. Thus, most
book types and new~paper fonts appeared to have almost identical

277
 characteristics, hardly enhancing the heritage of classic letter forms.
And as their parentage was somewhat suspect, they have generally
been left out of the standard histories. Daniel Berkeley Updike, for
example, in his Printing Types (1922), speaks of newspaper types
exactly once (in a description of the specimen sheet of Alexander
Wilson & Son, the Glasgow typefound.ing firm). He did, however,
mention the first stereotyped book, printed in London in 1804, which
was set in a type he termed modern and was clearly a forerunner of
the newspaper types appearing later in the century.
Theodore L. De Vinne in his Plain Printing Types (1900) describes
the typical stubby serifs and few kerned letters resulting from the
requirements of molding wax or plaster. These factors, naturally
enough, worked against the continuation of the Bodoni-Didot tra-
dition of strong contrast and hairline serifs. Book and newspaper
printers were beginning to demand more utilitarian styles to meet
the exigencies of an increasingly mechanized industry.
De Vinne, who was an innovative practical printer in addition
to being a typographic scholar, also believed that the replacement of
the hand presses by cylinder presses had contributed to the printers'
decline in enthusiasm for the long ascenders and descenders of the
Bodoni styles. He wrote that such types •could not properly resist the
force applied' by the advanced press equipment then coming into
wide use. So the tendency of both rypefounders and printers during
most of the nineteenth century was to steer clear of aesthetic compli-
cations in printing production. This resulted, unfortunately, in the
development of letter forms that, despite their poor designs, eventu-
ally became standard for the composition of continuous reading
material.
That these letters were characterless, truly anemic, in appearance
seemed to matter very little. Possibly because of their lack of indi-
viduality, they were designated by number rather than by name,
even after naming type designs had become a common practice. A
numbering system also made it easier for a founder to market a copy
of a competitor's type; so Minion No. 2, for example, was reissued as
Minion No. 5.
A concurrent blandness permeated the typographic output of
straight-matter types in the 1840s. Visual relief depended on the
development at this time of the myriad display types of kaleidoscopic
variety that characterize for us nineteenth-century typography. In-
deed, the constant demand for decorative display faces made their
 C:ENTUIW ROMAN

WHEN, in the course of human events, it become,s necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume, ampng the powers of the earth, the separate .and equal station to which
the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of: mankind requires that they should declare the canses which impel
them to thEj separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created! equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalien-
able rights ; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just wwers from the consent of the governed ; that, whenever any form
of governm~nt becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its J011,nda-
tion on sue~ prineiples, and organizing its powers in iruch form, as to them

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1234567890

WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one

people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate
and equal l!tation to which the laws of nature and of nature's God en-
title them, 1 a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that
they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold th~ truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;
that they 'are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights; thl}t among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi-
ness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the ccmsent of the governed ; that,
whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
I
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1234567890

WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for

one people: to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the
earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature
and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opin-
ions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are en-
dowed by thei,r Creator with certain unalienable r79hts ; that
among these, are life, Uberty, and the pursuit of ha'P]>iness. That,

I ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1234567890

Century Roman (ATP, c. 1898)

279
Linotype Excelsior superimposed upon Roman No. 2, showing larger counter-spaces
to reduce ink-trapping in high-speed printing

production the most profitable aspect of the foundries' business and

reinforced the neglect of the text types.
It is no wonder that in 1890 William Morris, in righteous indig-
nation, rurned the clock back some four cenruries, at least as far as
book types were concerned. As an antidote to blandness, he promoted
the use of solid (albeit ungainly) black-letter types. But though the
Morris revival definitely affected book and commercial typography,
the newspaper primers remained aloof from innovation, maintaining
their adherence to the well-established <modern' roman. A rationale
for this was that the heavier, or bolder, types in the small sizes used
for editorial content were subject to ink-trapping in the counter-
spaces. In addition, the newer types were not as narrow, and eco-
nomical, as the existing romans.
At first mechanized typesetting increased the reliance on the plainer
types. With the successful launching of Mergenthalel"s machine in
the 1880s, and the need to supply it with types in matrix form, his
company very early rumed to the modern romans already available
from the typefounders under several names and numbers. When the
Intenype machine was developed in 1912, the numbered types received
similar attention. In fact, both of these firms today still show in their

280
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV
WXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw
xyz .,-;:'!?$&fffiflffiffi() 1234567890
ABCDEFG HIJKLMNOPQR
STUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm
nopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
., -;:""!?$&fffiflffiffi O
Cenrury Expanded ( ATI!)

caralogue several of. the styles thar originated during that dry period
of the mid-ninetee~th century. The emphasis then, of course, was
not on the introd4crion of new types, but- as expressed in the
company literature-on supplying 'a complete type founclry in a
single machine.
In the area of m~gazine priming, greater artistic scope was per•
mitted. De Vinne worked with the American Type Founders Company
in the 1890s to develop what was probably the earliest type designed
for a specific purpo~: rhe Century typeface for Century magazine.
In this instance, the lresulr was highly successful, the product being
the popular Century family of type~- Noting the high quality of
printing presses and paper then becoming available, De Vinne pro-
posed thickening the thin lines of the modern romans and beefing up
the serifs, in order td get away from what he termed the feebleness
of the existing typefaces. He maintained, however, the economical
narrow width of the periodical type. In the development of Century,
De Vinne collaborated with Linn Boyd Benton of ATF.
The magazine's publishers, cognizant of the economies of a nar-
rower face, were greatly pleased with the type when the first issue of
Century appeared in i896. A somewhat wider-set ".ersion than rhe
 AD American newspaper man.ase- An American newspaper manage-
men& once vhidlY expressed a g:rea& ment onee vividly expressed a
truth abon& text ~ when &bey
great truth about text types when
said 'lleople are tired of type &ba& the:, said 'people are tired of type
mamb-ies They were annonndns
1•

an increase in &he dze of &heir jom- that mumbles'. The:, were an-
nars body brl,e. Sise alone does no&, nouncing an increase in the size
however, determine readability, or of their Journal's body type. Size
i:eneral ease of reading, especially alone does not, however, deter-
m terms of quantity of narrow- mine readability, or general ease
column matter. Other factors are of reading, especially in terms of
(i) reproduction: the type must
print clearly even when stereotyped quantity of narrow-column mat-
and rotary-machined, which means ter. Other factors are (i) reproduc-
that It has to have a clean and Open tion: the type must print clearly
cut; (ii) colour: the drawing of the even when stereotyped androtary-
letter should be strong enough to machined, which means that it
avoid greyness, even with thin Inks
at higli speeds, while retaining suf- has to have a clean and open cut;
(ii) colour: the drawing of the
ficient contrast between the thick letter should be strong enough to
and thin strokes to beat monotony;
<iii> proportion: the height/width avoid greyness, even with thin
relationship should be oblong, not inks at high speeds, while retain-
square. and the bod:ir of the type (x- ing sufficient contrast between
heillht) must not seriously encroach the thick and thin strokes to beat
on the ascenders, those upper dis- monotony; (iii) proportion: the
tinguishing strokes which perform
an essential optical function. By the height/width relationship should
I.e. alphabet 115 pta: figs ·05r I.e. alphabet 123 pta; l!gs ·062"

Linotype Excelsior

AD American newspaper manage- An American newspaper man-

ment once vf-,tdly expressed a great agement once vividly expressed
truth about sen types when they a great truth about text types
said 'neople are tired of type that
mumb-ies'. They were announcing when they said 'people are tired
an Increase in the size of thel;r jour- of type that mumbles.' They were
nal's body &ype. Size alone does not, announcing an increase in the
however, determine readability, or size of their Journal's body type.
general ease of reading, especially Size alone does not, however,
in terms of quantity of narrow- determine readability, or gen-
column matter. Other factors are eral ease of reading, especially
(i) reproduction: the - type must
print clearly even when stereotyped in terms of quantity of narrow-
and rot;aey-machined, which means column matter. Other factors
that it has to have a clean and open are (1) reproduction: the type
cut; (ll) colour : the drawing of the must print clearly even when
letter should be strong_ enough to stereotyped and rotary-mach-
avoid greyness, even with thiri inks ined, which means that it has
at hlgfi speeds, while ret.alning_suf- to have a clean and open cut;
ftcient contrast between the thick
and thin strokes to beat monotony; (11) colour: the drawing of the
(iii) proportion: the height/width letter should be strong enough
relationship should be oolong, not to avoid greyness, even with
square, and the body of the type (x- thin inks at high speeds, while
height> must not seriously enci'oa.ch retaining sufficient contrast
on the ascenders, those upper dis- between the thick and thin
tlngwahing strokes which perform strokes to beat monotony; (11)
an essential optical function. By the
I.e. alphabet 114 pta; llgs ·055" I.e. alphabet 127 pta; lip -062"

Linotype Ionic
 An American newspaper manage- An American newspaper man•
ment once ,vividly expressed a agement once vividly expressed
great truth abont text types when a great troth about text types
they said 'pepple are tired of type when they said 'people are tired
that mumbles'. They were an-
nouncing an: increase in the sfze of type that mumbles'. They
of their Journal's body type. Size were announcing an Increase In
alone does JtOt, however, deter- the size of their journal's body
mine readabpity, or general ease type. Size alone does not, how-
of reading, especially in terms of ever, determine readability, or
quantity of narrow-column matter. general ease of reading, es-
Other factors are (0 reproduction: pecially in terms of quantity of
the type must prmt clearly even
when stereotyped and rotary- narrow-column matter. Other
machined, which means that it has factors are (i) reproduction: the
to have a clean and open cut; (ii) type must print clearly even
colour: the drawing of the letter when stereotyped and rotary-
should be strong enough to avoid machined, which means that it
greyness, even with thin inks at has to have a clean and open
hi~h speeds, ! while retaining suf- cut; (ii) colour: the drawing
ficient contrast between the thick
and thin strokes to beat monotony; of the letter should be strong
(iii) proportion: the height/width enough to avoid greyness, even
relationship should be oblong, not with thin inks at_ high speeds,
square, and the body of the type while retaining sufficient con-
(x-beight) !I],Ust not seriously en- trast between the thick and thin
croach on the ascenders, those up- strokes to beat monotony; (iii)
per distinguishing strokes which
I.e. alphabet 120 pts; !Igo ·059' Le. alphabet 129 pta; !Igo ·062"

Linotype Paragon

An American' newspaper manage- An American newspaper manage-

ment once vlvidlY expressed a great ment once vividly expressed a
truth about text types when they great truth about text types when
said •people· are tired of type that they said 'people are tired of type
mumbles". They were announclng
an increase int the size of their Jour- that mumbles'. They were an•
nal's bod:, type. She alone does not. nouncing an increase In the size
however, determine readabilH:,, or of their journal's body type. Size
general ease j)f reading, especially alone does not, however, deter-
in terms of ;quantity of narrow- mine readability, or general ease
column matter. Other factors are of reading. especially in terms of
(I) reproduction: the type must
print clearly e,ven when stereotyped quantity of narrow-column matter.
and rotary-machined, which means Other factors are (i) reproduc-
that it has to ~ave a clean and o~ tion: the type must print clearly
cut; (ll) colour: the drawing of the even when stereotyped and rotary.
letter should be strong enough to machined, which means that it
avoid greynes$, even with thin inks has to have a clean and open cut;
at high speeds, while retaining suf-
ficient· contrast between the thick (ii) colour: the drawing of the
and thin stroli:es to beat monotony; letter should be strong enough to
(Iii> pro_portlon: the bel.gbt/width avoid greyness, even with thin
relationship should be oblong, not inks at high speeds, while retain-
square, and the body of the type in; sufficient contrast between the
<x-heigbt) must not seriously en- thick and thin strokes to beat
croach on the· ascenders: those UP- monotony; (iii) proportion: the
per distinguishing strokes which
perform an essential optical func- height/width relationship should
1.c. alphabet 112 pta; !Igo •055' t.c. alphabet 111 pta; ftp -oe2•

Linotype Corona ·
HOW IS ONE TO ASSESS AND EVALUATE A TYPE FACE IN TE
OF ITS ESTHETIC DESIGN? WHY DO THE PACE-MAKERS INT
How is one to assess and evaluate a type face in terms of its esthetic
design? Why do the pace-makers in the art of printing rave over a
specific face of type? What do they see in it? Why is it so superla-
tively pleasant to their eyes? Good design is always practical design.
And what they see in a good type design is, partly, its excellent prac-
tical fitness to perform its work. It has a "heft" and balance in all of
its parts just right for its size, as any good tool has. Your good chair has
all of its parts made nicely to the right size to do exactly the work that
the chair has to do, neither clumsy and thick, nor "skinny" and weak,
no waste of material and no lack of strength. And, beyond that, the
chair may have been made by a man who worked out in it his sense
of fine shapes and curves and proportions: it may be, actually, a work
of art. The same thing holds for shapes 0f letters. And your chair, or
your letter (if a true artist made it) will have, besides its good looks, a
suitability to the nth degree to be sat in, or stamped on paper and read.
That explains, in a way, why the experts rave over the fine shapes of
letters; but it fails to explain wherein the shapes are fine. If you seek
to go further with the inquiry, theories will be your only answer. Here
is a theory that the proponent thinks may have sense in it: Fine type
letters were, in the first place, copies of fine written letters. Fine writ-
ten letters were fine because they were produced in the most direct
and simple way by a tool in the hands of a person expert in its use, by
a person, moreover, who was an artist, Le., a person equipped to make
sound judgments about lines, curves, proportions, etc. The artist of
that moment when printing was invented who furnished the fine
written patterns for type was (luckily for printing) working at the
How is one to assess and evaluate a type face in terms of its esthetic
design? Why do the pace-makers in the art of printing rave over a
specific face of type? What do they see in it? Why is it so superla-

Linotype Opticon

original cutting was later marketed by ATF as Century Expanded.

This design, now available for most typesetting machines, has proved
its worth; over the past seventy-five years it has remained a favorite in
both commercial printing and advertising typography.
Nevertheless, none of this magazine activity had any immediate
9 Point No. 1 w;rb Italic and Small Caps (96,44) Lower case alphabet. 1.?7 points. Figures•. 0G22
HOW IS OXE TO ASSESS AND EVALUATE A TYPE FACE IN TERl1S OF ITS
How is one to a8sess and evaluate a type face in terms of its esthetic design? Why cl 1:l
II0111 is 011c to assess aiid.evaluate a type face iii terms of its esthetic designt Why c!Yn
10 roint No. 1 with Italic and Small Caps {106,10) Lower case alphabet, 134 l)Oints. Ficures . .OiO
HOW IS OXE TO ASSESS AND EVALUATE A TYPE FACE IN TER)[S 01''
How is one to assess and evaluate a type face in terms of its esthetic design? 12
How is one to assess and evaluate a type face in terms of its esthetic design? vn
11 roim No. 1 with Italic and Smail Ca.PS (1162) Lower case alphabet, 144 points. FigUres•.077
HOW IS O:XE TO .ASSESS AND EVALUATE A TYPE FACE INTER
How is one to assess ;md evaluate a type face in terms of its esthetic desig 12
H mo is one tp assess and evaluate a typeface in terms of its esthetio desig m
12 Point No. 1 with Italic and Small Caps U262) Lower case alphabet. 162 pbints. Fic.ures..084
HOW ISONE TO ASSESS AND EV ALUATE A TYPE FACE IN
How is one to ai.sess ancl evaluate a type face in terms of its esthe 12
How is one to assess and evaluate a typeface in terms of its est he VB
(n.. LINOTYPE-)

LIST OF CHARACTERS
in Two-Letter Fonts with Italic and SMALL CAPS

ABCD~FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
~CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
12345 a,bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 67890
VBCDE abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz FGRTJ
,. : ;? ! (I) '!'"--JECETh&£$. .. :fifl:ff:ffifflrere
,.s; '! ! AIQo"--ZECE lo N£PL ••• firffWMKH
12345 Z & : ( ) fl ffi ffl $ re re 67890
1234f u & : () ft ffi ffi $ ce ce 67890
1/s¾¾½%¾% XZ&lECE @ % tt§,r-[.]

Linotype Modem

impact on newspaper text, where the debased Bodoni-Didot types of

the 1800s continued to dominate the news columns into the twentieth
century. Surprisingly, though, in the advertising columns of news-
papers a typographit rejuvenation had already taken place between
1875 and 1900; that illone so much affected the appearance of news-
papers that one publisher, discussing the phenomenon with his col-
leagues, declared: 'Bbt, gentlemen, this is not journalism; this is bill-
posting!'
Moreover, alongjwith the visual stimulation in the ad alley had
come a change in t;he style of headings in the editorial section.
Cheltenham, available as of 1902, and its multiple variants took over
as a standard headline style in American newspapers, and to this day
it remains conspicuously with us in the daily edition of The New York
Tim~. -
It was not until the 1920s that American newspaper publishers,
finally aware of the concept of typographic legibility, began to consult
the composing-machine manufacturers about it. The firms, of course,
were delighted to comply with any request that would create a new
market for matrices. It was accordingly discovered that one of the
problems with the spindly types then used by newspapers was partly
the fault of the dry-molding of stereotypes, which required heavier
pressures than the obsolescent wet-matrix process. High-speed rotary
presses were also to blame for poor presswork. Indeed, the incessant
demand for greater production by publishers of large city dailies
where competition was keen had for too long been an element de-
teriorating the legibility of newspaper types.
In response to the awakened interest in types specially adapted
to newspapers, the designers at Mergenthaler Linotype Company
began a series of experiments with new letter forms. After four trial
fonts they came up with a modified 'Clarendon' style-a throwback
to the 18.sos, but nonetheless considerably different from the maligned
modem romans. Called Ionic No. 5, this new type was of large_
x-height and had shortened ascenders and descenders and solid,
bracketed serifs. In addition, the letter was of almost monotone
color. Cut, as were all Linotype faces from 1915 to 1950, under the
direction of C.H. Griffith, Ionic was completed about 1925. First
used by The Newark Evening News (N.J.), Ionic was a resounding
success. Within a year it had been adopted by some 3,000 newspapers
all over the world.
One would think that such popularity would have established
Ionic as the standard newspaper type for years to come. But the
manufacturers readily saw that the concept of typographic legibility
had opened up possibilities for profit that could go far beyond just
one type. The firms supplying the newspaper market therefore fur-
·ther experimented with innovative faces for newspapers. As legibility
was also currently receiving considerable attention from both reading
psychologists and typographers, Mergenthaler sponsored research in
this field in the hope that the findings could be translated into the
production of other lucrative types.
The results were not long in arriving. Five years after the intro-

286
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV
WXYZ 1234567890
abcdef;ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV
WXYZ: 1234567890
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV
wxyz: 1234567890
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
British Linotype Olympian

duction of lor,i.ic, a new face appeared in what was to become Lino-

type's Legibility Group. This was Excelsior, which incorporated
several feature~ of Ionic but in addition solved another problem that
was then becrn;ning apparent in newspaper production.
In a new h~gh-speed rotary press installed in Philadelphia, the ink
rollers had beeh melting from friction heating. It became necessary to
supply hard rupber rollers, which were less resilient than the defective
composition rollers and also tended to drag over the stereotype plate,
filling the counter spaces of the types with ink. This ink-trapping
difficulty was partially solved in Excelsior by op~ning up the counters
of the letters ttjus affected.
In any discµssion of newspaper typefaces, it is of interest to note
the gradual inGrease over a long period in the sizes used for editorial
 Ideal was one of the first type bines well with practically any
faces designed especially for ease other face which is based on a
in reading under adverse condi- modern roman structure.
tions. Its legibility in small or Ideal is the result of Inter-
larger sizes is unequaled. Ease type's scientific research and ex-
of reading is a major considera- perimentation. It was designed
tion in the choice of a type face for readability, proportioned for
where masses of words are re- legibility, and constructed for
quired. In basic form, Ideal is durability.
not unlike Century Expanded, Small types are a serious prob-
yet it has a more even line, with lem, especially when being used
hairlines that are heavier and in large masses for reference
serifs that are sturdier. It has works, textbooks, law and finan-
a lateral look as opposed to cial printing, or for newspapers
Century Expanded's vertical ap- or publications which have to be
pearance. It sets slightly wider, read hastily and often in poor
but its word count is high. light. This type face is fitly
In design, Ideal has a precise . named Ideal, because it has ev-
and delicate balance between erything that it tak!:!,S to make
just enough shading to afford a type face ideal under such
reader interest and little enough varying conditions.
to prevent such mechanical dif- Ideal is available in a com•
ficulties as broken or filled-in plete range of small sizes up to
letters. Its characters are wide and including 14 point. Ideal
and its counters open. Its color Bold is a well designed compan-
is rich and even. Its high word ion, insuring good contrast be-
count is an important considera- tween the light and the bold
tion in the printing of masses of when used with each other. It
words in relatively narrow col- is also available in a wide range
umns. Ideal does not require of unit font sizes and alphabet
leading for legibility. Although lengths, designed especially for
it is most widely used on book automatic teletype operation. A
papers and newsprint, it retains specimen showing of the 8 point
its legibility on any stock. As- size for use in 11½ and 11¼
sisted by its exceedingly clear pica column measure is included
italic and bold, it has an almost in a folder contained in pocket
limitless versatility, and com- of this booklet.

lnttrtype Ideal

columns. Until the present century, 6-point was standard, and it was
not until the studies made in the 19.20s that the need to enlarge this
size became apparent. Ionic was originally offered in 61/2-point, its
large x-height giving the type the appearance of the 8-point size. By
19.31, when Excelsior arrived, the standard size became 7-point.
By the midthirties other technical difficulties peculiar to news-
papers were being examined. For example, American newspapers that,

288
 Design must follow function, and their inherent power and legibility.
a type face created specifically for Rex has long ascenders and de-
newspaper usage tarely is satisfac- scenders, and it is these which make
tory for book work and commercial the face that rarity among news
printing. Rex is the exception. Its type faces that are also suitable for
elements were scientifically blended book printing. They endow it with
to suit the requireinents of the Mil- the feeling of refinement and the
waukee Journal for whom it was smoothness of tone so essential to
developed. Both Ideal and Regal a fine book page.
rival Rex only by providing a larger Although cut for use in editorial
letter in a given splice. and classified pages of newspapers,
Because of the roundness of the Rex is excellent for use in advertis-
Rex letters, they aJipear to be wider ing where character count is impor-
than those of Id~! or Regal. The tant. It is becoming increasingly
alphabet length of Rex, however, important for all-around use in
is actually shorter than either and, both book and publication fields
therefore, Rex's word count-line where legibility is a factor _because
for line-is more favorable. This of a limited amount of space.
rotundity of design: is also an asset Those who specialize in the print-
in rapid reproduction processes be- ing of college textbooks, law briefs
cause it affords remarkably open and large masses of reading where
counters that are free from filling- space is a problem will find Rex an
in. There are no i.harp points to excellent choice because it is easy
break off; the setjfs have square on the eyes.
ends that are delicately bracketed. Alert typographers will find that
Rex has an economic sturdiness of Rex is especially adaptable to usage
practical use as well as of size. in financial reports, price and parts
Rex's lower case) letters are re- catalogs. This feeling is brought
duced. in body size,1 but the height about by the contrasting height of
of the capitals is qi.aintained. The the lower case letters in proportion
capitals, however, have a slightly to the figures.
narrower letter a,nd a thinner Rex is available in 5,6, 7, 7½,8, 10,
stroke so that they blend harmo- 12, and 14 point with bold. Roman
niously with the lmyer case into an with italic and small caps is made
even grey tone. The delicacy of in 6, 7, 8, and 10 point sizes only.
treatment is pronoup.ced in the bold Rex is also duplexed with Franklin
capitals where it lends restraint to Gothic in 4 and 5 point sizes.

Intertype Rex

for economic reasons, were using European newsprint complained

that the paper was fess absorbent than the American variety, and that
Excelsior was print~g 'too thin.' To rectify the problem, the designers
at Mergenthaler thickened the stems and serifs, though keeping the
general style of Excdsior intact. A third legibility type thus emerged,
and was christened Opticon.
The great growm in the 192Os of tabloid newspapers also brought
 Regal is not just one man's idea and offset printing because they
of a legible type face. It is, reproduce sharply and cleanly.
rather, a development of type Although one news type looks
legibility in which many individ- pretty much like another to the
uals have had a part. Made orig- average reader, there are impor-
inally for the Chicago Tribune, tant differences which even the
in accordance with suggestions inexpert eye can. see when col-
from that newspaper, Regal is umns set in different types are
a scientific blending of elements placed side by side. It is said that
designed to meet various re- the difference between Regal
quirements. Before being chosen and other popular news type
by the Tribune, and after exact- faces is less than one-thou-
ing comparative tests which in- sandth of an inch. Yet this dif-.
cluded a vote among Tribune ference that is so small it can be
employees, Regal was selected seen only under a powerful mi-
by both type and eye experts. croscope, is easily apparent in a
Regal was developed not only side-by-side comparison.
for readability, but created to Designed expressly for the ed-
serve a fast reading, fast mov- itorial and classified columns of
ing public and so constructed to a newspaper, Regal is widely
stand rough treatment of stere- used in other fields. It is an ideal
otyping. Two versions of Regal choice for book work and for
were created and are available magazine pages. It lends an au-
in all popular sizes, duplexed thoritative look to factual state-
light with bold face, light with ments in advertising.. Regal is
italic and small caps, and in ad- legible with or without leading.
dition, duplexed with other de- Because it is a scientifically de-
sirable faces. Regal No. 2 is signed roman face,.it combines
slightly larger in lower case well with many other faces.
body, height than its companion, Regal is also available in a
Regal No.1, and is also designed wide range of unit font sizes. and
wider. Both sizes are well opened alphabet lengths, designed es-
up in design to insure good ster- pecially for automatic teletype
eotyping and to prevent smudg- operation. Specimens of sizes
ing from accumulations of ink and alphabet lengths are in-
within the closed letters. Both cluded in a folder contained in
are excellent types for gravure pocket of this booklet.

Intenype Regal

problems. Ink coverage for large areas of halftones tended to flood

the counters of the types used for the text. Mergenthaler met this
challenge with a type named Paragon, designed co print sharply and
cleanly under the specialized printing requirements of the tabloid.
A fifth legibility type named Corona, also from Mergenthaler,
once again solved a technical difficulty- the distortion produced by
stereotype-matrix shrinkage. In addition, Corona's design filled the

290
 Imperial is an exclusive Intertype clean to avoid ink traps; the con-
face designed from the ground up trast of thick and thin strokes is
for narrower newspaper columns reduced to minimize possible dam-
and modern. news setting tech- age to the· letters by rough treat-
niques. It was designed by Edwin ment in stereotyping and. the rigors
W. Shaar ~ifically to preserve of faster printing methods.
word count, to reproduce clearly Imperial is pleasing in design,
and sharply and provide maximum modern in spirit, with perhaps ever
legibility und~r these conditions. so slight a bow to the best features
The design,of a text face affects of tried and proven transitional
the basic "colbr" or overall appear- faces. It is not a revision, redesign
ance of a n:ewspaper page. The or an adaption of an old face.
establishment of the weight of Im- Imperial Bold closely follows the
perial was the first and paramount character of the light face in de-
consideration; from the very be- sign; has ample color for emphasis
ginning of the design. Based upon and is in complete harmony with
exhaustive sliudies of typecasting its companion. This was accom-
procedures, presswork, stereotyp- plished not merely by increasing
ing, ink and nbwsprint, the designer the width of thick and thin strokes
carefully tailqred every element of but by adept formation of curves
Imperial to meet the most exacting and serifs, thereby sidestepping the;
demands of th;e discriminating pub- heavy-handed, fat look that affects
lisher. It has an inherent strength all too many of our bold faces.
of design combined with a fine Imperial is in no way limited in
balance of white to create a clean, use to newspapers alone. It may
vigorous pag~. be used to excellent advantage in
Imperial is by all tests a legible textbooks and magazines, and will
face. It has a ~stinctly clean look, lend vigor to the factual statements
presenting a pleasant, even color of advertisements and job printing.
in mass on newsprint. Its carefully Imperial is also available in a
planned, clos~ fitting design en- wide range of unit font sizes and
ables the eye to see word pictures alphabet lengths, designed espe-
rather than single letters. cially for teletype operation. Speci-
Very slim \yedges of white are men showings of most-used sizes
forced into the anatomy of the let- and alphabet lengths are included
ters (spaces that might otherwise in a folder contained in the pocket
fill with ink); t':ounters are scooped of this booklet.
i
Intertype Imperiaj

request of a particular publisher for a new 'dress' (style) for his paper;
the face had t0 be aesthetically arresting but at the same time have a
more econom~cal character width than the type then in use. Pro-
duced in 1941,, Corona quickly became the most widely employed of
all newspaper! types in the United States. Fully half of American
papers now use Corona for text composition.
During thi), whole period Linotype's Brooklyn competitor in the

29I
 ROYAL
This example of Intertype's new typeface ROYAL is set
in the 9 point size. Royal owes much of its clarity to
generous x-height and slightly elongated form. The bold
face is equally successful. A complementary italic is in
preparation. Excellent word count.

Intenype Roya!

manufacture of a slugcasting typesetter, the Intertype Corporation,

was also involved in the production of legibility types. As the latter
had been established in 1912 by an association of newspaper publishers,
the firm had always been sympathetic to the specialized typographic
requirements of journalism.
The news types that emerged from Intertype strove for objectives
similar to those of Linotype. Ideal (1928), the first lntertype legibility
design, followed the concept of Ionic with its Clarendon-style serifs
and monotone strokes. lntertype's advertising department then ap-
parently decided that there was (or should be) a majestic aspect to its
newspaper types, and henceforth all of its legibility faces were given
'royal' names.
Regal came into being about 1935, specially designed for The
Chicago Tribune. It was voted in by the employees of the newspaper
and presumably also received the approval of the Trib's monarch, the
redoubtable Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick. Regal followed
the pattern established by Linotype's Excelsior in being a slimmed-
down version of a previous design - in Regal's case, Ideal. A third
lntertype legibility font, Rex, appeared in 1939. Designed for The
MilwaukeeJournal, Rex was also more condensed than its predecessors.
In 1957 Edwin Shaar, director of typography for Intertype, produced
Imperial, another close-fitting legibility letter that became one of the
firm's most successful types. It was adopted by numerous newspapers,
including The New York Times, which changed over from Ideal in 1967.
The standard size for The Times is 81/2-point, continuing the forty-
year trend toward larger body sizes in American newspaper types.
Another Shaar design, Royal, became available in 1960. It follows
the concept of Corona and it, too, has been widely adopted by the
world's newspapers.
The basic character in a. type design is determined by the
uniform design characteristics of all letters in the alphabet.
However, this ?lone does not determine the standard of
the type face ap.d the quality of composition set with it.
The appearanc~ is something complex which forms itself
OUT OF MANY DETAILS, LIKE FORM, PROPORTION,

Mclior (Linotype)

The premier 'b.ewspaper' type of the century, Times Roman,

although designed for the prestigious Times of London, has enjoyed
little success on Newspaper Row in the United States. Its use in
America has been .is a book and commercial type, presenting one case
where a legibility'. type has transcended its original purpose. The
printing procedures and materials of most U.S. newspapers do not
permit the use of a type featuring strong contrast of stroke and fine
serifs. As discussed earlier, Times Roman is a luxury design. But the
recent growth of ~eb-offset in the newspaper field, along with the
replacement of stereotype plates by photomechanical plates in the
newer relief presses, will perhaps allow for the greater use of more
aesthetic roman types in newspapers of the future.
Another postwlr legibility type is Melior, designed by Hermann
Zapf for the Gernjian newspaper market. This type, too, has been
bypassed by Ameri~an papers, but like Times Roman it has achieved
considerable renov,;n as a commercial type of distinction.
All of the types discussed so far have been in the transitional
classification; that 'is, types that display characteristics of both old-
sryle and modern faces. However, two English type designers have
recently turned aw~y from the transitional, producing types of purely
old-style and purely modern derivation.
Walter Tracy, typographic manager of Linotype and Machinery,
the British Linotype affiliate, in 1969 designed a legibility face that
was named Linotype Modem. The type approaches the vertical stress
of the Bodoni-Di4ot models, but without the thinning of light
strokes or serifs. This is somewhat similar to W. A. Dwiggins's Electra,
a book type that was also conceived in terms of legibility.
More recently, Epgland's Matthew Carter, the designer of Galliard,
has turned his attention to a news face based on old-style forms, with

293
 their oblique str<;ss. Named Olympian, this type revives some of the
Aldine-French-Dutch ideas of letter form. It was designed and pro-
duced at Mergenthaler Linotype.
Carter brings to such work, in addition to his familiarity with
punchcutting, a mastery of the intricate technology now required
to create a type compatible with the newest high-speed typesetting
devices. Designers of newspaper types have always encountered tech-
nical needs that are incompatible with typographic aesthetics. The
introduction of the Teletypesetter, for example, brought the factor
of unit widths, or <sers: to slug-machine characters, and this design
restriction continued with the multiplicity of keyboard functions of
phototypesetting machines. In considering this limitation along with
all the other technical exigencies of a newspaper type, Carter appears
to have been most successful. Indeed, Olympian, like Times Roman,
could very well be useful beyond the confines of the newsroom.
However, with complete automation via the computer, the designer
is no longer limited to arbitrary letter widths.
In the fifty years of development of the newspaper legibility types,
perhaps the only constant has been the demand for ever larger sizes in
the editorial columns. That Olympian is standardized at 9-point bears
out Carter's observation that statistically twice as many papers are set
in that size as in the next most popular size, 81/2-point.
Newspaper types are rarely selected for book typography, but they
nonetheless constitute a significant group of faces, if only because so
many people read them. It is therefore important that outstanding
designers continue to turn their attention to the production of such
types, trying to come to grips with the aesthetic restraints that seem
concomitant with every technical innovation.

294
 FRANKLIN GOTHIC AND THE
TWENTIETH-CENTURY GOTHICS

When the late Stevens Watts was manager of the American Type
Founders' foundry, he was fond of saying that 'while types come and
go, Franklin Gothic goes on forever.' The type was a perennial best
seller, and ov,er the past seventy years it has been one of the best-
known repres~ntatives of a style of type notable for its multiplicity of
forms, the m©dern gothics. These faces are not, despite their name,
gothics - at least in the traditional understanding of the term. And
Franklin Go9ic is doubly misnamed, having no historical relationship
to Benjamin Franklin.
If anyone can be blamed for the gothic misnomer it is perhaps the
corporate body of the Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry, which
back in 1837 ,ssued a new series of types without serifs under the
name Gothic 1 Probably it was the bold weight of this type that
prompted th~ designation. In any event, the Boston firm was the
ip
first foundry America to introduce a serifless design then attaining
great popularity in Europe, particularly England and Germany.
In the post-World War II era, when sans-serif types dominate the
typography ofi the marketplace, it is difficult to recall that typefounders
up to the beg~nning of the nineteenth century sought to please only
book printers. It was the Industrial Revolution, of course, that brought
to printers, as to manufacturers, countless changes and the introduction
of extra-bold types, called fat faces, patterned somewhat akin to the
Didot and Bodoni styles. These were welcomed for their display value
by printers sp!!cializing in the production of broadsides, handbills,
and posters.
The impact: of the new commercial types evidently stimulated
William Casloh IV - of the famous English typefounding family- in
1816 to offer experimentally a monotone type without serifs under the
name Two-Line English Egyptian. This 28-point type, produced in
capitals only, was the first sans serif to be purveyed as a printing type.

295
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP
QRSTUVWXYZ abcdef
ghijklmnopq.rstuvwxyz
.,-,.....
,,,? 1234567890
ABCDEFGHIJKLMN
OPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopq
rstuvwxyz
.,-,.•• 1234567890
Franklin Gothic (ATF)

Caslon's design did not meet with immediate support, primarily

because its introduction coincided with that of the well-received
square-serif faces currently being issued by competing rypefoundries.
But by 1825 the German firm of Schelter and Giesecke was also offering
a series of condensed sans serifs, which included lowercase characters.
Then, in 1832, three English foundries brought out additional sans-
serif types. One of these firms, that of William Thorowgood, termed
the style 'grotesque,' a classification that is still standard in Britain for
the sans-serif types that originated in the nineteenth century.
By 1850 all of the world's rypefounders were issuing sans serifs
in an endless, and confusing, variety of weights and widths. This
 CASLON JUNR
L.ETTERFOUND
Tue sans serif type of William Caslon IV, c. 1816

venezianiscner
Portratmalerei
Sans serif lowercase of Schelter & Giesecke, c. 1825

MARCHES
Early American sans serif of George Bruce, .c. 1853

typographic overkill continued until metal types were largely super-

seded by film fonts in the past few decades.
When the American Type Founders issued Franklin Gothic in
1905, it didn't seem that the company needed another gothic. For
after ATF had been formed in 1892- as an amalgamation of many
American typefoundries - the new firm issued a specimen book that
showed about fifty gothic types. Some of these types had such color-
ful names as Turius, Altona, Octic, and Telescope, but most of them
were simply numbered. Many of the faces were difficult to distinguish,
but all of the widths now common in gothic series were represented,
from extra-condensed to extra-extended.

297
 When ATF's Morris Benton became fully involved in type design,
about 1902 (when he was thirty), he began cutting the Franklin Gothic
series. In this he was no doubt influenced by the German production
of sans-serif type, for in 1898 the Berthold foundry in Berlin had
produced the Akzidenz series ( later known to American printers as
Standard) which had proved very popular and inspired the cutting of
Reform Grotesk by Frankfurt's Stempel in 1903 and the Venus series
by the Bauer foundry, also of Frankfurt, in 1907.
Franklin Gothic is an excellent example of a traditional early-
nineteenth-century sans-serif letter which retained certain features
common to roman. For example, the lowercase a and g are normal
roman characters, and in all of the letters there occurs a thinning of
stroke at the junction of rounds to stems. Some of the contrast of
roman letters also persists, although the overall appearance is mono-
tone. The weight of stroke of Franklin Gothic is heavy, or what
modern practitioners call extra-bold. It should be pointed out that
there has never, alas, been any consistency in the terminology for the
thickness of a stroke; such unquantified designations as light, thin,
medium, bold, heary, extra-bold, ultra-bold, and semi-bold indicate the
difficulty faced by typographers in type recognition and description.
Benton finished designing Franklin Gothic in 1902, but it did not
appear until about 1905. (The years in which typefaces were drawn
frequently differ from their dates of issuance. Unfortunately, the
records of the manufacturers have rarely survived, making it extremely
difficult to affix accurate dates.) In 1905 a condensed variant was
drawn, and in 1906 an extended one - the latter was abandoned at the
time and not cut until 1953, as Franklin Gothic Wide, following the
great revival in the fifties of these early gothics. An extra-condensed
version was also produced in 1906. Benton completed his contribution
to the Franklin Gothic family with the drawing in 1913 of an italic for
the original face and in 1914 of a condensed shaded modification.
The monotone structure of the gothics readily lends itself to
a variety of weights in which a type designer can maintain both a
uniformity of style and his original concept. In merchandizing their
wares, rypefounders learned to take advantage of this fact by suggesting
to printers that they required two or three weights (light, bold, etc.)
for each style of type, along with several widths (extended, condensed,.
etc.). The printer was then urged to purchase these variations in series,
that is, all of the sizes cast for each family variant.
Such marketing procedures were just beginning to emerge during
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the period 1990-1910, as an inspection of any rypefounders' catalogues

will disclose. A. very successful example was the dissemination of the
Cheltenham ;:.Iesign, but it was with the serifless types that this
approach to manufacture and selling came to fruition.
It was with the gothic types that early in the present century
foundries began exploiting the concept of offering types in a variety
of weights an;d widths. For example at ATF Morris Benton drew a
condensed gothic named Alternate Gothic cast in three widths differ-
entiated by QUmber but all narrower than normal. Since Franklin
Gothic was an extra-bold type, Alternate Gothic was designed as
a normal boldface. To fill out Benton then cut Lightline Gothic and
News Gothici the latter being a medium-weight letter. The success
of this vennu;e is evident, since all of these styles remain in use in
photographic ;or digitized versions of the original designs.
Successful !from the start, ATF's original twentieth-century gothic
was eventually adapted by all the composing-machine manufacturers,
and more recently it has been transferred to film. The fact that Franklin
Gothic survived the impact of the geometric sans serifs during the
period from 1926 to 1950 - in addition to the revival of its contem-
porary competitors, Venus and Standard-warrants the conclusion

299
that Morris Benton, even in his early efforts as a type designer,
possessed the skill to create a printing type that could withstand
obsolescence.
Indeed, up to 1950 the geometric unserifed types, as represq1ted
by Futura, dominated commercial printing. But by midcentury a re-
action against them had begun to reduce their effectiveness: Furura
was damned as being too cold for modern tastes - the word of critical
disapprobation being mecanique, 'mechanical; as used by the Swiss
typographers, who were the vanguard of a search for a new typog-
raphy that fitted the needs of a postwar generation. It was not to be
expected that the younger designers would sponsor a return to the
roman letter, although their elders were buoyantly anticipating such
a gesture. Instead, the sans-serif ideal was reaffirmed, but the form
embodied a return to an earlier tradition rather than to that of ·the·
geometric unserifed types of the turn-of-the-century 'gothics.'
Perhaps resurrecting these gothics seemed more efficient to the
typefounders than taking the time to commission new designs. Thus,

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News Gochie ( ATF)

300
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Lightline Gothic (ATF)

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Standard (Berthold)

from the Bauer foundry came Venus, circa 19o6, and Berthold reissued
the even older A;kzidenz Grotesk, which was renamed Standard for
the English and .American markets. The first series of Venus to reach
the United States was the extra-bold extended group, and it precipi-
tated an explosion in the use of wide types, which in turn spread to
gothics of all widths. Such was these types' impact on American
advertising designers that for a time most of the German freighters
making the westc;rly Atlantic crossing were ballasted with Venus and
Standard types. The appearance of the types fortuitously coincided
with a design trend then touching every object from furniture to
automobiles: wide and squat was in.

301
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Venus Bold (Bauer)

For two or three years Venus and Standard had the marker to
themselves, with typographers vehemently disagreeing as to which
was superior. ATF in the United States attempted to meet the com-
petition with aggressive promotion of its Benton gothics, but it was
a losing battle, for the German types possessed a greater range of .
compatible series. More important, Venus and Standard were sold as
single-type families, thus assuring the typographers of their effective-
ness in a comprehensive advertising campaign: In the meantime, new .
approaches were being sought by the typefoundries, eager to promote
and prolong this regeneration of the early serifless letter forms.
In the mid-195os all this activity came to a boil, with nearly every.
supplier of printing types peddling redesigned gothics to a trade
already saturated with the earlier models. The appeal was made,
therefore, to the primer's customer - often an advertising agency-
rather than to the printer himsdf, and the solicitation was explicit
in its offer of typographic sophistication.
In 1953 Adrian Frutiger, a twenty-five-year-old Swiss designer and
former compositor, was invited by the Paris typefoundry Deberny et '
Peignot to assist in the selection of types to be used for the Lumitype :i"
phototypesetting machine, the European version of the American ~;
Photon machine, which the foundry was manufacturing under license. ,·.
Before this assignment Frutiger had been experimenting with a uni- :s;

302
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Eurostyle Bold fNebiolo)

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Univers 6S (ATF-Deberny Peignot)

fied series o~gothic types in which a single designer controlled every

facet of their construction. At Deberny et Peignot the oppormnity to
produce such a design was provided, resulting in the type named
Univers, first distributed in 1957. The name was anticipatory, but the
style did beq:ime available to printers in forms other than for photo-
composition; for the foundry itself produced the type in metal for
its own mark;et and, by agreement with the American Type Founders
Company, for sale in the United States. Arrangements were soon
co.ncluded with the Monorype Corporation of London to transfer
Univers to the Monotype.
U nivers represents a most ambitious program of integrated rype
design, for Frutiger brought to the task a highly developed skill in
letter design. As a critic of the Futura concept of sans-serif construc-
tion, he sought to modify its severe strokes yet stay within the serifl.ess
boundaries. In discussing his ideas Frutiger said, 'A purely geometric
character is unacceptable in the long run, for the horizontal lines
appear thicker to the eye than the vertical ones; an O represented by
a perfect circle strikes us as shapeless and has a disrurbing effect on
the word as a whole.'
But what is undoubtedly the most unusual contribution of Frutiger
to the marketing of printing types was his defiant attempt to simplify
typographic nomenclature. Rather than employ the ordinary imprecise
designations of weight and width, he organized his entire design plan
of twenty-one series into a logical 'palette: by which each variant
received a number that instantly identified its structure. The palette
consisted of six vertical and six horizontal rows; the extended versions
occupied the vertical rows, diminishing in width from left to right;
and the weights were categorized horizontally, the lightest at the top
and the heaviest at the bottom.
For the first time, Frutiger's palette for printers brought a rational
approach to the difficulties of describing the various rype weights
and widths, always an area of debate among practitioners. Though
not applicable to many other types, the palette clearly differentiated
the numerous gothic and sans-serif faces, with their multiplicities of
stroke and variations of width. Unfortunately, however, Frutiger's
idea never caught on; when printers put Univers into their cases, they
compared the weight of each series with that of the geometric sans
serifs and applied the weight of the latter to the new type. The type-
specimen books of different printers therefore varied considerably
from one another, to the great confusion of customers. And, in the
Monorype version, Frutiger's numbers conflicted with the font number
assigned by the company to all of its types and so the palette was
discarded. Thus, a worthy attempt to bring order to the chaotic
designation of rype weights and widths was allowed to fail.
Univers met with competition when it was introduced-1957 was
a halcyon year for the new gothics, three others also emerging from
the drawing boards. Mercator was cut by the Dutch typographer

304
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ
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Helvetica (Hass-Sten)Pcl)

Dick Dooijes fof TypefoW1dry Amsterdam. Folio was produced by

Germany's BauerfoW1dry, and a type named Neue Haas-Grotesk issued
from the Swiss Haas'sche foundry, of Basel. The following year, Aldo
Novarese, at the Nebiolo foundry in Turin, produced a gothic family
named Reeta. Neither Reeta nor Mercator made an impact in the
United States, but Folio and Neue Haas-Grotesk certainly did.
Folio, designed by Konrad Bauer and Walter Baum, benefited
· from the promotion of the excellent sales agency that Bauer had long
retained in this country. It also became available for the linecasting
machine when adopted under a royalty agreement by the Intertype
Corporation.
Neue Haas-Grotesk, designed by Max Miedinger, was cut for
Linotype by the German Linotype firm, which named it Helvetica.
And the Stempel foW1dry entered into an arrangement with Haas'sche
to manufacture die type for export, again W1der the name Helvetica.
By the early 1960s, when the manufacturers of all these competing
types had brought their production up to encompass the innumerable
series involved, there was, of course, intense rivalry in their promotion.
Each design had its adherents, and it was fairly simple to start an
argument among typographers concerning the efficacy of each style.
The older type professionals naturally recalled the period, thirty years
earlier, when the geometric sans serifs had been subjected to simiJar
polemics; at that time, a single design-Futura-received by far the
most enthusiastic •approval and became the dominant form. Among
the neo-gothics, I;Ielverica has received greatest attention by adver-
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Folio (Bauer)

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Mercator (Amsterdam)

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Record Gothic (Ludlow)

-
306
rising-agency designers, and up to the present it is the most widely
used of them all. The more traditional typographers are mystified by
this preference, believing that the subtleties of difference among these
styles are so slight that an intelligent judgment of them is impossible.
It is evi4:nc that the admiration for Swiss typographic design in
general was an additional attraction in the selection of Helvetica as the
best representative of that style. In any case, the use of Helvetica has
spread from advertising into the world of publishing, where it turns
up frequently for the setting of textbooks of every description - thus
violating long-established precepts concerning typographic legibility.
Notwith~tanding the impact of the rejuvenated gothics, the older
forms still are very much in evidence at every hand. It would therefore
appear that Eranklin Gothic will be selected by future designers whose
great-grandf~thers would have nodded their approval .
• I
I
 CLARENDON AND THE
SQUARE-SERIF REVIVAL

The development of the group of types called square serif parallels

that of the gothics. Both forms represented the typefounders' answer
to the challenge of the nineteenth century: to find a new typographic
expression for industrialized society. As with the gothics, the square-
serif results were uneven, depending as they did on the skill of the
founder and the interpretation of the designer. .
The earliest square-serif attempts to meet the demands of the new:·
entrepreneurs - from peddlers to industrialists - had resulted in the·,
modification of the late-eighteenth-century Continental types, especi-)
ally those of the Didots in France (these have survived to the present'.
but generally under the name Bodoni). It was believed that thickening·
the main stem of a letter while reducing the weight of the serif would
create the maximum boldness required by this rapidly expanding
market. Such a rationale produced the numerous types that were~:
labeled 'fat-face' during the first decade of the nineteenth century.'.'
The English typefounder Robert Thorne is ordinarily credited with
the introduction of such a letter, one that was destined radically to
affect the marketing of founders' typefaces, merchandizing that had::
heretofore been concerned primarily with the printing of books. :
Within just twenty years the fat faces were joined by the sans serifs/
and the square serifs, and never again did typefounders emphasize
the production of types for continuous reading, realizing that the.;:
production of display types would henceforth be more profitable;'
Although they continued to manufacrure text types in quantity untif:J:
the development of typesetting machines in the late 1800s, their;
enterprise after 1820 was directed toward the display faces. i
The first square-serif type to be introduced was the Antique of:(,:
London's Vincent Figgins Foundry, turning up in the 1817 catalogue{;
of that firm in four sizes. These were capital fonts only, of monotonef
construction, in which the serifs were unbracketed and of the same"lt•1'
. >..,.-~

308
 ABCDEFGHI
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Clarendon Bold (Haas),

weight as the stem's. The square serifs outshouted the contemporary

fat faces on the printed page, since the heavy serifs contributed to the
overall boldness of: the character, making it perhaps the blackest ever
cast in printing type. But in the contrast of stem weight many of the
early sans-serif and square-serif fonts were not at all consistent. For
example, in the Antiques of Figgins three are monotone and in one,
the four-line pica size, a discrepancy in the thickness of stems and
-serifs is evident.

309
B.TBORNE
£116780
diminishing
Six-Lines Pica Egyptian of the Thorowgood foundry, 1821

Two-lines Pica Antique of the Figgins foundry, 1817

Robert Thorne, whose Fann Street Foundry in London specialized

in the production of display types, undoubtedly was aware of the
Antiques of Figgins, and of their potential: Although he was in poor
health at the time, Thorne began to work on several sizes of a similar
design. It would appear that it was Thorne who applied the term
Egyptian to the square-serif types, for upon his death in 1820, the
inventory of his foundry listed six sets of 'Egyptian'; his successor,
William Thorowgood, issued a specimen book the same year that
exhibits these faces. There is, however, a good deal of confusion con-
cerning terminology during this period. For instance, the foundry of
William Caslon IV had shown in its 1816_ specimen book a single size
of sans-serif caps that was called Egyptian and represented the first
instance of a sans-serif letter in a typefounder's catalogue. Through-

310
out the nineteenth century the logical designation of such types
remained a perplexing problem, and as late as 1907 the difficulty had
still not been 'resolved. That year as venerable a typographic historian
as Theodore :J:-ow De Vinne listed in his splendid specimen book all
of the square serifs under the heading 'Antique, Ionic, Doric, Etc.'
The provenance as much as the use of the term Egyptian is obscure.
Most authorities agree that it was the coincidence of the emergence
of the squareJserif types with the popular interest in Egypt following
the Napoleon~c conquest (which opened the country to archaeological
study, along \fith large-scale plundering of its artifacts) that gave the
design its name. There have been attempts to compare the structure of
the square-serif letter to Egyptian architecture, but it is more reasonable
to assume simply the natural appropriation of a name that had attracted
wide attentiorl, similar to the interest in the Tutankhamen exhibitions
of the 1970s.
Whatever the derivation of their name, Egyptian types were
extremely stic~essful and by 1840 they were being manufactured in

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Craw Clarendon {ATF)

311
audacia tua? nihilne te nocturnum prresi-
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Two-Lines English Clarendon of the Thorowgood foundry, 1848

great variety, the foundries competing with one another in the pro-
duction of such variants as open, shadow, outline, reversed, and
compressed. Another innovation in the type catalogues at this ·time
was the exhortation to printers to adopt the new forms. Prior to the
nineteenth century, specimen books had simply exhibited printing
types in dignified array, with the quotation from Cicero - 'Quousque
tandem abutere, Catilina?'-that had been inaugurated by William
Caslon in 1734. Other than a magisterial introductory statement such
as, 'We beg to inform the printer ... ,' the founders believed a hard-
sell approach to be unnecessary.
The new texts of the specimen books were a result of the industrial-
ization of the printing craft. Increasing numbers of printers in the
nineteenth century were engaged in the production of the ephemera
of the marketplace-the placards, broadsides, tickets, proclamations,
and notices that constituted the daily work of what in England be-
came known as jobbing printing, a term shortened in the United
States to job printing- and the many new types created for this work
needed advertising. (There is also little doubt that the new fraternity
of compositors was unschooled in Larin.) By midcentury the foundries
were aggressively catering to the trade, their adverti~ing suggesting
the most desirable uses of the numerous new display types. Such
promotion flowerep. during the present century, when the typefounders -
employed first-rate typographers and maintained their own printing
plants, which specialized in the production of admirably planned
specimen books, many of which were devoted to but a single type.
These pieces have today achieved status as collectors' items.
By 1830 the Egyptian types had spread to France, Germany, and .
the United States, and the-versions, differing in many respects, de-

312
pended on the interpretation of the punchcutters. The pressures of
increased prodU<;cion interfered with aesthetic considerations, a factor
that noticeably affected the design of Egyptian lowercase forms. As
the first square serifs were cut in capitals only, a weight was applied
to the stems that could not be adequately maintained in the transfer
to lowercase; an examination of the few lowercase alphabets cut for
the early Egyptians reveals the awkwardness of many of the characters.
In addition, a sirpilar difficulty may be noted in the maintenance of
the monotone boldness of the capitals. The designers of the early
gothics had encoµntered corresponding problems resulting in long
delays in prepari11g acceptable lowercase fonts.
Whereas the riew breed of commercial printers was most enthusi-
astic about the Egyptians, the more traditionally oriented practitioners
deplored these styles. For a contemporary criticism of the 'modem'
typography, it is interesting to turn to the famous printer's manual
Typographia, published in England in 1825 by Thomas Curson Hansard.

Instrun;iental Examination
REMARKABLE
Expecting Northeastern Storms
SIGNAL SERVICE

Harmonious Condition Destroyed .by Legislators

RESERVED ADMINISTRATION
French Clarendon as shown in ATF Specimen Book, 1896

313
 Normally approving of the industrialization of printing - especially
the technological advances-Hansard was outraged by what he con-
sidered the typographical excesses of his time. Of three contemporary
display letters that he condemned, one was a black letter and two
were Egyptians. In this early critique of the job types, Hansard first
censured the fat faces and then added: 'To the razor-edged fine lines
and ceriphs [sic] of type just observed upon [the fat-faced types], a
reverse has succeeded, called "Antique;' or "Egyptian," the prof~tty
of which is, that the strokes which form the letters are all of uniform
thickness! -After this, who would have thought that further extrava-
gance could have been conceived? ... Oh! sacred shades of Moxon
and Van Dijke, of Baskerville and Bodoni! what would ye have said
of the typographic monstrosities here exhibited, which Fashion in our
age has produced?'
But Hansard's criticism had no apparent effect on the popularity
of the new type styles. As far as printers were concerned, the types
met the requirements of the era and provided the means by which
they could trumpet their typography to a new market waiting to be
exploited.
With the multiplication of the Egyptians by the foundries, gradual
changes were introduced which altered somewhat the structure of the
letter. In the early models the serifs had generally been unbracketed-
that is, they lacked the normal joining stroke, or fillet - but by the
1830s some Egyptians appeared with slightly bracketed serifs, though
no consistency may be observed in this practice. And by 1845 a new
form had emerged, under the name Clarendon.
The Fann Street Foundry, in London, is credited with the intro-
duction of the first Clarendon. This type's initial appearance was as a
condensed letter, and unlike the Egyptians it was issued as a text
type rather than for display purposes. Furthermore, it was designed
to accompany a roman type as a related boldface, to provide emphasis
where required. In order to blend with the roman, the serifs were
bracketed and a degree of contrast was applied to the stroke widths.
The Clarendon design is ascribed to Robert Besley, who had joined
William Thorowgood at the Fann Street firm in 1838. It will be remem-
bered that it was Thorowgood who had helped to popularize the
Egyptians. From a surprising beginning as a typefounder in 1820-
a calling for which he had had no training- Thorowgood a year later
had parlayed a big win in the national lottery to an appointment as
Letter-Founder to His Majesty. The foundry rapidly grew to include

314
Greek, Hebrew, Russian, and German types, and in 1828 it absorbed
the foundry of Dr. Edmund Fry with its numerous exotic styles.
Besley "":as no doubt assisted in the design of Clarendon by the
skilled punchcutter Benjamin Fox. It so happened thatint845 England's
designs-copyright amendment act came into being, which permitted
registering ~ typographic design for a three-year period. But when
Clarendon, (he first type to be so registered, became an overwhelming
success, the protection was soon violated, with competing firms seek-
ing to take a~vantage of the type's popularity. Besley was acrimonious
in his denunciation of this plagiarism, a ·problem, as discussed earlier,
that afflicts the industry to the present day.
There is little information concerning the origin of the name
Clarendon. be Vinne in Plain Printing Types (1900) notes that the
type was firsr made for the Clarendon Press at Oxford University, 'to
serve as a display letter in a mass of text-type, and for side headings in
dictionaries and books of reference.' English sources do not support
this theory df the type's having been explicitly manufactured for the
Clarendon Press, but they do recognize that the name may well refer
to that press. In England Clarendon subsequently became synony-
mous with boldface as a description of weight, as it is described in the
Oxford English Dictionary.
Whatever the derivation of the. name, the Clarendon design was a
huge comm~rcial success. By 1850 Besley was advertising the virtues
of the font as follows:
The most useful Founts chat a Printer can have in his-Office are Clarendons:
they make a s~riking Word or Line either in a Hand Bill or a Title Page,
and do not overwhelm the other lines: they have been made with great care,
so that while r!Jey are distinct and striking they possess a graceful outline,
avoiding on t:He one hand, the clumsy inelegance of the Antique or Egyptian
Character, and on the other, the appearance of an ordinary Roman Letter
thickened by lqng use.
The idea ~fusing a boldface character for emphasis rather than an
italic became 1well established with Clarendon, a practice that remains
common in commercial printing, principally newspapers ..When the
duplexed, ori two-letter, matrix was developed for the Linotype
machine, a~ut 1900, the second letter was invariably an 'antique'
(Clarendon-style), when not an italic. Later on, of course, the com-
posing-machine manufacturers developed complementary bold vari-
ants for marry of their popular roman styles and so were not dependent
on a standardized boldface.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST
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Karnak Meclium (Ludlow)

INTERTYPE matrices excel in type 12345

INTERTYPE matrices excel in type 12345
Cairo and Cairo Bold (Intertype)

Clarendon thus began as a bold condensed type, but it was soon

appearing in an expanded version and even as a lightface letter. By
the 1850s it was internationally recognized as a utilitarian addition to
the commercial composing room. Besley's expanded variant became
the model for German cuttings as well as for the Clarendons that
appeared in the catalogues of the Bruce Foundry in New York, and
the Cincinnati Foundry- the first American firms to issue the type.
For the balance of the nineteenth century the Clarendons and the
Egyptians, by whatever name they went, continued to thrive and were
generally more popular than even the gothics. Although the decorated
letters and scripts took up much of the attention of the design depart-
ments of the foundries - leaving little time for experimentation in
modifying the existing square-serif types - for some fifty years (from
about 1820 to 1870) the square serifs played a dominant role in every-
day typography. Nicolete Gray, in Nineteenth Century Ornamented
Types and Title Pages (1938), wrote that the Egyptians as developed
by the English punchcutters represent the most brilliant typographic
expression of the century. Bur in his Printing Types (1922), Daniel
Berkeley Updike reduces the achievement to but one reference of less

316
 Inspired Singer
DISTINGUISH
Urgent Note
FINANCIER
Reinforce
EXPORT
Beton (Bauer)

than a sentence: ' ... a kind of swollen type-form in which all the
lines of a letter were of nearly equal strength.... ' (In a footnote he
expressed even greater disdain for the form.)
In the United States most of the foundries produced square serifs.
When the American Type Founders Company was formed-out of
some two dozen separate foundries - the first 'Collected' specimen
book of the amalgamation, issued in 1896, showed twenty-six varieties
under such names ,as Ionic, Clarendon, Antique, French Clarendon,

317
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Stymie Bold (ATF}

and Doric. But in 1906, _in the 1,180-page ATF specimen book, just
ten square serifs were listed, none of which was Clarendon. And in
the 1923 catalogue this list had been reduced to only six examples of
the genre, again with. the name Clarendon missing. The Barnhart
Brothers & Spindler specimen book of 1925, the last large-scale Ameri-
can type catalogue, exhibited five square serifs of which two were
called Antique and three Clarendon.
When a revival of the square-serif style occurred in the 1930s,
it followed the same pattern as the regeneration of the gothics that
had taken place in the 1920s when the geometric sans-serif forms had
emanated from the experimental typography of the Bauhaus move-
ment. Simply stated, the square-serif revival consisted of the addition
of serifs to the Futura model.
The first such type to be produced was Memphis, cut in 1929 by

,18
Rudolf Wolf, then head of StempePs design department in Frankfurt.
Memphis wa~ sold in the United States through Melbert Cary, Jr.'s
Continental Typefounders Association under the name Girder - an
inspired cho~ce for a period when in most American cities the steel-
work of the new skyscrapers was very much in evidence. For two or
three years there was a great flurry of activity in the production of the
geometric square serifs, most of which were given names connoting
their 'Egypti:µi' origin. In 1930 Georg Trump drew City for Berlin's
Berthold foundry, but it was not available in this country until 1936,
again as a Continental Typefounders import. For the Bauer foundry,
Heinrich Jost cut Beton in 1931, and the Paris foundry Deberny et
Peignot offered Pharaon by 1933, with the English Stephenson, Blake
& Company tagging along with Scarab about 1937.

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Memphis Bold (t,inotype-Stempel)

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City Bold (Berthold-Continental Typefounders Assoc.)

319
 The American type manufacturers, already menaced by furious
competition from the Europeans in the production of the sans-serif
faces, responded quickly to the new challenge but with little apparent
enthusiasm. The lntertype Corporation cut Cairo in 1931, and Mer-
genthaler Linotype, by arrangement with Stempel, began to advertise
Memphis, thus competing with Girder, the same type. In 1931 R.
Hunter Middleton started work on the long series of square serifs
named Karnak, which he drew for Ludlow Typograph. At American
Type Founders a shortcut was taken by digging into the vaults and
coming up with Litho Antique of circa 1910; a few characters were
redesigned to bring that face into conformity with the current trend.
Rather than checking the gazetteer for yet another Egyptian-sounding
name, ATF's advertising departmentwistfully named the face Stymie,
in the hope, unfulfilled, that their entry would curtail the enthusiasm
of their competitors. Lanston Monotype Machine Company in Phila-
delphia followed ATF's lead by. also resurrecting an older type,
Rockwell Antique, but soon thereafter adopted ATF's Stymie, by
agreement with the foundry, to capitalize on Stymie's acceptance
(even if competitors' enthusiasm remained undiminished).
For the balance of the 1930s all the suppliers were busily filling
out their square-serif series, but at the same time they were being
careful not to neglect the Futura models that continued to dominate
advertising typography. Of the geometric square serifs, Beton, of the
Bauer foundry, proved the most popular, but all of these types suffered
somewhat in comparison with the sans serifs, since the serifed geo-

QUALITY COLOR
Zero is the figure
P. T. Barnum (ATF)

320
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Consort and Consort Italic (Stephenson, Blake & Co.)

metric pattern was not compatible with the design of the numerous
variants requireq. by the advertising typographers, whose demands
ruled the market for new typefaces.
After World War II the emergence of the earlier gothics, particu-
larly the extended series, spurred another wave of interest in the
Egyptians, but this time the emphasis was on the Clarendon style.
In 1951 the Eng(ish foundry Steven, Shanks & Son revived three
series of Antique~ the second of which was a true Oarendon, in addi-
tion to an Antique Expanded. In the same year the Scottish foundry
Miller & Richard offered Egyptian Expanded, the Haas'sche foundry
in Basel revived an excellent Clarendon cut by Hermann Eidenbenz,
and the Bauer firm brought out Fortune, called Volta in Germany.
In 1953 Stephenson, Blake returned to the original punches of the
Fann Street Foundry for the type that it reissued as Conson:, adding
an italic and a boldface, and in 1960 the Monotype Corporation of
London brought :out New Oarendon. The American Type Founders
Company commi~sioned the talented typographic designer Freeman
Craw to product; a new type on the Oarendon model, which was
marketed in 1956, and became a great success. Those printers who
resisted the move to the Clarendons based their objections on the
similarity of these; faces to the ubiquitous Cheltenham design.
The Clarendon revival of the 1950s was by and large restricted ~
foundry types, although some of the styles did become available for
composition by the display phototypesetting devices. There appeared
to be little interest in the transfer of the Clarendons to the larger film
machines.
One other sty!~ of Clarendon has retained its popularity from the
nineteenth century, the so-called circus letter, which was cut by many

321
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Fortune Bold (Bauer)

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Consort Lighr (Stephenson, Blake & Co.)

322
of the early founders under the name French Clarendon. In this style
the slab serifs are overemphasized for display purposes, which has
naturally limited its usefulness as a general type. The restoration
of this face ·began as early as 1938 and had no relation to the later
Clarendon revival. Stephenson, Blake offered its version, called Play-
bill, and Typefoundry Amsterdam produced Hidalgo the following
year (Hidalgo was cut in only a capital alphabet, by S. Schlesinger).
In the Unit~ States the form is best known as P. T. Barnum. an ATF
resurrection bf the 1950s that has seen frequent albeit circumscribed use.
 OPTIMA AND THE
HUMANIST SANS-SE-RIF TYPES

Type designers have made numerous attempts to create a sans-serif

type that could be considered both beautiful and utilitarian. It was the
latter requirement that had shaped the sans serifs that were originally
produced early in the nineteenth century, but the prosaic typographic
needs of the Industrial Revolution brought fortl.• types containing
features of little aesthetic interest.
For the better part of a century, sans-serif types tended to be
unimaginative renditions of roman letter forms, although it was dis-
covered that their monotone characteristics did allow for variations
of weight and width that would have been more difficult to achieve
with their roman counterparts. In Europe these sans serifs were
termed 'grotesque' and in the United States 'gothic' quite soon after
their introduction. This unfortunate nomenclature was probably due
to their weight, which indeed was similar to that of the black letter -
the truly gothic fifteenth-century forms - but the term also expressed
the disdain of printers for the early serifless typefaces.
This attitude changed abruptly during the 1920s when the Bauhaus
typographers selected the sans-serif structure as the most expressive
icon of their functionalist ideals. But the types of geometric construc-
tion that emerged from the Bauhaus experiments were, of course,
considerably removed from the so-called gothics and thus served, in
fact, to further alienate typographic designers from the older style.
Meanwhile, the traditional typographers, particularly those who
espoused the post-Morris canons, severely criticized the geometric
typefaces, censuring them as gross caricatures of roman letter forms
and as both unreadable and illegible.
Unquestionably, the nineteenth-century gothics were plain letters.
In most instances-the traditionalists notwithstanding-the new geo-
metric styles were considered a great improvement over them, par-
ticularly by typographers who appreciated the asymmetric designs of
 ABCDEFGHIJKL
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Optima (Stempel)

the Bauhaus. Bu~ the idea persisted in some circles that it might also
be possible to combine the forms of roman and sans serif in an aes-
thetically acceptable type.
One of the first type designers to experiment along such lines was
R. Hunter Middleton, then a young man producing rypes for the
Ludlow Typograph Company in Chicago. In 1929, when interest in
the sans serifs was at its peak, Middleton drew Stellar, which thus
became the first new sans serif to be produced in the United States.

325
 LEIPZIG
SPRING FAIR
1936
IROOM x11 I
PRINTING
MACHINERY
SHOW
Offenbach design of Rudolf Koch for Klingspor foundry

-
326
 In its lightface weight, Stellar has much to commend it as a reasoned
attempt to blend the spirit of a graceful roman type with a serifless
structure. But its appearance at the very moment when American
typcgraphets were captivated by such geometric types as Futura and
Kabel milit3.ted against any success it might have enjoyed.
In Europe, the German Rudolf Koch, who had designed the
Kabel seriei of geometric sans serifs, now rurned to a sans serif of
roman inspiration and drew Offenbach. This was a pen-drawn roman,
and though, it was widely admired, its lack of a lowercase alphabet
restricted its, use.
A decade after the introduction of the geometric types of the 1920s,
there <><;curred a slight reaction to their overuse. The American Type
Founders Company accordingly accepted the design for a romanized
sans serif br,ought to the firm by a young American named Warren
Chappell, who had srudied with Rudolf Koch in the early thirties.
The resul~g type, Lydian, was introduced in 1938 and was an im-
mediate success. It was highly regarded as a display and advertising
type for twenty years after its introduction. Chappell supplied a very
legible oblique italic, which he followed with a chancery italic drawn
for the botd;weight only. The design has been transferred to the film
composers and is still in wide use.
But during the 19505 a sans serif emerged that gripped the atten-
tion of typographers as the most satisfying blend to date of the best
features of both the roman and the sans-serif structures. This was the
Optima design of Hermann Zapf.
Zapf- now the most prolific of the world's type designers as well
as the most widely known - first began to think of such a type in
1950. He has ,written, 'The type of today and tomorrow will hardly be
· a faithful r~tting of a 16th century roman of the Renaissance, nor
the original ~tting of a classical face of Bodoni's time- but neither
will it be a sans serif of the 19th cenrury.' He was familiar with Italian
inscriptional,lettering and, along with other typographers who have
admired the fifteenth-century sans-serif characters on the tombs in
Florence's Santa Croce, he was entranced by their classic forms.
Inlaid in gr<ren marble in the floor of that church, these circular
inscriptions }Vere cut about 1530; they are the product of sensitive
artists attempting to vary the existing roman styles. Zapf had also
made sketchb of the inscriptions on the fourth-century Arch of
Constantine in Rome.
Another ~ource of serifless inscriptions is the Schiattesi tombstone
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Lydian {ATF), designed by Warren Chappel for American Type Fowiders Co.

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Stellar (Ludlow), designed by R. Hunter Middleton for Ludlow Typograph Co.
 in Rome, dated 1423. Here designers can readily observe a possible
inspiration for the twentieth-century letters drawn by the English
Edward JohnstoJ:1 and the later adaptations in England by Eric Gill.
In several other Italian inscriptions, dated 1423 and 1430, the letters
are unserifed but have strong thick-and-thin contrast. It is this style,
sharing equally the best features of the roman letters and the sans
serifs, that inspired Hermann Zapf to begin experiments that resulted
in one of his most successful types. He began his Optima designs in
1952 and spent some six years in their development.
In 1954, while working on this project, Zapf took the suggestion
of Monroe Wheeler, of the Museum of Modem Art in New York,
and began to consider adapting his developing letter as a book type.
He thereupon changed the proportions of the lowercase, and by means
of photography (working with Ed Rondthaler at Photolettering, Inc.,
in New York), he tested the suitability of the design for continuous-
reading application. The capitals of Optima, as Zapf has stated, follow
the proportions 9f the Trajan Column inscriptions, which date from
A.D. II3 and serve ;as the best model of Roman majuscules.
Zapf also said that Optima is the first German type not based
on the standard paseline alignment established in 1905. Zapf writes:
'This base line is too deep for a roman, as it was designed for the high
x-height of the Frakrur and Texrura letters. Thus, too many German
types have ascenjiers which are too long and descenders which are
too short. The proportions of Optima Roman are now in the Golden
Section: lowercase x-height equalling the minor and ascenders-
descenders the m;tjor. However, the curved lines of the stems of each
letter result from technical considerations of type manufacturing
rather than purely esthetic considerations.'
-All of these details under Zapfs sure hand have been successfully
attended to, with the result that Optima is today widely used not
only for display composition but also for continuous reading, for
which its contrast of stroke makes it more adaptable than the mono-
tone sans-serif tyjpes. The regular and the medium weights show to
best advantage the classic principles called upon by the designer. In
the variants of the face, the semi-bold and the black, the nineteenth-
century gothic characteristics seem to dominate, although these
weights are meant to be complementary to the regular one.
Optima was first manufactured in 1958 in a foundry version by
Stempel of Frankfurt, and shortly thereafter in linecasting matrices
by America's Mergenthaler. It made its debut that year at the Drupa

329
 exhibition in Dusseldor£ Like all pcpular new types (particularly
those of Zapf), Optima has been widely pirated for use with com-
peting photographic typesetting systems. It is now sold under several
names, and the results are frequently very unhappy.
In a discussion with the writer, Zapf admitted a preference for
Optima over his other types, but he has also observed in print that
a father should not have to select a favorite among his daughters!
If left to his own devices, Zapf would have called the type, in a
straightforward manner, New Roman, but the marketing staff at the
foundry insisted on naming it Optima. By any name, it 'is a splendid
addition to the resources of twentieth-century typographers.
In 1929, when the geometric sans-serif types revolutionized com-
mercial printing, the emphasis in their development was quite different
from that of roman types. For traditionalists the new styles, no matter
how functional, were still without any aesthetic merits. The astute
Stanley Morison said of this period that 'typography was in a cul-de-sac
and life could only be wrung from the letterforms by torture.' Daniel
Berkeley Updike had not given consideration even to the nineteenth-
century gothics in his monumental Printing Types of 1922. Indeed, in
the chapter 'The Choice of Types' he asked, 'And what are the types
we ought not to want- which have no place in any artistically re-
spectable composing-room?' He then proceeded to name the outlaws,
lumping sans serifs with fat-faced romans, hairline types, and almost
all ornamental types. In the second edition of this text, published
in 1937, the typographic pundit was confronted with the sans-serif
explosion. But of it he merely said that he had nothing to add or take
away from his original remarks, 'save that if sans serif fonts must be
had, the medium Futura of Paul Renner or the Gill Sans may be used.'
In 1929 William A Dwiggins became involved with a sans-serif
typeface. Following a conversation on the subject with Dwiggins's
cousin Laurance B. Siegfried (a distinguished figure in American
printing until his death in 1978), Mergenthaler's Harry Gage visited
Dwiggins at his home in Hingham, Massachusetts. There ensued
some correspondence, with the result that Dwiggins was engaged to
draw a sans-serif type for Mergenthaler.
Dwiggins, then forty-nine, had a solid reputation as a book
designer, calligrapher, illustrator, and advertising typographer. As
a young man he had studied lettering with Frederic W. Goudy in
Chicago and later produced a number of designs for Updike's Merry-
mount Press. His connection, as of 1926, with Alfred A. Knopf's

330
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Drawing for hwnanist roman by William A. Dwiggins, 1929

331
publishing firm resulted in the design of hundreds of books that
established Dwiggins as the indisputable leader in American trade
book design.
Mergenthaler's interest in the production of a sans-serif type was
to satisfy the requests of its customers; to supply a type in the Fu~ra
mode to be made available in matrix form. The collaboration with
Dwiggins was most successful; from it came the popular type family
Metro, cut in 1929, which is still used in newspaper typography.
W. A. Dwiggins was happiest with traditional forms, but his lively
imagination and whimsical approach to design freed his thinking
from the conservatism expressed by so many contemporary type
designers. Whereas his old teacher, Goudy, was a ·purist in letter
design who never fully accepted the technical modifications of manu-
facturing, Dwiggins felt that he had a good deal t0 learn from the
engineers responsible for the transfer of drawing to matrix; more-
over, he thoroughly enjoyed working with them.
Although Dwiggins had satisfactorily met the demands of the
Mergenthaler firm, he was also eager to generate a sans-serif type
along somewhat different lines. This letter would be far removed
from dependence on geometric principles or the concepts of the
nineteenth-century gothics. In fact, what Dwiggins really wanted to
design was a sans-serif type with a humanist structure.
Since the center of the sans-serif revival was in Europe, Dwiggins
at first investigated the possibility of designing such a type for a
European typefoundry. Working through Melbert B. Cary, Jr.,
president of the Continental Typefounders Association-an import
house connected with a number of the European firms -he prepared
a few drawings to demonstrate his tentative ideas. Shortly after
this, however, Dwiggins decided that the Atlantic Ocean was too
formidable a barrier for effective type design and so abandoned his
hope of finding a European foundry.
The stats of the sketches Dwiggins made for Cary are contained
in the Melbert B. Cary, Jr., Graphic Arts Collection at the Rochester
Institute of Technology. Dated March 1929, the drawings show a
sans-serif type with definite roman characteristics. Dwiggins had
prepared these sketches in his own preferred manner, by cutting
stencils for stem weights, curves, arches, and so on, and ·'getting
a focus' by combining related elements of letter anatomy. This is
also the procedure he employed in constructing the elements of his
inimitable ornaments, used with such success in his book design.

332
 Several years later, when Dwiggins had become more involved in the
design of types; particularly for book composition, he changed his
method, drawing letters with a brush or pen to a size of ten times
12-point. In this he followed the style of his former teacher, Fred
Goudy, who also drew freehand to a large size.
In the drawings prepared for Cary, Dwiggins noted, 'Somebody
is sure to try this pretty soon, san-serif [sic]-a mechanically finished
o.s. body-letter of good shape. These are experimental-not perfected-
but there is an idea lurking in this somewhere.'
So when Mergenthaler Linotype approached Dwiggins for a sans
serif, the designer immediately thought of his earlier ideas. Unhappily
the firm was not prepared to break new ground. Though its customers
were persistently demanding a 'new' sans serif, of course what they
really wanted w.as a geometric style in the pattern of Futura. Dwig-
gins, always practical, bowed to the unavoidable requirements of the
marketplace. His Metro design therefore followed the Futura idea in
the capitals, though departing from it in the lowercase; Rudolf Koch,
another traditional type designer, had done the same with the Kabel
type. Dwiggins had earlier commented on the geometric sans serifs:
'They are fine in the caps and bum in the lowercase. I don't know if you
can make a Gothic that is good in the lowercase, but we might try.' .
Once the Metro design was launched, Dwiggins again turned to
his dream of ai sans serif with classic proportions and style. The
earliest evidence of this continuing interest that the writer can dis-
cover appears in a letter dated January 4, 1930, addressed to C.H.
Griffith, at that:time assistant to the president of the Mergenthaler
Linotype Company. Here Dwiggins states: 'I shall send-you a few
more characters of that experimental face of mine. [Harry] Gage
took down to you some stencils of a modelled san [sic] serif that you
were to try experimentally but it has been side-tracked. I have a hunch
that it may be important (listening to the whispers among the younger
set), and maybe it would be well to dig it out and look at it.'
During the next three years Dwiggins produced numerous drawings
for a humanist sans serif, and Mergenthaler produced matrices for a
sufficient number of characters to obtain a realistic idea of the final
I

appearance of the design. Bur after several attempts ro evolve a satis-

factory style (all of which were, in Dwiggins's phrase, 'drowned' by
the manufacturer), the company turned to other matters. Dwiggins,
however, persisted. By 1931 he was back at the drawing board, and he
wrote to Mergenthaler:

333
It seems that I can't keep away from the 'modelled san-serif,' [sic] partly
because I think there is something valuable to be done along that line, and
partly because the 'young ones' keep howling for a face, sanserif, [sic] that
can reasonably be used for body-matter in a book.
I enclose the latest effort, which I send with no suggestion that it be cut,
but that you lay it in the portfolio and take a look at it now and then.
One of the secrets of success in such a face would be great finesse in
fitting. With no cerifs [sic] the exact relation between black mark and white
paper becomes even more important than with usual characters. For every
two black bands of a given weight, there is just right white to go with them,
e.g., in rules scheme. I think these san-serifs [sic] could be fused into a correct
color by finding out just that right white interval. If it were formed between
straight stems ~e round letters could be brought into position to meet it,
couldn't they? I should suppose that there is a formula that controls that: if
the m, n, interval is so much, the m, o, interval will be so much?
The straight-stem interval in Met Black and Met Medium struck me as
very well calculated.

Mergenthaler finally got around to cutting a few characters of this·

type, labeling them '12-point Experimental No. 63.' On May 24, 1932,
Griffith wrote Dwiggins as follows:
Dear Bill:
Experimental No. 63 Modelled Sans Serif. Further to your comments on
the above and in answer to your query I am frankly of the opinion that
Experimental No. 63 can be nothing else than a 'stunt' face. At the moment I
cannot bring myself to the point of feeling that it has any immediate sales
value; or perhaps I should say that I do not regard it of sufficient importance
to interfere with the development of Electra or the development of your ..
ideas with regard to a face on the Scotch base.
On the other hand I cannot get away from the feeling that there is an
important place somewhere for a Modelled Sans Serif and I do not think that
we should let it get away from us altogether. Two or three young designers
who have recently rerumed from a sojourn in Germany have told me that
our German contemporaries are searching for a model of this kind and that it
is a live topic of discussion. They all seem ro feel that the key to the solution
of the problem is just around the comer; but they are unable to find it.
I recall that you used the identical expression a year or so ago. I heard it
again today from a young man who had just returned from a year's srudy in
Germany with Dr. [Rudolf] Koch. So let's not drop it altogether.

Dwiggins replied co what was beginning to appear to be Lino-

type's final rejection of the whole concept of the modeled sans serif:

Your comments are entirely correct. For myself I am not awfully thrilled. In
spite of the clamor of .the 'young' typographers, I doubt if a san-serif [sic]
body letter will work. This one looks flea-bitten - like a hand-lettering plate
that had been over-etched. Metroblack and Metromedium carry the eye on

334
 AaBbCc Aa Bb Cc
Albertus Light 534 Albertus 481

ABC
ABCDEFG H IJ KLMN OPQRSTU
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Albertus Titling 324

ABC D E.F G H I J K LM Albertus Bold Titling 538

Alberrus, desighed for English Monotype by Berthold Wolpe, 1932

the line becaµse of the thickness of the stems. It seems that anything with
lighter stems:than Mblack and Mmed. requires the cerif [sic] stroke to carry
the line. Men:-0lighr, e.g., doesn't work as a body face at all well.
lwill folltjw your lead as to further experiments with No. 63. If you think
it worthwhil~, there are things that are plain to be done. My query would be:
can it be anything else than a 'stunt' face? If a stunt face looks like sales to
you, good enpugh, let's go. But don't let's go on my account. Within me is
more.'

Attache~ to this letter in the files of the Griffith-Dwiggins corre-

spondence, at the University of Kentucky, is a handwritten note from
WAD, date~ May 27, 1932, which might very well be the final comment
on a humanist sans-serif type by one of the greatest of American type
designers an~ graphic artists: 'On the strength of your comments I
will not let '.the idea die. Using that last experiment as a point of
departure, PU try some more twists. But as you say, do Electra stuff,
etc., first. I~ it is possible to make a sans serif body-letter that the
American pu;blic can read without noticing the fact that it is reading,
we are the ones who can do it. Yes?' ✓
 The idea did not perish but what did come to an end was the
opportunity for William A. Dwiggins to accomplish something that
was very close to his heart- a sans-serif type based on humanist
roman forms.
The 'modelled sans serif' that Dwiggins so hoped to produce was
finally and superlatively drawn as Optima by the thirty-four-year-old
Hermann Zapf in 1952. In 1969, the writer showed Zapf the Dwiggins
drawings in the Cary Collection, and they were a revelation to him.
Zapf could only shake his head at the coincidence of inspiration
between himself and Dwiggins, thirty years and four thousand miles
apart. Zapf fully agrees that the success of a printing type depends on
numerous factors other than the skill of a designer, and proper timing
is one of the most essential. The Dwiggins experimental sans serif,
like Middleton's Stellar type, is a case in point.

William A. Dwiggins
 FUTURA AND THE
GEOMETRIC SANS-SERIF TYPES

The types that ~cans call gothic and that Europeans call grotesque
were the first serifless letters to achieve popularity as printing types.
Now, more than 1a century and a half since their introduction, their
appeal has not diminished in the eyes of most typographic designers.
Naturally there have been several dips in the curve of these styles'
acceptance, but they continue to flourish and fulfill a substantial niche
in the typographic requirements for commercial printing.
The specimen books of the nineteenth-century typefounders were
brimming with gothics, and when the family concept of providing
various weights ~d widths for one face became established-after
1900- it seemed that these types would continue their domination
of commercial printing. In the rnidtwenties, however, the gorhics
experienced a setpack, which was to last for a quarter of a century.
This was a result, of the influence of the German school of design
(encompassing the Bauhaus), from which emerged an approach to
structuring serifl~ss letters that captured the imagination of the
younger typographic designers. The typeface that expressed die neue
Typographic, 'the new typography: was Futura.
But though Futura made a definite impact upon its introduction
in 1926, it was not the first sans-serif type to depart from the gothic
modd- there were antecedents that had influenced its design. Prob-
ably the most important of these was the alphabet drawn by Edward
Johnston for the London Underground Railway in,_ 1916. Johnston
was an outstanding teacher of calligraphy, who in 1906 had published
Writing and Illuminating and Lettering, a work that hdd great aµthority
in England and Germany and is still considered probably the most
influential book op lettering ever published.
The Johnston Underground Alphabet-still in use-represented
a departUre from t;he nineteenth-century gothic letters. Whereas these
gothics had been' primarily serifless modifications of roman forms,

337
 ABCDEFG
HIJKLMNOP
QRSTUV
WXYZ
abcdefghi
iklmnopqrstu
vwxyz
1234567890
Futura Medium (Bauer)

-
338
ABC DEFGHIJ KLMNOP
1

QRSTUVWXYZ
a bed efgh ij klm nopq rst
uvwxyz
1234567890 &£
The ''Underground" type of Edward Johnston

abcdefGhi
ia<lmnopqr
stuvwxyz
a dd
Herbert Bayer's p:perirnental Universal typeface, 1925

Johnston, with compass and straightedge, created monotone charac-

ters of geometric construction. Utilizing his profound knowledge of
traditional letters, he produced an alphabet that had far greater legi-
bility than th<r earlier sans-serif forms.
The Johnston approach to sans-serif lettering was to come to
fruition in the type of the fine English designer Eric.Gill. Named Gill
Sans, this face was cut by the Monotype Corporation in 1928 and
I

339
rapidly became the most widely used serifless type in Great Britain.
As the American Monorype firm refused to offer the Gill type for the
American market, it received limited use here with the result that the
Continental sans serifs became dominant.
In Germany just before the First World War there had been a
movement to discard conventional ideas in typography. Its spokes-
man, Jakob Erbar, believed that the type that would best express the
new concepts would have to be a serifless letter. The world conflict
delayed the spread of Erbar's ideas, but after the war their effect was
enhanced by the Johnston alphabet, giving further impetus to the
reform movement.
In 1919 the Bauhaus school, under the direction of the architect
Walter Gropius, brought to fruition some of the untried theories of
design-particularly those related to architecture-that had previously
only been discussed. Function and form became the key words of the
philosophy of this new design, whose focus was the elimination of
the Victorian 'gingerbread' decoration on buildings and the substi-
tution of pure line. Applied to type, this approach could only result
in clean sans-serif characters. And what could be more appropriate
than constructing these characters with compass and straightedge?
The timing of the sans-serif experiments coincided with a period
that many observers of typography considered deplorable. Blackness
reigned supreme, in such faces as Cooper Black, Ultra Badoni, and
Broadway. Complementary to the heavy types were rules of equal
weight, with dingbats and cubes to match. Thus, the functional
movement, with its clean lines and geometric distribution of white
space, offered a most dynamic contrast to the existing styles. Indeed,
American typographers had been experimenting with the asymmetric
designs of the neo-Bauhaus penod before Futura became available.
And since the resulting designs - being based on the extra-bold types
then popular-were appalling, the advent of the German sans serifs
by contrast sparked even greater enthusiasm for geometric sans serifs.
The first type to· emerge from this philosophy was a sans serif
designed by and named for Jakob Erbar. Produced in 1926, this type
should be recognized as the initiator of 'the new typography; but
it was followed closely by another design, Futura, that appeared to
most observers to be superior in every way. Futura captured the
imagination of typographers worldwide and thus robbed its prede-
cessor of its claim to being 'the first.'
Futura was created by Paul Renner, a book designer and founder

340
 aaaabb~bc
ddefgghii
klmnoo 0 pp
9qr1·f stuv
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Aff0ckf3
Original concept of the Futura design by Paul Renner

of the Masters' S~hool for German Printers in Munich. As originally

conceived, Futura represented what can only be termed an abstraction
of the idea of th~ roman letter. The capitals were more traditional
than the lowercase characters, and they followed more closely the
features of the earlier gothics, although they were of monotone and
geometric construction. But in drawing the lowercase, Renner's
obvious enthusiasm for 'form follows function' resulted in a font in
which several letters became caricatures of classic minuscules.
Renner offem;i the design to the Bauer Typefoundry of Frankfurt,
which recommended a number of changes based on its long experience
in producing printing types. The design as it is now recognized was
completed in 1927. The major changes, made in the lowercase charac-

341
 ters, brought them closer to the accepted forms. The type became
enormously successful and instigated a sans-serif renaissance that
quickly spread from Europe to the United States.
At the same time that Futura was under development, the most
widely known and respected German type designer, Klingspor's
Rudolf Koch, was also preparing a geometric sans serif, ultimately
named, for the export market, Kabel. Appearing the same year as
Futura, Kabel was also heartily received.
As Koch was in every sense a traditional designer -who had cut
many of the punches of his earlier types by hand- he evidently found
it more difficult than did Renner to depart from the normal roman
forms·. For example, in Kabel the lowercase a is in the standardized
roman pattern, as are g and t. The e reaches back to the Venetian
period in its retention of the slanted crossbar. It is in the capitals that
Kabel holds more closely to the geometric style, although several
letters are unique among the sans serifs in having slanted stroke
endings.
In the cap font Futura is a surprisingly simple design of plain
block letters with no remarkable individual characters other than
perhaps the Q, whose tail is a diagonal that is longer inside the
counter space than outside it. It may be noted that the caps are
shorter in height than the ascenders of the lowercase, a feature of
practical value in German-language printing in which there are so
many capitals. The lowercase alphabet utilizes the perfectly round o
as the base for seven other characters, which are changed with the
mere addition of a stroke to create a, b, d, e,g, p, and q.
Together Futura and Kabel were received by the more progressive
typographers in the United States as harbingers of a whole new world
of typography. Some traditionalists, as could be expected, took an
entirely different view - one of them called the faces 'block letters for
block-heads.' It was probably the combination of geometric sans-serif
types with the asymmetric design that was most disturbing to the
conservative typographers. But the movement could not be halted or
even slowed. The excitement greeting the debut of the geometric
sans-serif types in the United States prompted the American manu-
facturers of type and matrices to take immediate steps to counter
the competition from the German foundries. By 1930 this had been
accomplished, but since accurate records of the dates of introduction
of these designs do not exist, it is difficult to determine the exact
sequence of presentation. The fact remains, however, that within

342
 ♦

_ .-.es1 ra e
Characters in Font

ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPOR
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$1234567890
a 6 c def g hi j k I
m no p qr s tu v
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w>,<y z ch ck Ft ff fl fl
Kabel Light

343
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
(&$1234567890¢£.,:;'"'' --·--·*%11?[]«»)
Kabel Bold, designed by Rudolf Koch for Klingspor foundry

three years of the arrival of the German types, all American manu-
facturers had produced competitive styles.
The Intertype Corporation entered the sans-serif derby with the
Vogue series, created for the fashion magazine of the same name.
Designed anonymously, Vogue superficially resembles Futura. The
response to Futura of two of the other manufacturers of linecasting
machines - the Mergenthaler Linotype Company and the Ludlow
Typograph Company- was the production of independently designed
sans-serif styles. Mergenthaler turned to one of the finest graphic
designers of our time, William A. Dwiggins.
A year previously, Dwiggins had written a great book on the sub-
ject of typography, entitled Layout in Advertising. In this volume he
had discussed the legibility of types and stated: 'Gothic in its various
manifestations has little to commend it except simplicity. It is not
overly legible, it has no grace. Gothic capitals are indispensable, but
there are no good Gothic capitals; the typefounders will do a service
to advertising if they will provide a Gothic of good design.'
Dwiggins received an immediate response from Harry L. Gage, at
Mergenthaler, who requested that Dwiggins define good design in a
gothic, illustrate it, and then cut it for the Linotype. This Dwiggins
proceeded to do, and from then on he was, in addition to all of his
other roles, a type designer.
Linotype's sans serif was named Metro, and the first series to
be drawn was the bold weight called Metroblack. The subsequent
variants of the series were drawn by the firm's design department
under Dwiggins's supervision. Metro is at its best in the capitals,
which represent the same approach as that of Edward Johnston to his
alphabet for the London Underground. In the lowercase several
characters depart from the geometric principles, such as the e in its

344
HOW IS ONE,TO ASSESS AND EVALUATE A TYPE FA
How is one to assess and evaluate a type face in terms of
its esthetic design? Why do the pace-makers in the art of
printing rove over a specific face of type? What do they
see in it? Why is it so superlatively pleasant to their eyes?
Good design isi always practical design. And what they see
in a good type,design is, portly, its excellent practical fit-
ness to perfor111 its work. It hos a "heft' and balance in all
of its ports j us( right for its size, as any good tool hos. Your
good choir hos:oll of its ports mode nicely to the right size

ABCD~FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUYWXYZ&
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&
obcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 ($,.:;'-'? !)
abcdelghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 ($,.:;'-'?!)

Metromedium (Linotype)

thin crossbar and the f, j, and t in their peculiar slabbed-off stroke

endings.
A successful i11dividualized approach to the redesign of a gothic-
which has sold very well for Linotype, particularly in the newspaper
field-Metro is nqnetheless scarcely a face in the Futura pattern, and
it was later felt that a closer copy of Futura was needed. This was
supplied in conjunction with the American Type Founders Company
when Spartan, an; almost identical copy of Futura, was brought out
in the early 1930s.
Another rendition of the Futura design was created by R. Hunter
Middleton, typographic director of Ludlow. Like Dwiggins, Middle-
ton was intrigued by the sans-serif idea, and he, too, went his own
way. When he introduced it in 1929, Middleton called Stellar 'a modi-
fication of the Futura severity,' although, like Metro, it was a con-
siderable remove from Futura, actually resembling a humanist sans
serif, a form that would garner attention thirty years later. Under
pressure from its customers, Ludlow felt it necessary in 1930 to pro-

345
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
&.,:;l?'f\'"-0¢$123456789O%
Spartan Medium (ATF)

ABCDl:FGI-IIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrst:uvwxyz
&.,:;!?u-••:•$$1234567890
Bernhard Gothic Medium (ATF)

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ
a bed ef g hi ikl m nopq rstuvwxyz
(& $12 3 4 5 6 7 8 90.,:; "--! ?+ [])
Tempo Bold (Ludlow)
 vide a type closer to Futura, and thus brought out its Tempo series,
also· drawn by Middleton. _
Meanwhile, the American Type Founders Company had contracted
for a sans-sei;if type with Lucien Bernhard, a German artist who had
come to the 1United States in 1923, having earlier produced several
types for the Bauer Typefoundry in Germany. In 1929, the series
called Bernhard Gothic was introduced. Displaying his skill as an
imaginative ~esigner of posters, Bernhard brought the same flair
to his sans-s,=rif type, prompting an instant acceptance by printers
dependent on foundry types.
But despi.te the success of Bernhard Gothic, ATF was also com-
pelled by competition from the European foundries to make available
for American printers a sans serif that was closer to Futura. As men-
tioned abovei, this decision to satisfy the market resulted in the joint
undertaking with Mergenthaler to bring out Spartan.
The Lans'ton Monotype Company in Philadelphia, in its desire
quick1y to provide a geometric sans serif, adapted Koch's Kabel design,
naming it si~ply Sans Serif. But during the middle 193os, under the
directi~n of Sol Hess, this firm also bowed to the inevitable and
manufacture~ its own copy of Futu.ra, which it called Twentieth
Century.
It may be:noted that Monotype also asked Frederic W. Goudy, in
1929, to produce a sans serif. He acceded to this request somewhat
reluctantly ~d, like his fellow-American designers Dwiggins and Mid-
dleton, tum~ away from the German style. The type that emerged,
Goudy Sans, was disappointing to the Monotype finn, though it was
nonetheless produced. Goudy later wrote of it, 'I attempted to give to
my type a definite expression of freedom and a personal quality not
always found in this kind of a letter.'
The Intertype Corporation was the only American firm to enter into
an arrangem<;nt with the German Bauer foundry to produce Futura
for machine-~omposition, and it was given permission to apply the
original name to its cutting.
With the 4vailability of Futura in either the original or the nu-
merous copi~, it may be seen that the geometric sans serif came into
its own during the 1930s. Although there have been a few periods
when the nine.teenth-century gothic ~pes have returned to favor, the
Futura style h'as remained possibly the most popular of all the sans-
serif types for ~he past half-century.

347
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP
QRSTUVWXYZ abed
efghiiklm.nopqrstuv""
xyz 1234567890
20th Cenrury Bold (Monotype)

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW
XYZ&
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz fiflffffiffl
1234567890£
Gill Sans Bold (English Monotype)

Eric Gill

348
 SCRIPT, CURSIVE
AND DECORATED TYPES

The examination of any current type-specimen book will invariably

disclose a large nµmber of faces designed to imitate some form of
handwriting. The catalogues of the nineteenth century also listed
numerous examples of such written forms, though they were mostly
restricted to the styles that had been developed by seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century writing masters, and all were written with a steel
pen. The modern scripts differ from those of the last century by their
bewildering variet;y of structure, which stems primarily from the use
of several instruments - the broad pen, the steel pen, and the brush
(surprisingly, this,is a very late development in the design of cursive
printing types, coming only within the last half century). That scripts
are types selected! for specialized use precludes any particular script
style from achievilig favored status among typographers. Decorative
letters, to be discussed later in the chapter, are similarly restricted in
modern typography.
It is a simplification to state that all printing types descend from
writing styles, bu~ once the fifteenth-century book hands haa been
transferred to metal types, they followed a line of development that
can be continuously traced over the past five centuries, an evolution
now solidly documented by typographic historians and bibliographers.
The documenting, of these types has been made easier for well over
half of that period by the hegemony of book production as opposed
to more ephemeral printed matter. Until the nineteenth century,
books remained the major product of the printer. By the beginning
of industrialization, the traditions of roman, italic, and black-letter
types had been well established; the slight changes in form forged
by commercial necessity during the first three cenrories of printing
were readily assinulated, thereby simplifying their arrangement into
a comfortable system of typographic nomenclarore.
Under pressure to cater to the new industrial age's requirements,

349
 typefounders after 1800 were stimulated into frenetic competition
(with often disastrous financial results). Theirs was a passionate search
for profitable novelty, which frequently took the form of scripts and
decorated types. Contributing to this effort were the new mechanical
changes invented for the founding of printing types - after almost
four hundred years of technological lethargy-which finally provided
the means by which founders could both vastly increase their output
and improve the quality of their product. The two-piece hand mold
gave way to the Pivotal Typecaster patented in 1838 by David Bruce,
Jr., a New York typefounder. This· device pel,"ITlitted the production
of 100 to 175 characrers per minute, depending upon size, as opposed
to the 400 to 500 per hour of the most skillful hand-caster. Several
hand operations still had to be performed after casting, but by 1888
Henry Barth, of the Cincinnati Type Foundry, had perfected a casting
machine that ddivered completely finished types at the rate of about
250 per minute. The Barth machine is essentially the same caster that
is now used by all typefounders.
Another factor contributing to the typefounders' increasing in-
terest in producing extravagant new display types was the develop-
ment of stereotyping, a method by which whole pages of type could be
molded into lead printing plates. Since it was no longer necessary to
print from actual types, the types could be redistributed after the
molding operation. Although continued molding did cause some wear,
the damage was far less than that of printing, and types lasted longer.
Faced with a shrinking market for book and magazine type, the
founders turned their attention to display and special-purpose types.
One of the most important mechanical developments to affect
typefounding and the creation of fancy types was the invention of a
method whereby matrices could be made by the electrotyping process.
This practice bypassed the cutting of punches, allowing a foundry
readily to duplicate a competitor's type by simply purchasing a font
and then molding each character in wax and obtaining by electro- ·
deposit a copy from which to manufacture a set of matrices. Perfected
in 1845 by Edwin Starr in Philadelphia, the method initiated the
pirating of printing types on a large scale. It also contributed greatly
to the difficulty of identifying a type, as the same design, reproduced
by many foundries, frequently appeared under a dozen different names.
The final major contributor to the multiplication of new types
was the matrix-engraving machine. Invented by Linn Boyd Benton
in 1885, this device eliminated the need for hand-cutting a steel punch.

350
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Civilit'C type of RAfJcn Granjon, Lyons, 1558

351
Rosart's Caracrere de Finance, Enschedc foundry, 1768

352
Fleischmann's adaptari6n of Rosart's Finance types, Enschede, 1768

353
 The long period of mechanization from the nineteenth into the
twentieth century was so turbulent that typefoundries never again
regained their earlier complacency. It was a frenzied, demanding, and
highly competitive time, a period in which bankruptcy and amalga-
mation became quite common. The great majority of the innumerable
types marketed during this century have long been forgotten, although
some have recently been resurrected both by type collectors and by
phototypesetters.
The reader of this book has been confronted with a confusing
diversity of typographic terminology, for no single system of type
classification exists. And script types, because they derive from a pro-
fusion of handwriting styles, are even more difficult to classify than
others. In describing these types two terms are used almost inter-
changeably: script and cursive. Many typographers pref~r to call a type
a script only if it has joining characters, and a cursive if the characters
are separate. But there is a general lack of agreement in usage; manu-
facturers themselves are quite indiscriminate in their names. Beyond
this imprecision, the diversity of writing styles over the past five
centuries further complicates the classification. Under such circum-
stances, it is reasonable and safe simply to resort to terms of historic
accuracy.
The first type to be based on cursive, or informal, writing is the
italic of Aldus Manutius (1500-1). Within thirty years, the French
punchcutters adapted this italic form as a complementary companion
of roman type, and .it is so used to the present time. Because of this
roman connection, italics are not considered scripts, even though
their derivation is the same as the styles called script. About 1524
Vicenrino degli Arrighi brought to metal types the chancery cursive
writing, a style that today is used primarily as the complementary
italic for a number of romans based on the Italian Renaissance letter
forms: Yet another complication exists in arriving at a rational termi-
nology, since printers have rarely agreed with the nomenclature used
by Latin paleographers. For example, Berthold Louis Ullman, in his
authoritative study Ancient Writing and Its Influence~ refers to the
'humanist script' as the model for all printing types, thus making no
distinction between the structure of letters. As noted in the chapter
on the Arrighi types, the it~ic form developed from the font first
used by Aldus in 1501, and within two decades became a complemen-
tary form to roman, never classified as script despite the obvious
relationship of form.

354
 Credit for the first cursive type is generally given to the French
punchcutter Robert Granjon, who made a type based on the gothic
cursive bookihand that had been in use for several centuries in northern
Europe before the invention of printing. Harry Carter, the English
historian, has written that Granjon called this style lettre franfuise,
and that sev~ral French typefounders of the period also knew it by
that name. It was related to the biitarde form of black-letter type,
although it was certainly more freely written. The first use of the
Granjon cursive was in Dialogue de la Vie et de la Mort, by lnnocenzio
Ringhieri, printed at Lyons in 1557-. Its second appearance, the follow-
ing year, was of greater importance, as it was used in La Civiliti
Puerile, written by Erasmus as a <grammar' of manners for children.
Reprinted innumerable times in later centuries, and always with the
same style of;type, the title became synonymous with the type: Civilite.
Granjon rea;ived the exclusive rights to his type for ten years, and by
1562 had priqted some twenty books in it_ But just two years after its
appearance, it already had been copied by Parisian printers.
Civilite reached Scotland by 1571 and was being used by English
printers some five years later. Called Secretary in Great Britain, it was
employed piin1arily for legal printing until the eighteenth century.
Civilite types were available from founders in France and the Low
Countries until the nineteenth century in much the same form as the
sixteenth century. Debemy et Peignot of Paris offered an excellent
version, last shown in its catalogue of 1926.
Currentl}1 there are several cursives that bear some relation to the
Granjon type. Morris Benton cut a letter for the American Type
Founders Cqmpany in 1922 that received the name Civilite, but it
lacks the str0ng gothic character of the original. The most widely
used adaptation is Ernst Schneidler's Legend, introduced by the
Bauer foundry of Frankfurt, Germany, in 1937. Legend immediately
caught the fancy of the advertising typographers, who adopted it,
curiously, to .depict the exotic atmosphere of the Near and Far East,
rarely selectiqg it to suggest the spirit of its place of origin, northern
Europe of the high Middle Ages. Even closer to this spirit than
Legend is Rlj.apsodie, designed by Ilse Schiile in 1951 for Frankfurt's
Ludwig & Mkyer foundry.
The 19sos;was an extremely active period for the tutting of script
types, possibly the most productive ever, in which more than sixty
different designs issued from the various typefounders. Several of
these types ?ore traces of the black-letter cursive form, notably

355
 Ondine of Debemy et Peignot, designed in 1954 by Adrian Frutiger,
and Georg Trump's Palomba, manufacrured by C. E. Weber in Snm-
gart about 1955. Neither of these scripts, however, was widely available
or used in the United States.
The chancery writing of the early sixteenth century- which inspired
such beautiful italic types as Arrighi, Narrow Bembo, Deepdene, and
Palatino - has also been adapted for independent script faces, mostly
of bold weight, used principally for display purposes. The broad-pen
influence is noticeable in two such adaptations that have both enjoyed
considerable popularity in this country: Lydian Cursive, drawn by
Warren Chappell t<> accompany his broad-pen Lydian series, in which
the standard italic is an oblique, or sloping, roman; and Rondo,
designed in 1948 by Stefan Schlesinger and Dick Doo1jes for the
Amsterdam Typefoundry. A third type containing chancery overtones
is Raleigh Cursive, designed in 1929 by Willard T. Sniffin for the
American Type Founders, and enjoying considerable success with the
smaller commercial printers.
During the last half of the sixteenth century the principles that
had been expounded in 1522 by Arrighi in his writing manual of the
chancery style, Operina, became controversial among the writing
masters. For example, Giovanni Francesco Cresci, a calligrapher
employed by the Vatican Library, was critical of the chancery style
as being 'slow and heavy' and too pointed, and he also found fault
with the writing instrument of the earlier period, preferring a more
rounded and flexible point. He believed that letters should be rounder
and also advocated the joining of characters. The English historian
of calligraphy James Wardrop has said of Cresci that he exemplified
such concepts as 'Overboard with geometry; overboard with edged
pens: let us get back to handwriting, handwriting that flows.' In 1570
Cresci published II Perfetto Scriffore ('the perfect writer'), in which
, he argued for such reforms. From that time the more commercial
standards of writing came into favor, and the classic traditions of the
chancery hand went into a long decline.
By the mid-seventeenth century the position of the writing master,
the teacher of calligraphy, d~rninated that of the scribe, the practicing
penman, so that ~alligraphy influenced commercial writing styles.
During this period three different hands were developed in France
and began to appear in the writing manuals. Ronde is an erect script
deriving from the Civilite of the sixteenth century but written with
lighter strokes, thus deemphasizing the gothic influence. Apparently

356
 emanating from the financial writing rooms, ronde has also been called
financiere. The second style was termed lettre italienne and is attributed
to Lucas Materot, who worked in the papal office at Avignon and
produced a copybook in 1608. This is a hand of joined letters, which
lent itself to rapi<;i writing and became a model for what later was to be
called English round hand, or copperplate. Along with these smoothly
flowing script hands came a tendency to apply the embellishments, or
decorative flourishes, that were eventually to diminish the scripts'
practicality for commercial purposes. The third style, called coulie, is
a modification of ronde, being somewhat rounder and simpler to
write and consequently more suitable for business writing.
Typographicil copies of these written scripts first appeared about
1643, cur by Pierre Moreau, a French calligrapher who had turned to
printing, first using engraved plates and then from aetual types. The
English historian1AF. Johnson refers to the Moreau types-appearing
in eleven books between 1643 and 1648- as biitardes italiennes. The
full development of the scripts as printing types came during the
eighteenth century when a number of notable punchcutters turned to
their production, Pierre Simon Fournier cut a biitarde coulee in 1742,
and in 1753 J. F. Rosart at the Durch Enschede foundry of Haarlem
made _a caractere fi.e finance, which Stanley Morison called 'singularly
ugly'; Morison d~plored the decision of Giambattista Bodoni to copy
it later in the century. The noted German punchcutter J. F. Fleisch-
mann cut a much·improved copy of the Rosart type for Enschede.
The ronde remains alive today as a printing type in but few ver-
sions, although dil.ring the nineteenth century it was a standard French
script. In fact, American foundries generally applied the name French
Script to the style. In its 1906 catalogue, ATF first exhibited a ronde,
called Tiffany Upright and designed by Morris Benton. The face's
name was subsequently changed to Typo Upright and it became a
standard for sodal printing, remaining popular up to the present.
The English firm: of Stephenson, Blake has an identical type named
Parisian Ronde. Both of these are later versions of the Rondes
Modemes origintllY cur by France's Deberny et Peignot.
By the dose of the seventeenth century the writing masters were
slowly abandoning the more ornate forms, bringing an end to the
capricious directions taken by the earlier penmen. By the start of the
eighteenth century writing hands were more disciplined and practical,
as can be seen in examples of writing books of the time. In 1712, the
Englishman Chat;les Snell published the Art of Writing in which he

357
 censured his fellows for the superfluous decoration of scripts. George
Bickham's Universal Penman, published in parts berween ITH and 1744,
is the best single source of information concerning the variety of
contemporary English writing hands. In this beautiful engraved book,
still available in reprint, appears the script now called English Round-
hand, which became the model for hundreds of script types (though
mostly of inferior design) during the nineteenth century, some of
which have survived in modified form into our own time. The English
Roundhand became standardized throughout Europe, being called
in France ecriture anglaise, in Italy· scrittura inglese, and in Germany
englische Schreibschrift. The typographic form of the round hand is
also an English contribution, initiated by the typefounder Thomas
Cottrell, who cast it into ty.pe in 1774.
Through the influence of scores of copybooks, round hand had
spread to every part of the world by the mid-nineteenth century. It was
the recognized standard for penmanship, not only in businesses but
also in schools. Under such names as Spencerian and the more utili-
tarian American Palmer Method, generations of children were system-
atically taught to hate handwriting - the central 'R' of a questionable
philosophy of education -with the obvious result that most adults .
never acquired the ability to write legibly, much less beautifully.
The conversion of the nue copperplate scripts to printing types
required both great skill of design and rigorous craftsmanship in ex-
ecution. Not only the close fitting of the characters but their inclination,
on the order of about thirty-five degrees, presented a stiff challenge
to the ingenuity of the typefounder. Since it was not possible to cast
such a letter on a standard square type body, a variety of methods
were used to produce an angled body that could support the extend-
ing letters and provide the interlocking of characters to assure tight
fitting. Founders solved the problem in a number of ways. When the
mechanization of typesetting brought economic upheaval to the type-
foundries, founders took some comfort in the fact that at least one
style of type could not be produced in any way but by a skilled crafts-
man - it was not until the arrival of the phototypesetting devices that
it became possible to set script types other than by hand-composition.
But the price to the foundry was slow production, which could be
afforded only by charging the printer at least fifty percent more for
copperplates than for normal types.
The manufacmre of copperplate scripts continued unabated until
the outset of the Second World War. Few scripts of other origin

358
Early American roundhand script type, cut by George Bruce, c. 1820

359
encroached on their popularity. In its 1906 specimen book the Ameri-
can Type Founders Company listed eight different copperplates, and
in both the 1912 and the 1923 catalogues ten varieties were listed. But
it was in Germany that the greatest number was produced: by the
1930s some seventy-five copperplates were advertised, mostly for
German printers and not for export.
The use of copperplate scripts was primarily restricted to social
printing whose style had been traditionally initiated by the engravers,
with a spillover into legal forms. Every printer had at; least one such
style to offer customers, and in most instances this represented the
only script type in his cases. From 1920 the predominant American
copperplates were ATF's Typo Script and Typo Script Extended
(originally called Tiffany Script), both drawn by Morris Benton. As
of 1908 a boldface copperplate had been offered. In 1923, in the .final
large catalogue to be issued by ATF, a medium-weight variant ap-
peared, named Bank Script. The three weights enabled advertisers to
use the formal scripts even for newspaper advertising. In England
Stephenson, Blake did not begin such a program until the 1950s, with
their medium-weight Youth!ine Script, followed by Copperplate Bold.
That the round hand continues to intrigue type designers is evident
in this era of phototypesetting. In 1966 the Englishman Matthew
Carter returned to the eighteenth-century copybook of the writing
master Charles Snell. From this source, for use in the Mergenthaler
Linofilm, Carter drew a type that was named Snell Roundhand and
which once again brings to a script type the controlled skills of
an experienced penman. Freed of the necessity of conforming to
a physical body of type, the Carter design is successfully sympathetic
to the copperplate ideal.
As already mentioned, by the late 1920s the script letter forms
of all varieties were returning to favor. With very few script types
available, the advertising agencies employed hand-lettering artists
to supply styles and meet specific orders. Frequently such occasional
letters would attract attention, inspiring job printers to make demands
on the founders for similar styles. Advertising budgets could readily
cover the cost of making photoengravings of single words or lines,
but the printer's budget could not-the printer needed types, and
this requirement once again created a market for typefounders' scripts.
In 1925 Lucien Bernhard, a German designer resident in the United
States, drew a cursive in the tradition of the romie but with ascenders
three times the length of the descenders, accompanying an extremely
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short x-height. The capitals, however, were round and full, and this
combination was sufficiently intriguing to make the type an inter-
national success. In 1927 ATF brought out a reasonably close likeness
of Bernhard Cursive, named Liberty. The rising interest in the script
forms received a,dditional impetus from a vigorous quill-drawn de-
sign from the experienced hand of Germany's Rudolf Koch. Named
Holla and drawn1 in 1932, its cutting was completed after Koch's death

361
in 1934. Holla exerted a strong influence on the design of script types
issued later.
Also affecting the script faces after 1930 were the geometric sans-
serif types. As none of the available scripts seemed to be visually
comfortable with the unadorned letter limns, lenering artis_ts discarded
the orthodox styles and turned to new forms. Brush-lettering seemed
to meet the new demands more satisfactorily than pen-drawn charac-
ters, allowing greater freedom and informality and thus ushering in

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what might be termed the era of brash-brush script lettering, which

still remains the dominant form. Early examples of these scripts are
1

remembered;with nostalgia by postwar typographers: Bernhard Brush-

script, Signal Black, Keynote, Mandate, Kaufmann Bold, Hauser
Script, Gra-xda, and Brush. Of these, Brush has most successfully
survived the 1passage of time, remaining popular despite strong com-
petition for over forty years.
During the past half century there have been several interesting
effons on the part of type designers to modernize the copperplates.
In 1933 a Ne~ Yorker, Howard Trafton, drew such a letter. Marketed
by the Bauer typefoundry of Germany, Trafton Script became the
most popula;r such type of the thinies. A face of similar derivation,
Coronet, designed by R. Hunter Middleton of Chicago, was pro-
duced in 1937; by the Ludlow Typograph Company. In 1933 the German
designer M.1Wilke drew a series for the Berthold foundry called
Ariston, which had just penetrated the American market when the
war interfen;d with its distribution. Hermann Zapf tack.led the prob-
lem about 1947. Of the opinion that the true copperplate scripts were
not typographic, he attempted to capture their spirit but within the
restrictions of a normal type body, and his solution was a script that
lacks the connecting strokes and excessive kerning of the copperplate.
The type was issued in 1952 under the name Virruosa I. The following
year Zapf simplified the capitals in Virtuosa II, and in 1957 he added a
I
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C.Omrnercial Script (,}TF)

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boldface version. This series was most successful, contributing to the

esteem in which Zapf is held by the world's printers. In 1955,
no doubt spurred by the favorable reception accorded Virtuosa, the
Berthold foundry produced Boulevard, cut by G. G. Lange.
This discussion of the transfer of handwriting styles to printing
types ends on a rather predictable note. Many of the script types of
the past century and a half have been conscious attempts to perpetuate
the best standards of penmanship. But scripts produced in our era
tend to go in the direction of ordinary twentieth-century handwriting,
a far remove indeed from the refinement of the old writing masters.
One example: in 1953 the French typographer Roger Excoffon pre-
pared for the Olive foundry, of Marseilles, Mistral, a cutting quickly
made available on the Anglo-American points-system type body and
distributed by the Amsterdam Continental agency. To the amazement
of the purist, it became an instant best seller, primarily because it is
such an uncanny example of the current 'hand' of Everyman. Truly
outrageous for a printing-rype, Mistral represents an extreme of type-
face eccentricity, and for just that reason it has been received "'.ith
delight by most practitioners although it is debased as much as any
script can be while still remaining useful for the dissemination of
information, the raison d'etre of every printing type.
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Legend (Bauer)

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Lydian Cursive, (ATF) •

-
367
a3ra3if a11~ Ot~et' <So«11tries ~ere ecrorti":J to
4Portu5af potte~ imrre511ate~ ~it~ a ~eficate a11~
fra3ra11t ferfume. €urofe ~a~ a c:0115ta11t 111arket

9\.n :>nvifation is most COt'~iaffE ecfeH~~ to 'Pt'infevs OH~ 81get'

'Pet'SOHS infet'esfe~ in tge ceEfOjt'Ofgic c,C,ibt'a~ OH~ Cv\\useum,

G,gicg G,as esta6f;sge~ to gonor an~ fet'fetuate 1ge memot'E an~ ~ee~s

Civilite (ATF)

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tpecor"tor colors itt most (o\)e(t, sf?eets

Rhapsodic (Ludwig & Mayer)

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Coronet (Ludlow)

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Mistral (Olive)

-
369
 1HE DECORATED TYPES

Ever since people gave shape to letters, they have rarely been content
to allow their creations to remain pure in form. The urge for personal
embellishment is eternally irresistible. The books produced during
the medieval period bear witness to the capacity of the scribes, the
rubricators, and the illu.minators to paint, ornamentalize, and by all
the aesthetic skills at their command enrich the letter forms. Indeed,
the survival of many of the ancient texts has depended at least as
much on the appeal of their decoration as on their content. With the
invention of printing such practices were continued, though in this
less personal medium at a diminished rate. During the incunabula
period- 1455 to 1500 - the printers allowed space in their pages for
the artists to decorate and beautify. When this custom was discon-
tinued in the sixteenth century, printers supplied their own, printed
decorations, in the form of initial letters, borders, tail-pieces, and
fleurons, all of which perpetuated the tradition of page adornment.
It was not until late in the seventeenth century that the concept
of embellishing the initial in the normal roman letters was investi-
gated by typefounders in cast metal types. The earliest decorated
type to survive from this period is Union Pearl, an italic cut by the
Grover Foundry of England in about 1690; the matrices for this letter
have come down to Birmingham's Stephenson, Blake & Company,
from which the type may still be purchased. But it was not until the
middle years of the eighteenth century that the ornamented letter
became common, owing primarily to the French founder Pierre Simon
Fournier. His Manuel Typographique of 1764 exhibits a number of
ornamental letters that seem to have been partially inspired by his
preoccupation with the numerous fleurons he had designed, all shown
in profusion in this remarkable specimen book along with examples
of their use in borders, title pages, and headbands.
The Fournier departure from the production of standard romans
and italics was quickly followed by his competitors. The fine 1768
catalogue of the Enschede foundry of Haarlem is indicative of how
quickly the festooned letters caught the imagination of the type-
founders. In many instances such decoration was not casual embel-
lishment, however, but rather it was integral to the letter, taking the
form of a shadow effect, or the addition of a white line to the heavier
stem of the letter or of a florid pattern to the main stroke. In such
cases the letter retained its original classic form. Discussing Fournier,

370
 J., F., ROSART® j. F. Rosart's sliadmved !elter, ca. 1759

JJ.~CQUES FR--r~FifOIS
R.OS--rf.RT" _
:PdATTHIAS ROSART(i
J. F. Rosart's lettres jleuragees, ca. 1768

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EnscMJJ's s/ra&Jwed script, Double Capitale Financier, engraved by J. F. Rosart, 1768

LA. VEUVE DECELLIER~

Douhle Mediaan Fleuragee, engraved byj. F. Rosan, and one ofthe finest ofall lettres jleuragees

18th century decorative types cut by J. F. Rosa.rt for Enschede foundry, 1759-68

Daniel Berkeley Updike relaxed his normal conservatism and wrote

in Printing T')'Pes (1922), 'And to all these fonts he added series of
varied ornamental letters and shaded letters (lettres grises), and very
delightful they were.' For Updike such a statement was pracrically a
panegyric-one that was not repeated about the decorated types of
the following,century.
After 1800 the English typefounders took over the ornamented
letter, which seemed to them the ideal expression of the industrial-
ization trans~orming the venerable printing craft into a humming

371
modern business. By 1850 Continental and American foundries were
also strenuously turning out the decorative types, but in the avaricious
competition that ensued, the letter forms degenerated, often losing
all relationship to the classic models that had survived up .to that
time. During the last half of the nineteenth century the American
typefounders took the lead in the production of the ornamented
display types.
It was, as indicated, owing to the rampant commercialism in
ephemeral printing of the 1800s that the ornamented letter radically

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Fourruer's decorative types, 1764
M

372
 'The 5(Viojt Ancient e.nglif.i Types

The Unioni 1learf Mml.!; cajf for the 'F1euron

from the original' matrices formerly in tne
pofle}Jion of the Grover %1HliJ'.!f (ejlaGlifoe~
London circa 1674) h!J t'Ee prefent owners,
S\tte}Jrso Step1ienfan1 :Bfale 8G Coo Limite~,
S1ieffiefd ail~ London, 19 2 7 o

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Union Pearl, the earliC;St decorative type, c. 1690

departed from the charm of the eighteenth-century styles. However,

prior to the development of the decorated fat faces early in the nine-
teenth century, several English founders offered inline/outline versions
of the classic romans. William Caslon IV as early as 1784 produced an
extremely handsome three-dimensional rendering of his Old Style,
which set a high standard of accomplishment and in the twentieth
century has stimulated founders to follow suit. Inlines were cut for
many of the basic, roman series of the revived classic types, such as
Garamond, Goudr Old Style, Badoni, Cochin, and Eusebius, and

373
abcd0fghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
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Campanile (MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, 1879)

Lavinia (Boston Type Foundry, c. 1840)

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Belvin (c. 1870)

Buffalo Bill ( Johnson & Co., c. 1845)

Bijou (MacKeUar, Smiths & Jordan, 1883)

-
374
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Lilith (Bauer)

during the 1930s this practice was continued with such new types as
Lutetia, Romulus, Erasmus, and Egrnont. Typefounders have, in fact,
continued co produce fine variants up to the present. Examples are
the beautiful' font of capitals called Castellar, drawn for English
Monotype in 1957 by John Peters, and Cristal, another alphabet of
capitals, cut for Deberny et Peignot in 1955 by Remy Peignot.
There have also been several revivals of early inline faces, such
as Fry's Ornamented, first cut by Richard Austin about 1796, and
Enschede's Rosart, which appeared in 1759, from the hand of J. F.
Rosart. Modern printers therefore are well equipped with three-
dimensional letters designed on classical lines for fine book printing.
Had the realm of the decorated type not been invaded by the
excessive commercial demands of the new class of industrial encre-

375
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Cristal (Deberny et Peignot)

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Sapphire (Stempel)

preneurs, it is quite possible that the ornamented letter would have

been further developed within the tradition of the book. But the
pressures of competition among the various typefounders brought
about the extremes of design that contributed to the low esteem
in which the genre has been held by most typographical historians.
Another factor, of course, was the emerging practice by the mid-
nineteenth century of the manufacture of matrices by electro-deposit,
an invention that promoted a wave of plagiarism; it had been dis-
covered that the fat faces, the grotesques, and the square serifs readily
lent themselves to embellishment, since the boldface weights provided

376
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a broad surface for decoration, so that these faces were accordingly

modified and decbrated. But for the immoderation it is quite possible
that Updike migl).t have accepted the necessity for such creations and
included the ornamented letter in Printing Types. Instead he was
outraged by the ;ippendages applied to the roman letter and by the
typefounders' preoccupation with typographic extravagance. The
proper Bostonian thus placed practically the entire output of orna-
mental letters under sentence as 'types we ·ought not to want-which
have no place in any artistically respectable composing room.'
Fortunately, given their neglect by Updike, Nicolete Gray has
thoroughly docur;nented the development of these marketplace type-
faces in her most authoritative Nineteenth Century Ornamented Types
and Title Pages, first published in 1938 and completely revised in 1976.
Far from inveighing against the crassness of the era, Gray says of it,
'19th century ornamented type design and jobbing printing are one
of the folk arts of early industrial society and reflect aspects of its

377
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-
378
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Goudy Handtooled (ATF)

379
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culrure in a way which is historically illuminating.' Certainly this

period of typographic inventiveness deserves further srudy as an
exciting and innovative interval in printing history, placed as it is
between the end of the book's influence on the world of print and the
return of the classic influence after 1900.
While at first glance it would appear that the classification of deco-
rative typefaces is a procedure fraught with difficulty, in actuality most
of the styles can be easily recognized by their basic structure, such as
old style, modem, square serif, and sans seri£ A number of terms are
used to describe them: inline/outline, in which a white line runs the
length of the stem; shaded, in which the stems are screened with
either dots or lines; patterned, in which a floriated design is added;
dimensional; cameo, in which the letter is outlined in reverse on a
solid background; and embellished, in which the shape of the letter
gives way to flamboyant additions.
There are of course many designs that owe nothing to the past.
These employ novelty to attract att~tion to themselves and by exten-
sion to the message of the words. Although the traditionalist may
deplore such letters, it must be recognized that every promotional
printing type need not aspire to the heights of typographic aesthetics
and legibility to fulfill its fundamental purpose of engaging the reader's
attention. For such reasons the o_rnamental typefaces, in either classic or
rococo fonn, will continue to be employed. Printers enjoy an unending
flow of both styles from the manufacturers, especially considering
the ease with which hand-lettering may now be transferred directly
to film fonts with no mechanical restrictions.
 TYPE MAKING
FROM'. PUNCH TO COMPUTER

The term type designer is of fairly recent origin, having been practically
unknown until the late years of the nineteenth century. This is not
to say that type was not 'designed' during the four hundred years
following Joha~. Gutenberg's invention, but rather that until the
present century the designing of type was not a distinct, prestigious
profession within the confines of typefounding. Even today, despite
the respect for the title, the calling rarely brings affluence to. the
practitioner. Ind~ed, most twentieth-century type designers have
found it necessary to seek permanent employment in other fields to
indulge in the 'luxury' of drawing letters for printing types.
The more fortunate of the fellowship have been those who have
made a permanent connection with a typefounder or a manufacturer
of typesetting m3:'chines. In the United States, for example, Morris
Benton spent his whole career - almost fifty years - on the staff of
the American TfRe Founders Company, as did Sol Hess with Lan-
ston Monotype and R. Hunter Middleton with Ludlow Typograph.
Frederic W. Goudy managed a certain amount of independence by
maintaining his own workshop, but from 1920 to his death in 1947
he also received a monthly stipend from Lanston as the firm's arr
director. The types designed by these four men far oumumber those
produced by all the free-lance type designers of their era. Nevertheless,
the latter group was well accepted by the manufacturers and in fact
greatly encourageq. to create new faces.
The independents were also engaged in a variety of non-type-
designing jobs, though most of this work was in some way connected
with the graphic arts. It is fortunate that they were encouraged by
the manufacturers,, since many excellent types have issued from their
drawing boards. T,oday resident type designers of established repu-
tation are rarely fopnd in manufacturers' offices; they prefer the free-
dom to broaden their design work. And in the future it is probable

381
not only that the free-lance designer will be encouraged, but that this
person will hold a dominant position in the production of types:
most firms will continue to employ knowledgeable draftsmen for the
everyday handling of the innumerable tasks in the production of fonts
of type-whether by the hot-metal or the cathode-ray-tube method-
but in all likelihood the important new faces will come from the
independent type designers, most of whom maintain studios and
engage in a broad range of design activity.
The supply of good type designers will probably remain stable
and may even grow, as indicated by the burgeoning interest in callig-
raphy. While the availability of young designers familiar with classic
letter forms is a heartening development, it is most unlikely that such
ability will be combined with a similar perception of the technical
problems connected with the translation of drawing to finished type.
In this realm the designer connected with a foundry or a manufacturer
has, needless to say, a distinct advantage. The free-lance designer, to
be most effective, must make the effort to acquire knowledge of the
technoltJgy of type production, which over the past twO decades has
undergone revolutionary changes. It is because of this necessity for
technical understanding that this survey will undertake to trace the
evolution of the making-as distinct from the designing-of printing
typell from the very beginning.
Theodore Low De Vinne wrote of Johann Gutenberg: 'He was
the inventor of typography, and the founder of modern printing,
who made the first adjustable type mold.' This statement appeared in
The In11ention ofPrinting, published in 1876 and still one of the most
authoritative sources on the origins of the invention of movable type.
Most experts in De Vinne's time and since have more or less agreed
with him-although there is also a considerable body of opinion of
the opposite persuasion- and given the lack of documentation of
that fifteenth-century incunabular period it is unlikely that credit will
ever be awarded to anyone other than Gutenberg. By mutual agree-
ment, the world's printers celebrated the sooth anniversary of Guten-
berg's contribution in 1940, consecrating that date as the inaugural
of their craft.
Indeed, despite the absence of even a single record fully describing
the procedures by which the first type was made, theorists during the
past century have produced hypothetical treatises about Gutenberg's
invention. One of the most common presumptions is that carved
wooden letters were joined into words and lines and held together
Punch and matrix,as shown in De Vinnes's Plain Printing Types, 1900

with string; a, variation of this theory is that the cutting of wood

punches, in cqnjunction with a sand mold,· produced cast type. Still
another hypothesis is the early utilization of an alphabet carved in
a woodblock ,(such as an abecedarium) and then cast into a thin
lead plate, on, which the characters were cut out and mounted on
wooden shanks.
The authoptative English typographic historian Harry Carter,
after a lifelong examination of the early documents of printing
practices, has ~ated that he sees nothing to controvert the judgment
that from the beginning punches, matrices, and molds were used to
make type. H<i cites the fact that punches bearing letters or symbols
had been develpped well before the appearance on the scene ofJohann
Gutenberg, antl that engravers of coins and seals and even jewelers
were competent in such work. Precise molds were also required for
the making of .kms and armor.
The earlies~ account of the making of type appears in Dialogues
Franrois pour les Jeunes Enfans, printed by Christopher Plantin at
Antwerp in 1567. This is a child's encyclopedia and in it the punch,
the matrix, and the mold are described-a description that largely
applied until the close of the nineteenth century. It is unfortunate
that the Dialogifes was written for children and thus com:ains virtually
no technical details that would have provided invaluable insight into
the craft of pun'.chcutting. Moreover, as Stanley Morison has written,
 P'4.t.,!I.

The Type mold, from Moxon's Mechanick Exercises, 1683

'If ever the Dialogue was clear and easy reading to the parents of
Plantin's time, it is hardly so today to any of us' (Morison's statement
appears in the foreword of Calligraphy and Printing in the Sixteenth
Century, a translation edited by Ray Nash in 1964).
Imperfect as the Dialogues account is, it tells us that the punch was
'a long piece of steel with whatever letter is wanted cut or engraved
on the end.' The next step in typefounding as detailed by Plantin
(the probable author as well as printer of the work) was: 'When it is
finished they strike it in copper and so make a matrix, which is simply
an impression of the letter that has been struck in, like the mark made
by a seal in sealing wax.' The mold is described, vaguely, as 'an assem-
blage of several parts, which makes all the letters alike, being, as they
say, of one fount.'
Not until 1683, with Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises, did a
fuller description of typemaking appear. (The first account written by
an actual typefounder would not be published until 1764, when Pierre
 Simon Fournier issued his Manuel Typographique.) Moxon devotes
an entire chapter to 'Letter-Cutting,' and in the preface states: 'Letter-
cutting is a Handy-Work hitherto kept so conceal'd among the arti-
ficers of it, that I cannot learn any one hath taught it any other; But
every one that has u~d it, Learnt it of his own Genuine Inclination.'
Moxon does notiexplain where he himself learned the craft. It is
I
known that while in Bolland he had visited Christoffel van Dyck, the
most proficient punchcutter of the period. In addition, as a printer
Moxon must have been acquainted with the London typefounders,
and presumably he le:µned some of their procedures from conversations
with them. In 1669 he had issued a proof showing seven sizes of
roman type and three of italic, which he had personally cut {possibly
these types were produced covertly for his own use, since at the time
bur four rypefounders were licensed to practice in England). On the
strength of this experience in cutting types, Moxon has left a very
complete account of'every step of production, describing all the tools
required and then proceeding to an all-embracing explanation of
every step of typerriaking. Moreover, three chapters of Mechanick
Exercises are devoted to 'Mold-Making,' 'Sinking the Punches,' and
'Casting of Letter,' t11aking this first techn1cal treatise on typefounding
such a solid document that it served as the standard dissertation on
the subject through the nineteenth century.
To return to the fifteenth century, Gutenberg unquestionably
took many years to perfect his invention of movable type. As may be
determined from cotµt records, he was certainly experimenting with
type prior to 1440, although he probably did not begin the production
of his Bible until 1452. When printing spread throughout Europe
during the following two decades, each printer had to acquire the
various skills of typefounding by himself or else train a craftsman for
this purpose-there were no typefounders as such. By the end of the
century rypefounding began to emerge as a separate craft, particularly
the typecasting (the l~t-skilled founding job), but punchcutters were
still in short supply.
We know so little :about the early typemakers that no generalization
about their training _is possible. Apparently some of them had been
scribes, for such an activity provided competence in the creation of
letter forms. But, as we have discovered, the calligrapher, adept with
pen or brush, is not pecessarily as dexterous with file and graver. For
example, when Arrighi decided to produce a printing type he did not
cut the punches hi~el£ In the present century such a distinguished
 type des1gner as Frederic W. Goudy never cut punches, nor did any
of his contemporaries other than Rudolf Koch and Victor Hammer.
The modern concept of type designing, unknown during the first
four centuries of typefounding, fell under the category of _punch-
cutting. The punchcutters whose names we know were all men with
great facility for the creation as well as the rendering of letters.
The creative proficiency needed for type designing is not, it should
be pointed out, an automatic outgrowth of the skills of the metal
worker - the majority of the early punchcutters doubtless relied on
design suggestions made by the printers, who knew exactly what
kind of types they wanted for their work. And the names of mediocre
designers and punchcutters have almost entirely disappeared.
Throughout the sixteenth century there continued to be few
punchcutters, and these were in great demand. It was during this
period that typefounding established itself as an operation distinct
from the printing office. The numerous skilled operations involved in
the manufacture of type had always placed a burden on the master
printer, who was already fully occupied with the production of books.
Eventually, the separation of the crafts became an economic necessity,
owing to the long training and experience required for cutting punches,
driving and justifying matrices, constructing molds, and casting type.
Moreover, once a printing office had accumulated a reasonable supply
of type, there was little work for the resident founders.
Even with the growth of typefounding as a separate institution,
the number of punchcutters remained fairly constant. Since all that
was required to enter the founding business was a reasonable supply
of matrices, some founders dispensed with punchcutters altogether,
which further preserved punchcutting as an exclusive craft. Nicholas
Kis, the Hungarian who journeyed to Holland to learn the art about
. 1680, was lucky to obtain six months of instruction from Dirk Vos-
kens, who granted this training only because Kis was a foreigner-
Voskens later remarked that he would not consider teaching his calling
to one of his own nation for a 'hundred thousand florins.' Such was
the attirude of most punchcutters throughout their long period of
dominance in type design, a prominence not ending until the late
nineteenth century. As recently as 1855 the English founder Vincent
Figgins II remarked, 'The art had been perpetuated by a kind of
Druidical or Masonic induction from the first.'
As to the traditional making of a type, the steps were relatively
few. The operation began with the punch, whose basic appearance
Bruce's typecasting machine

varied little from place to place except in size. It was a bar of steel
about two and a half to three and a half inches in length and a quaner
inch square (for 12-point or smaller). The cutting of the bar was
performed while the steel was in an annealed state, after which it was
hardened before being driven into the matrix. The character to be cut
was scribed itjto the upper flat surface of the punch. This was followed,
with cerrain letters, by driving in a counterpunch. Here practice varied,
as some cutters preferred to tool the counters by hand. During the
various stages of cutting, the craftsman made smoke proofil to check
his progress, a test easily accomplished by holding the face of the
punch over a candle flame and using the soot deposit to obtain
progressive proofs. The entire cutting process was most exacting and
could not be hurried- completing a single punch depended on the
skill of the engraver, but a minimum of four hours was required
for a good punch. Cutting an entire font was therefore a long and
laborious task, particularly when languages employed many ligatures
and accented letters sometimes adding up to more than two hundred
characters. It is not known when the practice of cutting accents
separately came into use, though it is described by Fournier. This
procedure saved a great deal of time, as a shoulder was cut into each
matrix to allow the positioning of the accent before the striking of
the matrix, eliminating the need for separate accented letters.
The second step in typefounding was the striking, or driving, of
the matrix, which-was a bar of copper or soft iron (or nickel or brass
as of the nineteenth century) about one and three-quarters inches
long, three-eighths of an inch thick, and as wide as necessary to
incorporate the character. The punch was driven into the matrix to a
specific, carefully controlled depth, whereupon it had to be justified,
that is, filed and trimmed so that all of the characters of the font had
standard space at the head and sides to assure proper alignment and
fitting. Again, these procedures required considerable judgment and
skill. The worker executing this job was called a justifier, and he was
not necessarily the punchcutter who might or might not drive his
own matrices. Before the emergence of independent typefounders,
the punchcutter controlled his creative output by retaining his punches
and selling only his strikes (matrices).
The final step of production was the casting of the type itself in
type metal. The mold-which most authorities view as the crux of
the invention of printing- is of fixed dimensions in reference to a
specific size of type, but it can be readily adjusted to allow for the
various thicknesses, or widths, of the letters which make up a font of
type. The height-to-paper-the size of the type character from its
base to its face -was a constant within any one shop (although it
changed from place to place), but the point size of the letter varied,
as did the character width. This last dimension made the type mold
unique, distinguishing it from molds for the casting of coins, medals,
and the like. A separate mold was required for each size of type.
The matrix was positioned in the mold and held in place by a
 spring. The caster held the mold in his hand and poured molten
metal into it, at·the same instant jerking it upward to assure a cast of
solid metal. Th~ mold was then opened and the character removed.
At its foot a jet tjf metal projected, which was later removed, following
which each character was 'dressed.' This final operation, performed
by the least-skilled worker in the foundry, consisted of planing the
bottom of each, letter to remove the burr caused by the breaking of
the jet, and the ,rubbing of each side of the cast character to remove
'fl.ash' at the edges, resulting from casting difficulties or, as was often
the case, improperly driven matrices. The rate of production in hand-
casting was slo~; depending on the size of type, between 2,000 and
4,000 casts wen! made each working day.
The alloy oftype metal in the earliest days of printing was softer
than in later tim~s. Tin was used in greater quantity than it is today, as
documented by ,early colophons. Being expensive and soft- resulting
in type that was easily bent in the smaller sizes - tin was replaced by the
end of the sixteepth century by lead as the principal metal in the alloy.
Harry Carter cit~ the analysis made of types cast at the Plantin print-
ing office about 11580 (the types are preserved because of having been
insened in woodblocks): they are 82 percent lead, 9 percent tin, and
6 percent antimony, with the balance copper. Carter compares this
analysis with that of twentieth-cenrury foundry type, which is about
60 percent lead,,15 percent tin, and 25 percent antimony, and includes
a trace of copper. Until commercial typefounding emerged in the late
sixteenth century, many of the types were too soft to withstand con-
stant wear. This:may account for some bad printing. As Harry Carter
has pointed out~ the sharpness and durability of type depend upon
good ( and strot1;g) metal. Such metal, that has the least shrinkage in
cooling and repi;oduces the punch most precisely, is dependent upon
the proper proponions of tin and antimony.
Until the nineteenth century all types were manufactured much as
described above; Modifications in the basic method were individual
artd dependent upon the craftsman's skill and enterprise. But after
1800, primarily as a result of industrialization, the various typefounding
operations were rapidly improved.
The first innovations increased the output of the hand mold by
fifty percent and more by applying a spring-pump feature that facili-
tated a faster ret;urn motion. In the 1830s the pivotal caster appeared
almost simultaneously in the United States, England, and the Conti-
nent. The best-known version (patented in the United States in 1838
by David Bruce, Jr.), hand-operated and later power-driven, turned
out 100 to 175 types per minute. These types still had to be hand-
dressed, as it was not until about 1890 that the modern typecasting
machine, producing completely finished types at twice the rate of the
pivotal devices, was developed. The ultimate machine of this kind
was the Wicks Rotary Typecaster, patented in England about 1900,
which cast 60,000 characters per hour up to 11-point. By that time,
however, keyboard typesetting machines had proved completely suc-
cessful and obviated the need for foundries manufacturing great
quantities of type for hand-composition. From then on the founders
became more and more involved in producing the display types not
yet practical for the keyboard machines.
The last phase of the industrialization of typefounding did not
occur until 1884, with the invention of the matrix-engraving machine
by the Milwaukee typefounder, Linn Boyd Benton. There was, how-
ever, an interim development in midcentury that had preceded this
machine-the electrotyped matrix. Invented by the American founder
Edwin Starr about 1845, the matrix substituted the steel punch with
one made of lead, allowing for both a much simpler procedure of
cutting and even the use ofan existing type character. The letter was
molded in wax and by the standard electrotyping technique a copper
shell was made, which became the basis for a matrix. It was this new
opportunity to use existing types that upset rypefounders everywhere,
subjecting as it did their most successful designs to the plagiarism
of competitors. The smaller foundries, never adequately staffed with
skilled punchcutters, could use Starr's method to easily produce any of
the current styles (marketing the faces under different names perhaps
assuaged their consciences).
It was the Benton matrix-engraving machine that finally displaced
the punchcutter from four centuries of dominance. Essentially a panto-
graph device, it bypassed the need for a steel punch by simply engraving
a matrix from a pattern plate made from a drawing of a letter. Ironically,
this invention came at exactly the same time as the Mergenthaler Lino-
type machine, which freed the printer from the need to compose types
by hand. Benton further assured the demise of the foundry by selling
the use of his machine to the Mergenthaler firm, which paradoxically
convened it to engraving steel punches, insuring that matrices could
be stamped out by the millions for the new typesetting machines.
Type designing underwent radical changes with the development
of the Benton machine. Now the designer needed only to draw an

390
 LINOTYPE
JANSON "E"

P..ENCIL
DRAWIN<;

lO PUN~H
1.4:6178
5
D

BRAH PATTERN
1.82.
MATRIX

Sketch of Linotype matrix manufacture

alphabet to the size of about an inch, whereupon it was removed

to another of Benton's devices, the 'delineating' machine, which
was also a pantograph. The operator traced the original drawing to
a greatly enlarged scale and, in the inventor's words, this person
was 'also enabled, by various adjustments, to change the form of

391
 MONOTYPE:
ITALIAN
OLD STYLE
"N"

.o 3

PENCIL
DRAWING

(ELLULAP,.
MATA.IX

COPPEJ\ PATTEI\N

Sketch of Monotype matrix manufacrure

the pencil tracing in such a- manner that it becomes proportionately

more condensed or extended, and even italicized or back-sloped.'
Apparently this pantograph was so novel in construction that a patent
was refused on the grounds that the application described a mechanical
impossibility; Benton had to demonstrate the device to be granted

392
Punchcutter at the Bauer foundry

a patent. The enlarged drawing was next reduced to a smaller size,

again by pantograph, this time being transferred to a metal plate
containing a coating of wax, through which the line was completely
traced. This plate ~as then electrotyped, thus providing a pattern
plate for the matrix-engraving machine. From it,~ sizes of a design

393
 Tll.AN5PO~ING
DRAH PATTEI\N TO PUNC.H

Use of the punchcutting machine

could be cut. Benton said of this method that it was superior to cutting
handmade punches in both accuracy and uniformity. He boasted of
its ability to cut letters that could be read only by a microscope -
too small even to print. Adjusnnents were possible that enabled the
operator to engrave the letters proportionately more extended or

394
The mechanical punchcuning machine of Linn Boyd Benton, c. 1885

condensed, and lighter or heavier in face than the pattern, adaptations

necessary, the i11ventor believed, 'for the production of a properly
graded modem series containing the usual sizes.'
The Benton pantograph was an enormous success and was soon
·adopted, in one form or another, by all typefounders. European firms

395
Typefounder's hand mold

retained punchcutters' services until very recently, but during the

past seventy-five years the vast majority of new types have been cut
by the pantograph-engraved matrix. The composing-machine manu-
facturers depended absolutely on the Benton-produced punch for
stamping matrices, a process demanding precisely engineered punches
to insure identical matrix replacement.
Since the pantograph principle was adopted there has never been
complete uniformity among founders or typesetting-machine manu-
facturers concerning the numerous steps necessary to convert the
drawing of a letter to an engraved matrix or punch. In most instances,
however, the procedures vary only slightly, and at that, primarily out
of aesthetic considerations, as governed by the transfer of a freely
drawn character to one that may be mechanically restricted. In the
case of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, the type designer's
work is sent to the mechanical-drawing department, which produces
large engineering drawings for each size of type to be manufactured;
the company claims that precise corrections are made, down to .00025
inch, in order to assure the proper proportion of lines, curves, and
.strokes in a given point size of type - most other firms are satisfied

396
 with three or four drawings for the whole range of types. The master
drawings are converted to pattern plates by pantograph, from which
the punches are cut 0n the Benton machine. These operations differ
only in small degree among the other composing-machine manufac-
turers. The American Monotype company, for example, produced a
pattern plate by a pqotoengraving made from the working drawing.
At the Ludlow Typbgraph Company, R. Hunter Middleton, the
director of rypograP:hy, was also the firm's principal type designer
and was thus able to control the various steps in ways impossible
for outside designers<" He personally made the working drawings on
polystyrene film, whi~h had excellent dimensional stability. The draw-
ings were then photographed on zinc for the pattern plates.
In ligh~ of the di~erse steps endemic to type production, it may
be seen how a designer's original concept could be altered during
execution. Whereas tjie punchcutter who designed type was always in
control of every I 'ter he cut, the modern type designer has discovered
that what emerg _s fr0m the manufacturing process often differs con-
siderably from what! went in. In many cases, needless to say, the
designer is not at all sympathetic to the .limitations placed on his
creations by the tecl\niques of production. It may be assumed that
some of the changes in an original drawing have been made because
the designer ignored br was unaware of the restrictions of the manu-
facturing process, or'even of the use to which the design was to be
put. But sometimes,, too, the whim of the in-house supervisor has
subtly modified a currve here and there, to the obvious annoyance of
the artist.
It is interesting in this respect to compare the responses of two
very fine American ty,pe designers to the vagaries of the manufactur-
ing operations. Willi~ A. Dwiggins, whose excellent types were all
drawn for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, maintained a cordial
relationship with the firm through the vicissitudes of twenty-seven
years and eleven types. His attitude is best summed up in a sentence
from a letter written t\o artist Rudolph Ruzicka in 1937: 'I haven't any
complaint to make about the staff's French curves and straight-edges.'
On the other hand, Frederic W. Goudy, who after more than
twenty years as an independent type designer made a connection
with the Lanston Monotype Machine Company, became quickly
disillusioned with ~onotype's drawing department. Since Goudy
drew all of his types freehand, he could not appreciate the technical
difficulties of conve~g his drawings to the large-scale matrix pro-
1

397
duction. Therefore, though retaining the title of Art Director until
his death, Goudy established his own workshop in his home in
Marlborough, New York, purchasing all of the equipment necessary
to produce matrices and cast type. After he learned to cut his own
matrices, however, Goudy tempered his earlier criticism. He did not
agree, for example, with Rudolf Koch that the engraving machine
was a means of displacing craftsmanship and that rype designers
should oppose its use. Goudy wrote, 'The important point is to
recognize where handwork ends and machine work begins.' As Goudy's
most prolific period occurred after his decision to cut his own types,
it is apparent that he found the pantograph to be compatible with his
ideals as a type designer.
Another twentieth-century type designer who held strong views
concerning the hand versus the machine approach to type design
was the Dutchman Jan van Krimpen, of Enschede, in Haarlem. His
position was that of the skeptic - even cynic - as illustrated in a report
he sent to Stanley Morison in 1956, entitled 'On preparing designs for
Monotype faces so as to prevent arbitrary encroachments from the
side of the drawing office on the designer's work and intentions and
otherwise inevitable disappointments at the designer's end.' Readers
who wish to pursue van Krimpen's strongly individual views on the
design of printing types are referred to Jan van Krimpen: A Letter to
Philip Hofer on Certain Problems Connected with the Mechanical Cutting
of Punches, most competently edited, with an introduction and com-
mentary, by John Dreyfus (David R. Godine/The Houghton Library,
1972). This account summarizes the complex relationship between an
artist and an industrial process.
The age of the hand-cut punch lasted for almost 450 years, but the
mechanical cutting of punches seems to have just about run its course
in less than a century. Technological changes in the post-World Wai
II era have had a profound effect on typesetting procedures, resulting
in a massive shift from dependence on metal types to the employment
of photomechanical means to produce typographic images.
At first glance, phototypesetting would appear to remove many
restrictions encountered by type designers previously confronted
with the transfer of handwritten forms to the caprices of matrix
manufacture and subsequent mechanical composition. In some in-
stances, improvements were readily noticeable, such as the proper
kerning of letters and dose fitting of italics, neither of which wa~
economically feasible on linecasting equipment, although excellent
 fit was possible on the Monotype. Along with these improvements,
however, numerous complications were introduced in the transition
to film. The enlargement or reduction in size from a master font was
a constant pro!Jlem; so was the difficulty of fitting characters not
physically juxtaposed, as is type cast from matrices whose fit has been
carefully deterclined by the type designer. Film exposure could distort
the image, chemical deterioration occurred during development, and
matching densities for patch corrections remained a perennial dilemma.
These are but a few of the problems encountered in changing from
metal to film, not to mention the vagaries of the complex electronic
typesetting equipment.
Outweighing these drawbacks, however; are the many advantages .
in designing type for film. Artists can very quickly see the results of
their efforts, as the laborious and time-consuming manufacture of
punches or matrices has been eliminated. Changes of form can thus be
made economically, freeing the designer from having to accept results
that formerly would have been too costly to revise. It is also now
possible to caq:y through to production many experimental types
which earlier w9uld have remained on the drawing board.
Ironically, however, though such freedom is welcome, itcomes at a
time when there are fewer well-trained type designers than ever to take
advantage of it. This is owing to the infiltration of nonprofessionals
into the world (?f type design. Numerous manufacturers have entered
the field of electronic typesetting, and their engineers, though pro-
ficient in the construction of machines and systems, are often un-
equipped to judge letter forms. In the new era of modern typesetting,
spawning devices that have enormous output capability, the tendency
is to downgrad~ such traditional typographic concepts as the correct
fitting of lette~ and the spacing of words. The touch of a key can
allow the operator to either minus-space or plus-space in order to
justify a line, and this decision, if wrong, can severely reduce legibility.
It may readily be seen, then, that the new freedom of the type designer
may not always result'in positive typographic solutions. Thus, a wide
gap currently exists between the technology's almost astonishing
potential for e:;ccellence and the supply of. traditionally oriented
practitioners who are skilled in the construction of letter forms.
Indeed, it is ironic that a machine with sophisticated abilities may be
subjected • to theI caprice of an operator who lacks any basic under-
standing of fundamental typographic practices.
The phototypesetting machines' design has gone through two

399
Sketch of coordinates in digitizing a type

, ~i~-~t~oqidii}~~i~c~ ~;~1.~CF·'~~ae~:0~~~~¥~~~'~'::~i

C.onversion of a letter into a grid pattern

;/:\~ ><: ,-. .F.'· _ , :,-~·-,,~ ._~,· ,;· . :~:,; :,, ::·-~ :-'F'>••\-~\/> ~: .~::--:s_- "~:..:;~·~·-·:•:: ·:,:s:··'.t.}~
'\Digitization is, a: teehniq~,bv w,bidY.the analog{continuous:):propeity..ofa-Jetteris:i
. . .. . .· . ~nveited~o:;_·gn4;p,attem,, 6~. s~c:s.pf ntuiibersr\/'.
·'. ~ ~''
"C :-•'•~ v!. ~

400
 0
PHOTOCOMPOSITIOtl

[~}
MASTER IMAGE
LENS C> OUTPUT

DIGITAL TYPE

M
~<J
OUTPUT
EtECTROtlICS
MASTER IMAGE

Procedures for coding a letter for digitization

Storage of master infonnation for digitizing type is done at a large print size, whereas
the physical limitations ci,f optics require that a film master be produced at the smallest
point size.

-;jP;~~~:;: o~~;~i~:~::~~;=~do~:
•' S. .. ,·.•, .<,

401
phases and is now into a third. The earliest devices followed quite
closely the concept of the hot-metal typesetters. Later they were im-
proved by the adaptation of electronic principles, allowing for more
rapid output and more complicated responses. The equipment of this
second phase is now dominant in the typesetting field, but a very recent
advance - the third phase - appears to offer the greatest advantages yet
encountered in the manufacrure of typesetting machines. This new
group benefits from the application of computers capable of astounding
output speed. More important, from the standpoint of type design,
these machines do not require fonts in the shape of grids or disks, but
rather can store the most intricate letter forms in computer memory.
Traditional computer readout has been in the shape of all-capital
'stick' characters, which compared with printing type are not at all
legible. But the computer is also capable of reproducing the most
beautiful fonts ever used by printers. The ability to deliver the elegant
types depends on the amount of storage and memory available in the
computer and on the refinement of the letter construction, which in
tum depend on the quality of the computer.and the software- a matter
of economics.
The preparation of letters for computer storage is called digitizing.
Digital type may be defined as a set of coordinates for each letter, to
be stored in memory and produced by a computer printer or typesetter
on photographic film or paper. The font of type is generally stored on
a magnetic disk and is electronically called up in any size required. The
process of digitizing can be decribed in six steps: 1) artwork is prepared;
2) it is then scanned for transfer to magnetic disk or tape; 3) the
scanning process provides digital representations of the characters,
which are now called raw data; 4) the raw data are edited in a graphics
terminal, which displays the characters for evaluation and correction
or modification; 5) after the editing, master font sizes are generated
from the data obtained; and 6) finally a disk is manufactured, contain-
ing fonts conforming to the specialized needs of the purchaser.
Among recent developments in the digitizing of type fonts is the
Ikarus system. This German computer program has drastically cut the
time to digitize type, and which, properly used, represents a tool of
tremendous significance to the type designer. In addition to the process
of digital transfer, the device has unique capabilities for the modifica-
tion of an original design, such as the converting of a typeface to
additional weights of stroke and change of width, all of these steps
being closely integrated by the designer on a video screen.

402
 The computer is the most advanced typographic product yet to
appear; it would seem to be the culmination of almost five and a half
centuries of progress in the transfer of the scribal hands to the printed
page. Engineers have thus provided the means for printers to continue
enriching the heritage they have provided humankind Now the re-
sponsibility falls on the printers to control the new technology and
make it serve the great legacy of their time-honored craft.

Cnunttt,,
counttt-
fundJ

Diagrams of counter-punching by Rudolf Koch

SHE LDON·LUTETIA·S PECTRU M
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TYPOGRAPHIC US ·IN ·U RB E·C U I·NOM EN· HAARLE M

Jan van Krimpen

404
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

This bibliograpny attempts to list many of the books, past and present, in
print and out of print, that may be of use to scholars in
the field and other interested readers.

General books on the history of

printing and bookmaking

BALSTON, THOMAS. The Cambridge University Press Collection of Private

Press Types: Kelmscott, .Arhende:nt:, Eragny, Cranach. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Pr~ 1951.
BARKER, NICH;OLAS. Stanley Morison. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, l9';z2.
BENNETT, PA UL A. Books and Printing: A Treasury jfll' Typophil,es. Cleveland:
World Publishin'.g Company, 195.1.
BLUMENTHAL, JoSEPH. The Printed Book in America. Boston: David R.
Godine, Publisher, and Dartmouth College Library, 1977.
- - . Art of the; Printed Book, 1455-1955. Boston: David R. Godine, Pub-
lisher, in associ~on with The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1973.
- - . Typographif Years: A printer's journey through a half century 1925-1975.
New Yock: Fredi::ric C. Biel, 1982.
BLUNT, WILFR~D. Sweet Roman Hand: Five Hundred Yean ofItalic Cursive
Script. London: James Barrie, 195.2.
BOHLER, CURT: F. TheFifteenthCenturyBook. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Prc;ss, 1986.
CARTER, THOM~S FRANCIS. The Irwention ofPrinting in China and Its
Spreaa Westward., Revised by Carrington Goodrich. New York: The Ronald
Press Co., 1955.
CHAI>PELL, WAR.REN. A Short Hirtory of the Printed Word. New York:
Alfred A. Knop( 1970. (Reprint in paperback by David R. Godine, Pub-
lisher, 1980.)
CHAYTOR, H. J .,Frum Script to Print. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1945.
CLAIR, CoLIN . ./iHirtoryof PrintinginBritain. London: Cassell, 1965.
- - . A History of European Printing. London, New York, San Francisco:
Academic Press, 1976.

405
DAY, KENNETH. Book Typography, 1815-19.65. London: Ernest Benn, 1966.
DE VINNE, THEODORE L. The Invention ofPrinting. New York: Francis
Hart & Co., 1876.
- - . The Practice ofTypography. 4 vols., New York: Oswald Publishing Co.,
1921.
- - . Notable Printers ofItaly During the Fifteenth Century. New York: The
Grolier Club, 19m.
Fleuron, The: A Journal of Typography. Edited by Oliver Simon (1923-25) and
Stanley Morison (1926-30). Seven vols., London: Ar. the Office of the Fleu-
ron (vol. 1-4); Cambridge: At. the University Press (vol. 5-7 ), 1923-30.
Reprint, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwich Reprint Corporation, 196o.
Fleuron Anthology. Chosen and with a retrospecrus by Sir Francis Meynell and
Herbert Simon. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1979.
GILL, ERIC. An Essay on Typography. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher,
1989.
GOLDSCHMIDT, E. P. The Printed Book of the Rftuiissance. Cambridge: At
the University Press, 1950.
IVINS, WILLIAM M., JR. The Artist and the Fifteenth Century Printer. New
York: The Typophiles, 1940.
MCKITTERICK, DAVID, ED. Stanley Morison & D. B. Updike: Selected
Correspondence. New York: The Morerus Press, 1979.
McM UR TIE, DOUG LAS C. The Book: The Story ofPrinting and Bookmaking.
3rd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1943.
MORISON, STANLEY. German Incunabula in the British Museum. London:
Viccor Gollancz, 1928.
NASH, RAY, ED. Calligraphy and Printing in the Sixteenth Century. Antwerp:
The Planrin-Morerus Museum, 1964.
NESBITT, ALEXANDER. TheHistoryandTechniqueofLmering, 2nd edition.
New York: Dover Publications, 1957.
OSWALD, JOHN CLYDE. Printing in theAmericas. New York: The Gregg
Publishing Co., 1937.
ROGERS, BRUCE. Paragraphs on Printing. New York: William E. Rudge's
Sons, 1943. (Facsimile edition, paper. New York, Dover Publications, Inc.,
1979.)
SAVAGE, WILLIAM. The Art of Printing. London: Longman, Browns,
Green, and Longmans, 1841.
SIMON, HERBERT. Song and Wordr: A History of the Curwen Press. Boston:
David R. Godine, Publisher, 1973.
STEINBERG, S. H. Fi11e Hundred Tean of Printing with a foreword by
Beatrice Warde. Middlesex, UK; Baltimore, Md.: Penguin, 1955.
TARG, WILLIAM. The Making of the Bruu Rogen World Bible. New York:
1979-
UPDIKE, DANIEL BERKELEY. In the Day's Work. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1924.
WROTH, LAWRENCE C., ED. A Hirtury ofthe Printed Book, Being the Third
Number of the Dolphin. New York: The Limited F.ditions Club, 1938. Rpt.,
Westport, CT, Greenwood Reprint Co., 1970.
 Books with material, on individual typefaces or type designers

ARMSTRONG, ELIZABETH. Robert Estienne, Royal Printer. Cambridge: At

the University Press, 1954.
BEMBO, PIETRO. De /F,tna. Postscript by Giovanni Mardersteig. Verona:
Oflicina Bo,doni, 1969..
BENNETT, PAUL A. Postscripts on Dwiggina. 2 vols. New York: The Typo-
philes, 196tj.
BENTON, JOSIAH HENRY. John Baskerville, Type-Founkr and Printer,
r7o6-177;. ~cw York: The Typophiles, 1944.
BINNY AND RONALDSON. The Specimen Books of Binny and Rona/,dson,
I804--18r2. lntroduction by Carl Purington Rollins. New Haven: The Col-
umbiad Club, 1936.
BLUMENTHAL, JOSEPH. Bruce Rogers: A Life of Letters, 1870-1957. Au.mn,
Texas: W. Thomas Taylor, 1988.
BUDAY, GE,ORGE. 'Some More Notes on Nicholas Kis of the "Janson"
Types.' Lo~don: The Library, March, 1974-
CARTER, H'ARRY, AND GEORGE BUDAY. 'Nicholas Kis and the Janson
Types.' Gut'enberg Jahrbuch, 19;7.
CARTER, S~BASTIAN. Twentieth Century Type Designm. New York: Tap-
linger PublifariOns, 1987.
CHA YT, STEVEN & MERYL, EDS. A Ludlow Anthology. Winter Haven,
Fla.: Anachronic Editions, 1986.
CLAIR, COLIN. Christopher Plantin. London: Cassell & Co., 196o.
DRE YFU s, Jo HN. The Work ofJan van Krimpen. Haarlem, The Netherlands:
Joh. Enschecle en Zonen, 1952.
- - . Bruce Rogm and American Typography. New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1959.
DWIGGINS, WILLIAM A. Mss hy WAD. New York: The Typophiles, 1947.
Fine Print on Type: the Best of Fine Print Mag~ine on Type and Typography.
San Francisco: Fine Print Publishers, 1988.
FRUTIGER, ADRIAN. Type;Sign, Symbol. Zurich: ABC Edition, 1980.
GILL, ERIC. A Book ofAlphabets for Douglas Clevmon Drawn hy Eric Gill.
Wellingborough, Eng.: Christopher Skelton, 1987.
GOUDY, FREDERIC W. A Halfcentury of Type Design and Typography,
1895-194-;. 2 vols. New York: The Typophiles, 1946. (2nd edition retitled
Goudy's Type Designs. New Rochdle, 1978. I TIOl.).
GRANNIS, C:HANDLER B., ED. Heritage of the Graphic Arts; A Selection of
Lectures Delivered at Gallery 303, New York City, Unkr the Direction of Dr.
Robert L. Leslie. New York and London: R. R. Bowker Co., 1972.
HAIMAN, GYORGY. Nicholas Kir: A Hungarian Punch-Cutter and Printer
160;-1702. San Francisco: Jack Stauffacher/The Greenwood Press, 1983.
HANDOVER, P. M. 'Black Serif,' Motif 12 (Winter, 1964).
1

HARLING, R:oBERT. The Letter Forms and Type Designs ofEricGill. Boston:
David R. Godine, Publisher, 1976.
HUTT, ALLEN. Fournier: The Compleat Typographer. London: Frederick
Muller, 1972..

407
Janson: A Deftnitin Collection. San Francisco: The Greenwood Press, 1954.
KOCH, RUDOLPH. The Little ABC Book ofRudolf Koch, a facsimile of Das
ABC Buchlein, with a memoir by Fritz Kredel and a preface by Warren
Chappell. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1976.
MARR OT, H. V. William Bulmer and Thomas Bensley. London: The Fleuron,
1930.
McLEAN, RUARI- Jan Tschichold. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher,
1975.
Mo RAN, JAMES. Stanley Mori.son: His Typographic AchicPement. New York:
Hastings House, 1971.
MORISON, STANLEY. John Bel~ 1745-1831. Cambridge: At the University
Press, 1930.
- - . Edited by Brooke Crutchley. A Tally ofTypes. 2nd edition. Cambridge:
At the University Press, 1973-
RANSOM, WILL, ED. KelmsCQtt, Doves, and Ashendene: The Prmu-e Press
Credas. New York: The Typophiles, 1952.
Robert Hunter Middleton: The Man and His Letters. Chicago: The Caxton Club,
1985.
RoGERS, BRUCE. The_ Centaur Types. Chicago: October House, 1949.
SCHOLDERER, VICTOR. Johann Gutenberg, the Invent/Jr of Printing. Lon-
don: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1963.
SHAVER, NEIL, ED. A Goudy Memoir. Council Bluffs: Yellow Barn Press,
1987.
STRAUS, RALPH AND ROBERT K. DENT. John Baskerville: A Memoir.
Cambridge: Printed at the University Press, 1907.
TRACY, WALTER. Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design. Boston: David
R. Godine, Publisher, 1986.
Victor Hammer: Artist and Printer. Lexington, KY: The Anvil Press, 1981.
William Morris and the Art of the Book. New York: The Pierpoint Morgan
Library, 1976.
ZAPF, HERMANN.AboutAlphabets. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970.
- - - Hermann Zapf. Hamburg: Maximillian-Gesellschaft, 1984-
___ Hermann Zapf and His Design Phiwsophy. Chicago: The Society of
Typographic Arts, 1987.

Books on o/J'e and letter.forms

CARTER, HARRY, AND H. D. L. VERVLIET. CiviliteTypes. Oxford: The

Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1966.
CARTER, HARRY.A View ofEarly Typefounding, Up to About 1600. Oxford:
Ar the Clarendon Press, 1969.
DEVINNE, THEODORE L.HistoricPrintingTypes. New York: The Grolier
Club, r886.
- - . Plain Printing Types. New York: The Century Co., 1900.
ETTENBERG, EUGENE. Type for Books andAd-Pertising. New York: D. Van
Nostrand Co., 1947.
FAIRBANK, ALFRED, AND BERTHOLD WOLPE. RenaissanceHandwrit-

408
 ing. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Co., 196o.
GRAY, NICOLE:TE. The Art of Lettering. Boston: David R. Godine, Pub-
lisher, 1986.
GOUDY, FREDERIC W. The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering. New York:
Dover Publications, Inc., 1963.
JOHNSON, A. F. Type Designs: Their Histm-y andDepelopment. 2nd ed. Lon-
don: Grafton & Co., 1959.
- - - . and PERCY H. MUIRE. ED. SelectedEssaysonBooksandPrinting.
Amsterdam: Van Gendt & Co.; New York: Abner Schram, 1970.
KAP R, A LB ER T '. The Art ofLettering; the History, Anatomy, and Aesthetics of
the Roman Letter Forms, Munich, London, New York: K. G. Saur, 1983.
KELLY, RoB ROY. American Wood Type 1828-1900. New York: Van Nos-
trand Reinhold Co., 1969.
LAWSON, ALEX:ANDER S. PrintingTypes:Anlntroductiun. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1971. ·
- - . and A. l'ROVAN. 100 Type HistorieI. 2 vols. Arlington: National
Composition Association, 1983.
LINDEGREN, E;iuc.ABC of Lettering and Printing Types. New York: Mu-
seum Books, Inc., 1964.
MORISON, STANLEY. 'Black-Letter Text.' Cambridge: At the University
Press, 1942.
- - - . and HARRY CARTER. John Fell, The University Press and the Pell'
Types. Oxford: At the Clarendon Pess, 1967. (Facsimile edition, New York:
The Garland Pr~ss, 1981.) -
- - . Letter Forms, Typographical andScriptorial. New York: The Typophiles,
1968.
- - . Edited by David McKitterick. Selected Essays on the History of Letter-
Forms in Manuscript and Printing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981.
OSLEY, A. S. Scribes and Sources: Handbook of the Chancery Hand in the
Sixteenth Century. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1980.
POORE, TAYLOR. Graphic Arts .ABC; Volume .2, San Serif. Historical Devel-
opment by R. Hu,nter Middleton. Chicago: Poole Bros., Inc., 1949.
REED, TALBOT' BAINES. A Histqyy of the Old English Letter Foundries.
Edited by A. F. Johnson. London: Faber & Faber, 1952. ··
SILVER, RoLLo'. Typefounding in America, 1787-18.2.5. Charlottesville: Uni-
versity Press of Virginia, 1965.
SMITH, DAN. Gi'aphicArts.ABC; Volume 1, Square Serif. Chicago: A. Kroch
& Son, Publisher, 1945.
ULLMAN, BERTif!OLD Louis. Ancient Writing and Its Influence. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1969.
UPDIKE, DANIEL BERKELEY. Printing Types, Their History, Forms, and
Use: A Study in Sunmmls. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1937. (Facsimile edition in paper. New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1980.)
WARDROP, }AMES. The Script of Humanism. Oxford: At the Oarendon
Press, 1963.

409
 ZAPF, HERMANN. Manuale Typographicum: 100 Typographic pages with quo-
tations from the past and present on types and printing in 16 different languages,
selected and designed by Hermann Zapf Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press,
1970.

Technical descriptions of type-founding and treatises on type design

Avis, F. C. Edward Philip Prince, Type Punchcutter. London: F. C. Avis,

1967.
CARTER, HARRY, ED. AND TRANS. Fournier on Typefounding. London:
Soncino Press, 1930.
The Computer and the Hand in Type Design: Proceedings of the Fifth ATypl
Working Seminar, Part I. In: "Visible Language," Vol. xix, no, 1 (Winter
1985).
DWIGGINS, WILLIAM A. WAD to AA: A Letter About Designing Type.
Cambridge, Mass.: Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Harvard
College Library, 1940.
GILL, ERIC. A Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon Drawn by Eric Gill.
Wellingborough, England: Christopher Skelton, 1987.
GOUDY, FREDERIC W. Typologia: Studies.in Type Design and Type Making.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1940.
HOPKINS, RICHARD L. Origin of the American Point Syrtem for Printers'
Type Measurement. Terra Alta, W. Virginia, 1976.
KocH, PAUL. 'The Making of Printing Types.' In The Dolphin, vol. 1. New
York: The Limited Editions Club, 1933. .
LAWSON, ALEXANDER. Anatomy of a Typeface. Boston: David R. Godine,
Publisher, 1990.
LEGROS, L. A., AND J.C. GRANT. Typographical Printing Suifaces. London:
Longmans Green & Co., 1916. (Facsimile edition. New York: The Garland
Press, 1980.)
LEWIS, JOHN. Anatomy of Printing: The Influence of Art and History on its.
Design. New York: Watson Guptill, 1970.
MARROT, H. V., TRANS. G. B. Bodoni's Preface to the Manuale Tipografico
of 1818. London: Elkin Mathews, 1925.
MIDDLETON, ROBERT HUNTER. Making Printers' Typefaces. Chicago:
The Black Cat Press, 1938.
Mox o N, Jo s E PH. Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, (1683-
s+). Edited by Herbert Davis and Harry Carter. London: Oxford University
Press, 1962. (Paperback reprinr, 1978. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.)
VAN KRIMPEN, JAN. On Designing and DePising Types. New York: The
Typophilcs, 1957.
- - . A Letter to Philip Hofer on Certain Problems Connected with the Me•
chanical Cutting ofPunches. Cambridge, M:w.: Department of Printing and
Graphic Arts, Harvard College Library; Boston: David R. Godine, 1972.

410
 Catalogues of 'type, and identiftcatum aids

BERRY, W., JOHNSON, A. F., AND W. P. JASPERT. The Encyclopedia of

Typefaces. 4th ed. London: Blanford Press, 1983.
GRAY, NICOLETE. Nineteenth Century Ornamented Typefaces. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976. ·
HUTCHINGS, R. S. A Manual ofDecorated Typefaces. New York: Hastings
House, 1965.
- - . A Ma,nual ofSeript Typefaces. New Yock: Hastings House, 1965.
McGREW, MAc. American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century. New
Rochelle: The Myriade Press, 1986.
MERRIMAN, FRANK.A.TA. Type Comparison Book. New Yock: Advertising
Typographers Association, r965.
PERFECT, CHRISTOPHER AND GORDON ROCKLEDGE. Rockledge's Inter-
national Type-Finder: The Essential Handbook of Typeface Recognition and
Selection, New York: Frederick C. Beil, 1983.

Biblwgraphies and dictumaries of

'typefounden and printers
ANNENBERG, MAURICE. Type Foundries of America and Their Ca:tau,gs.
Baltimore and Washington: Maran Printing Services, 1964.
BERRY, W. TURNER AND A. F. JOHNSON. Catalogue of Specimens of
Printing Types by English and Scottish Printers and Founders, 1665-1830. New
York: Garland Publisher, Inc., 1983.
MARDERSTE IG, GIOVANNI. The Officina Bodoni: An Account of the Work
1

of a Hand Press 1923~77. ed. and trans. by Hans Schmoller. Verona, Italy:
Edizioni Valdonega, 1980.
RIN GWALT, J. LUTHER. American Encyclopaedia ofPrinting. Philadelphia:
Menamin & Ringwalt, 1871. (Facsimile by Garland Publishing, Inc., 1981)

4II
 INDEX

Page numbm in italics indicate illustrations.

Adler, Elmer, 26v-63 Ancient Writi7l!f and Its Influence

Akzidenz Grotesk type, 298, 301 (Ullman), 354
Albertus type, 335 Anderson, John, 34
Akline-Freµch type, 8 Andover type, 126
Airline Press, 77, 88, 100, 132 Andres Brun, Calligrapher of Sargossa
Aldo Novarese type, 305 (Morison), 162
Aldus Buchschrift, 125, 127 And.romaque type, 41, 43
Aldus Manutius. See Manutius,Aldus Angelo, Valenri, 29-32
Alexander Wilson & Son, 278 Angereau, Antoine, 82, 132
Allen, Dorothy, 34 Anthoensen, Fred, 24-0
Allen, Lewis, 34 Antique type, 3o8, 309, 310. See also
Alternate Gothic type, 299, 299 Roclcwell Antique type
American (periodical), 276 Apollo Press, 220
American Apollo, The (newspaper), 220 Arch of Constantine (Rome), 327
American Instirute of Graphic Arts, Ariston type, 363
108, n8, 150, 165. See also Fifty Arnoldo Mondadori, 100
Books of the Year Exhibition Arrighi, Ludovico degli, 84, 354,
American Line Specimen Book, 267 385; Coryciana printed by, 93;
American Monotype Company, 71; second italic of, 94
type-making process at, 397 Arrighi type, 72, 8.5, 87, 89-91, 95
American Type Founders Company: Art of Writing (Snell), 357-58
blue books of, 238; Cheltenham Ashendene Press, 169
varieties -produ<;ed by, 258, 258, Austin, Richard A., 220, 244; Fry's
259; 'Collected' ~pecimen books Ornamented type cut by, 375, 376
of, 238, 317-18; Desk Book of
Printing Types (~898) of, 237; Baine, John, 231
Frederic Goudy, and, 114, 115, u6; Bank Script type, 366
library of, 92; mentioned, 13, 28, Barker, Nicolas, 95, 133
40, 55, 57, 61, 65, 115, 137, 235; Barker, Robert, 26
specimen books of, us, 313, 318, 360 Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, 13,
American Unical iype, 35, 36, 44, 45 68-71, 18o; Cooper Hilte type of,
Amsterdam Typefoundiy, 356, 361 379; specimen book (1925) of, 318
Anatomy of Vesalius, 131 Barnum type. See P. T. Barnum type
Ancient Roman type, so Barth, Henry, 350
Baskerville, John, 175, 184, 185-92, Bensley, Thomas, 210
214; Bucolics and Georgia of Virgil Benson, John Howard, 84
printed by, 185, 186; on Caslon Benton, Linn Boyd, ss, 271, 281;
and his types, 187; and English matrix engraving machine
printing, 209.-10; ideal of invented by, 350, 390; mechanical
perfection of, 185-88; technical punchcutting machine of, 395
innovations of, 187-88 Benton, Morris Fuller, 55, 61, llS,
Baskerville type, 74; 100, 180, 185, 137, 216; American Point System
191; American Type Founders and, s1; Baskerville type cut by,
Co. version of, 190; popularity of, 194; Bodoni type designed by, 205;
166, 185; reputation of, 188; career of, 38; Cheltenham type
revival of, 192. See also Foundry variations cut by, 258; Cloister
Baskerville type, Intertype Black cut by, 28; Cloister Old
Baskerville type Style type of, ss; ·Franklin Gothic
Bitarde Coulee, 357 and, 298-99; Goudy Bold type
Batardes, 19, 22, 28 cut by, II4, us; Goudy
Bauer, Konrad, ·305 Handtooled type cut by, 116;
Bauer Typefoundry, 298; italics for early Roman type
punchcutter at work at, 393 developed by, 60-61; Tiffany
Bauhaus, 152-53, 255, 265, 324-25, Upright type by, 357; Venetian
337; philosophy of, 340 printers and, S7
Baum, Walter, 305 Berner, Conrad, 136, 157
Bayer, Herbert, Universal type of, 339 Bernhard, Lucien, 347, 360-61
Beaujon, Paul. See Warde, Beatrice Bernhard Cursive type, 360-61, 362
Becker Bernhard Gothic type, 346, 347
Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Berthold Typefoundry, 45, 298, 301;
Caron de, 190 City type of, 319,319
Becker, Beatrice. See Warde, Beatrice Bertrand Typefoundry. See Fonderie
Becker Bertrand
Beilenson, Peter, 92, n4 Besley, Robert, 314, 315
Bell, John, 210, 218-22; British Album Best, Harvey, 14, 32
printed by, 221; foundry Bcton type, 317, 319, 320
announcement printed by, 218, Bewick, Thomas, 214
221; reputation of, 223-24 Bible: Baskerville folio (1763), 189,
Bell type, 158, 219, .zz;, 227; 190; Doves Press (1905), S4;
American reception of, 220-22; ·Gutenberg (1455), 17; King James
classification of, 224; copies of 220- Version (16u), 24, 26, 28; Oxford
21; popularity and uses of, 22s, Lectern (1935), 70, 72, 95-97;
228. See also English Copperplate Schoeffer's ( 1462) edition of, 20-21,:
type Bible Gothic type. See Jessen type
Bembo, Pietro, 77 Biblioteca Palatina, 205
Bembo Condensed Italic type, Bo, Bibliotheque Nationale, 138
82, 82 Bickham, George, 358
Bembo Titling type, 81 Bijou type, 374
Bembo type, 74, 7S, 79, 98, 100, 157; Binny, Archibald, 229, 230-31, 232-
phototypesetting and, 83; 33, 253
popularity of 74, 83 Binny & Ronaldson, 229-30; 1812

414
 specimen book of, 231, 232, 237, photo version of, 265; reputation
240. See also MacKellar, Smiths & and uses of, 262-65; swash variants
Jordan of, 265, 267. See also New
Black English Letter type, 24 Bookman type
Blacldetter ty,pe, 8, 13, 20; Caslon's Book of Cummon Prayer; edition of
classic, 24;' Caxton's Flemish, 22; (1549), 24; Merrymount Press
classification of, 16; development _edition of (1930), 158
of, IS, 16-34; dual alphabet of, rs; Book ofKells, 37, 38
French innovations in, 23; in Borowsky, Irving, 9
Germany, i2-23, 24-2s; manuscript Boston Public Library, so, 64
styie and, IS, 16; readability of, Boston Type &Stereotype Found.ry,295
14-15; in the United States, 28 Boulevard type, 366
Blado, Antonio, 92 Bowles, Joseph M., 63
Blado type, 9?,, 100 Bradley, Will, 178 .
Blumenthal, Joseph, 72, 92, 98 Brimmer, Marrin, 222
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 106 British Album, The, 221
Bodoni, Giambattista, 99, 214-15, Broadway type, 340
220; Baskerville's influence on, 188, Bruce, David, Jr., 23.3; pivotal
196; biography of, 196-205; design typecaster invented by, 350, 387,
concepts of, 199-201; Gray's 38~0
Complete P~ems printed by, 20+; Bruce, George: Early American
Manua/,e Tipografico by, 198, 199- Roundhand Script type of, 359;
200, ws; output of, 202; Stendahl Early American Sans Serif type of,
and, 202 297
Bodoni Bold Paneled type, 378 Bruce Typefoundry, .267, 316
Bodoni Bold grpe, 207 Brush type, 361, 363
Bodoni Open type, 379 Bucolics and Georgics of Vi1:!Jil, 185,
Bodoni type, SS, 57, 74, 99, IOo, 114, 186, 188.
I97, 198, 203;; American Type Buddy type. See Raycroft type
Founders Co. version of, 205; Buffalo type, 37+
Bauer Typefound.ry version of, Bullen, Henry Lewis, 92, 137, 20s, 217
200, 201, 20s; Benton's revival of, Bulmer, William, 205, 210, 243;
205; condensed version of, 206; edition of Shakespeare produced
copies of, 202-208; Didot's version by, 210, 213; Stanhope's iron press
of, 202, 20s;, Nebiolo Foundry used by, 214
version of, 2f>S, 206; newspaper Bulmer type, 211, 212, 213, 215;
uses of, 207, 208; popularity and American Type Founders Co.
use of, 208. See also Didot type, version ot: 216; influences on, 214;
Poster Bodoni type, Torino type, italic of; 214-; popularity and uses
Ultra Bodoni type of, 217
Bologna, Francesco da. See Griffo, Bundy, George, 162, 163
Francesco Burne-Jones, Edward, 256
Bookman Oldstyle .type, 263 Burns, James F., Jr., 9
Bookman Romw type, 267
Bookman type, 143; as book type, Cairo type, 316, 320
262-64; 268; ,commercial uses of, Caledonia type, 32-34, z+s;
262, 264-65, 269; italic of, 267; development of, z+r, influences

415
 of, 250; popularity and uses of, 252 Cellini, Benvenuto, 89
Ca/,ligraphic Models ofLudwico degli Centaur, The (Guerin), 62
A.rrighi (Morison), 95, 99 Centaur type, 54, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66,
Q;dligraphy and Printing in the 69, 9S, 98, 100, 150; development
Sixteenth Century (ed. Nash), 384 of, 67-73; italic for, 71-72;
Cambridge University, 190 ownership of, 68-71, 73; Updike
Cambridge University Press, 72, 192, on, 72
194,228 Century (periodical), m, 281
Camelot type, 112 Cenrury Expanded type, 281--84, 281
Campanile type, 374- Century Roman type, 279
Caractere de Finance type, 3.f2, 357 Century type, 57, 271
Caracteres de PUniversite, 136, 137 Chancery cursive, 84-86, 89, 91, 92,
Carolingian minuscule, 16-19, 21, 35, 47 · 336, 354
Carter, Harry, 7, 19, 20, 58, 162, 163, Chap Book (periodical)., 255, 256
355; on Gutenberg's typemaking Chappell, Warren, 327, 356
practice, 383; Lyell lectures of, 88; Charlemagne, writing reforms of,
on type metal used at Plantin, 389 16-17, 35, 47
Carter, Matthew, 141, 293-94, 360 Chaucer type, 21, 29, 32
Carter, Will, 97 Cheltenham Bold type, 254-, 255
Cary, Melbert B., Jr., 10, 319, 332 Cheltenham Press, 256
Cary Graphic Arts Collection. See Cheltenham type, 57,260, 261;
Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Graphic Arts advertisement for, 259; American
Collection Type Founders Co. version of,
Caslon, William, 24, 171-75, 184; 257; as display type, 257; New
broadside specimen sheet of, 171, York Times set in, 286; original
172; specimen book (1763) of, 173 sketches for, 256; popularity and
Caslon, William, IV, 310; decorated reputation of, 253-55; variations
Old.styles of, 373; sans serif type of, 258, 258, 259
of, 295-96, 297 Chesterfield type, 261
Caslon Antique type, 179, 180 Chictlgo Tribune, 292
Caslon Old Face type, 177 Chiswick Press, 175; 176
Caslon Openface type, 378 Christian, Arthur, 137
Caslon type, 150, 177, 178, 209; Cincinnati Typefoundry, 350
classification of, 180; Declaration City type, 319, 319
of Independence set in, 174-; first CiPilite Puerile, La (Erasmus), 355
broadside specimen sheet of, 171, Civilite type, 147, 3fl, 355;
172; origins of, 171; popularity of, American Type Founders Co.
166, 175-6, 183; printing version of, 368
characteristics of, 166; reputation Clarendon Bold type, 309
and use of, 169-71, 18o Clarendon Press, 315
Caslon No. 471 type, 170, 180 Clarendon type, 321-323; Besley
Caslon No. 540 type, 180, 181 and, 314, 315; name of, 315. See
Caslon No. 641 type, 171 also Consort type, English
Castellar type, 375 Clarendon type, Craw Clarendon
"Catalogue of the Pictures, A" rype, French Clarendon type, New
(Nicol), 210 Clarendon type
Caxton, William, 22, 23 Classification. See Printing types,

416
 classification of Crowell-Collier Publishing Co., 274
Claudin, Anatole, 136 Cwnming, John F., H, 65, 237
Cleland, T. M., 137 Cursive type, 8, 354-66
Clement VII, 91
Cleveland Typefoundry, 237 Dabney, Frances, 222
Cloisn:r Black type, 28, 32 D'Annunzio, Gabriele, roo
Cloister Initials, n5 Dante's Divine Comedy, Nash's
Cloister Lightface type, 59 printing of, ;9, 61
Cloister Old Style type, 4-8, 55, 57- Dante type, 101, 106-8, 107; italic
61, 82, .II4; development of, 47-50; of, 1o6, popularity of, 98
italics of, ;8, 60; popularity of, 61; Da Spira, Wendelin, 21
Updike on, 61 ·De/Etna (Bembo), 76, t,, 78, 100,
Cloister Press, 92 132; Mardersteig edition of, 102
Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., 50, 65 De /Ema type, 76, 78, 81, 82, 133
Golden type, 65 , Dearborn Type Foundry, 41
Colines, Simon de, 88, 132-33 Deberny et Peignot Foundry, 43,
Collected Specimen !Jook (American 194, 302, 319, 355, 356, 375
Type Founders ,Co.), 238, 317-18 Declaration of Independence, I74,
Collier's (periodical), 264, 276 175-76
Collins Cleartype Press, 100, 102 De Dtwina Proportione (Pacioli), 106
Colonna, Francesco, 8o Deepdene type, n7, 118
Commercial Script type, 365 De Praeparatwne Evangelica
Computer typesetting, 400, 401,402-3 (Eusebius), 53, 61, 64
Conkwright, P. J.,, 231, 240 De Roos, S. H., Libra type by, 43, 45
Consort type, 321 Designs-Copyright Amendment Act
Continental Typefounders of 1845, 315
Association, 319, 332 Desk Book ofPrinting Types (1898),
Cooper Black type, 340 237
Cooper Hilire type, 379 Detterer, Ernst, 61
Cooper Union, 120 Deutsche Schriften. See Frakrur type
Copperplate Bold type, 360 Dtwina Proportione, De. See De
Copperplate Script type, 358-66 Dtwina Proportwne
Copperplate writll\g, 357, 358 De Vinne, Theodore Low, 57, 98,
Copyright, 126-27,, 315. See also 235, 271; Century type developed
Pirating of type by, 281; on Gutenberg, 382; on
Corona type, 283, 290-91, 292 nineteenth-century roman types,
Coronet type, 363, 369 244; on technical need v.
Cortelyou, Peter C., 176 typographic aesthetic, 278'
Coryciana (Paladius), 84, 91, 92, 93 De Vinne Press, specimen book of,
Cottrell, Thomas, 358 2;1
Cranach Press, 92, 99; Rilke's Dialogue de la Vie et de la Mort
Duineser Elegien produced by, 96 (Ringhieri), 355
Craw, Freeman, 321 Dialogue <m the Uncial Between ,a
Craw Clarendon type, 311, 321 Paleographer and a Printer, A
Cresci, Giovanni Francesco, 356 (Hammer), 35, 42
Cristal type, 375, 376 Dialogues Fran;ois pour les Jeunes
Crito: A Socratic Di'alogue (Plato), 95 Enfans (Plantin), 383-84

417
Diary of Lady Willoughby, The, 175, Egenolff, Judith, 157
176 Egenolff-Berner Foundry, 134, 136;
Dickinson Type Foundry. See S. N. Broadside specimen sheet (1592)
Dickinson Type Foundry of, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140, 155,
Didot, Firmin Ambroise, 220 156
Didot type, 207 Egyptian Expanded type, 321
Digitalization of type, 4-00, 4-01, Egyptian type, 310-12, 310, ·313, 314,
402- 3 316, 321
Digression of the Roman Later Ehrhardt type, 163
(Hammer), 43 Electra type, 246, 293, 334, m
Dingbats, 147 Electroplating, 350, 390
Dolphin, The, 227 Elegance type, 126
Dooijes, Dick, 3oS, 356 Elements ofLettmng (Goudy), 14
Douglas, Lester, II6 English Clarendon type, 312
Doves Press, 50, 65, 92, 169; Bible English Copperplate type, 222
( 1905) of, f4- English Monotype Company, type
Doves type, 50, 54 revival program of, 92, 217
Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, English Newspaper, The, 278
Bulmer's (1791) printing of, 213 English Roman No. 1 type, 102
Drugulin Foundry, 158, 162 English Round Hand, 357, 358
Drupa Exhibition, 329-30 English type. See Black.letter type
Due Episodi delta Vita di Felice Enschede Typefoundry, 141;
Feliciano, 102 Catalogue (1768) of, 370; Rosart's
Duineser Elegien (Rilke), Cranach decorative types of, pr, 375
Press edition of, 96 Erasmus, Desiderius, 77, 132
Dunlap, John, Declaration of Erbar, Jakob, 340
Independence printed by, 174-, Essays ofMontaigne, 56, 65
175-76 Essex type, 50
Durandus type, 19-20 Estienne, Henri, 132, 133
Dutch-English type, 8 Estienne, Robert, 132, 133
Dutch Roman type, 16o Eurostyle Bold type, 303
Dwiggins, William A., 32, 330; Eusebius, Pamphili, 53, 61, 64
biography of, 246; on Bookman Eusebius type, 60, 61
type, 262; Caledonia type Excelsior type, :zSo, 282, 287
developed by, 246, 247-252, 24-r, Excoffon, Roger, 366
correspondence with C. H. Exhibition of British Book
Griffith of, 333-336, 336; Production, 74
drawing methods of, 155, 332-33;
drawings of Humanist Roman Fairbanks, Alfred, 82
type by, 331, 332-336; on Gothic Fann Street Foundry, 310, 314, 321
type, 344; Layout in Advertising by, Farmer, Little and Company, 245
246; Mergenthaler Linotype and, Feder und Stiebel (periodical), 120
397; on Palatine type, 125; on Fell, John, 160
sans-serif types, 333-34 Fell type, 164-
Fem, Alan, 98-99
Early Printing in America, 240 Fifteenth Century type. See Caslon
Egenolff, Christian, 157 Antique type

418
Fifty Books of the Year Exhibition. Gage, Harry L., no, 344
74, II6, 150,, l65-66, 194, 217, 242, Galliard Italic type, 141-46, 14-2, 144,
252,264 293; weights of, 145
Figgins, Vincent, 224, 308-9 Garamond, Claude, 82, 88, 130-35,
Figgins, Vincent II, 386 184; printing scene of, 129-30;
Fleischmann, J. F., Rosart's Robert Estienne and, 132, 133-34;
"Finance" types adapted by, 353, St. Augustine type attributed to.,
357 155
Flemish Black.ietter type, 22 Garamond Roman type, 132, 139
Fleuron, The (periodical), 75, 137, Garamond type, 74, 100, 129, 135,
149, 150 138-39, [51-52, 155, 157;
Folio type, 305, 306 American Type Founders Co.
Fonderie Bertrand, 192 version of, 130; Broadside
Fontana type, '105 specimen sheet (1592) of, 134, 136,
Fortune type, 32-1, 322 138, 139, 140; derivation of, 132;
Forum type, u3-14 Egenolff-Bemer use of, 134-36,
Foundry Baskcbrville type, 194, 195 138; English Monotype version
Four Gospels, The, 28, 103, I05 of, 134; Jannon specimen book
Fournier, Pierre Simon, 175, 384-85; (1621) of, 136, 138, 139; Ludlow
decorative ·t)pC of, 372; on John Typograph Co. version of, 133,
Baskerville, 188; the ornamented 140; Oporinus version of, 131
letter and, 37,0 "Garamond Types, The'' (Warde),
Fournier type, 174 14-9
Fragmente des Pindar (Holderlin), 4C George Clymer and the Columbian
Frakrur type, 23, 24-25, 25, 45, 122, Press (Kainen), 242
329; Nazism and, 24-25, 123 Georgics of Virgil. See Bucolics and
Fra Luca de Pacioli (Morison), 72 Georgics of Virgil
Frank Holme School of Illustration, German Black Letter. See Fraktur
246 type
Franklin, Benjamin, 188, 190 Gilgengart type, 122-23
Franklin Gothic type, 295, 296, 297- Gill, Eric, 145, 329, 339, 34-8
98 Gill Sans Bold type, 330, H9-40,
Frazier, J. L., 264-65 34-8
Frederic W. Goudy Award, 1o8 Girder type; 319. See also Memphis
French Clarendbn type, 313, 323 type
French National Printer, 132, 136-37 Gloucester type, 261. See also
Friar type, 42, 45 Cheltenham type
Friendrhip (Thoreau), 26o Godine, David R., 9, 209
Frutiger, Adrian, 302-4, 356 Golden Legend, The, 49
Fry, Dr. Edmund, 315 Golden type, 49-50, 53
Fry, Joseph, 194 Goodhue, Bertram Grosvenor, 57,
Fry Baskerville type, 194, 195 255-56, 261; Cheltenham type
Fry's Ornamented type, 375, 376 original sketches by, 256;
Futura type, 153, 300, 304, 305, 318, Merrymount design of, 55
327, 330, 333, 340-42; and the Gothic Antique type. See Durandus
Bauhaus, 337;: original concept of, type
341 .. Gothic type. See Black~letter type

419
Goudy, Frederic W., 13-16, 61, 71, Gray, Nicolete: on Egyptian type,
73, 110-119, II9, 246, 330, 347, 316; on ornamented types, 377-80
386; American Type Founders Co. Gree du Roi type, 134
and, 114, ns, 116; autobiography . Gregory XIII, 150
of, 116; career of, 381; Cloister Griffith, C. H., 168, 240, 286;
initials designed by, 115; drawing correspondence with Dwiggins of,
methods of, 117, 155; Elements of 333
uttering by, 14; Lanston Griffo, Francesco, 58, 78, 100-2, 132,
Monotype Machine Co. and, us, 184; innovation of, 80-82; italics
u7, 397--98; Lift magazine type type cut by, 86-87, 88; type (1495)
designed by, 113; Lombard.ic by, 102
capitals by, If, 15-16; reputation Griffo type, ro6
of, no, 117-19; Rogers and, 67; Grolier Club, 65, 67, 72
Zapf and, 122 Gropius, Walter, 340
Goudy Award. See Frederic W. Gros Cicero type, 143 ·
Goudy ·Award Grover Typefoundry, Union Pearl
Goudy Black type, 14 type of, 370, 370 ·
Goudy Bold type, 114, ns Guerin, Maurice de, 62
Goudy Catalogue type, 115 Gulli-ver's Tra1Jels (Swift), 140
Goudy Friar type, 42, 45 Gutenberg, Johann, r3, 19, 57;
Goudy Handtooled type, 115, 116, 379 42-line Bible of, IT, Mainz
Goudy Old Style type, III, 114-16, indulgence (1455) printed by, 18,
II7 19, 22; type production methods
Goudy Light Old Style No. 38 type, of, 382-83
U3, II3 Gutenberg Jahrbuch, 162
Goudy Sans type, 347 Gutenberg Prize, 108
Goudy Society type, 119 Guyot, Fransois, 88--89
Goudy Text Shaded type, 38o
Goudy Text type, 14, 14, 16, 28, 117 Haas'sche Typefoundry, 305, 321
Goudy Thirty type, 32-34, 33 Hmf-Century of Type Design and
Goudy Village type, 112 Typography, 1895-1945, A
"Gout Hollandois, The" (Johnson), (Goudy), 16, n6
162 Half-Uncial manuscript hand, 36,
Grabhorn, Edwin, 28, 29-32, 238-40 37, JS
Grabhorn, Robert, 28, 29-32, Hammer, Carolyn Reading, 45
238-40 Hammer, Victor, 35, 31-46, 46;
Grabhom,Hoyem Press, 28, 34, 240 Chapters on Writing and Printing
Grandjean, Philippe, 175, 184; by, 44; Digression on the Roman
Romain du Roi type of, 192; type Letter by, 43; on legibility, 45
plate used by, 193 Hammer Uncial type, 38, 40
Granjon, Robert, 88, 141-43, 145; Handy, John, 185
biography of, 149-50; Civilite type Hansard, Thomas Curson, 187;
of, 351, 355; cursive type by, 355; criticism of nineteenth century by,
reputation of, 147 313-14
Granjon type, 147, 148; popularity Harvard University Press, 192
of, 150 Helvetica type, 305-7, 305
Grant, John Cameron, 271 Belvin type, 374

420
 Heritage Press, 262 Invention ofPrinting, The (De
Hess, Sol, 161, 168, 347, 381; New Vinne), 382
Bookman type designed by, 266 Ionic No. 5 type, 286
Hesse, Gudrun von, 120 Ionic type, 271, 282, 286
. Hidalgo type, 323
Histoire de l'Impri,merie en France au Jannon, Jean, 136-37; specimen
XV a au XVI Siecle (Claud.in), 137 book (1621) of, 136, 138,139
Hirturia Florentina:(Aretino), 49 Janson, Anton, 160, 161
Historia Natural-is <Pliny), 49 Janson type, 100, 167, Janson and,
History of Printing in America, The 150, 160-62; early uses of, 162;
(Thomas), 234-, '.f35 italic of, 159; Linotype version of,
History of the Old English Letter 168; Monotype version of, 159;
Foundries (Reed), 222 Morison on, 16o; printing
History of the Print~d Book, A characteristics of, 166; Stemp!
(Wroth), 228 version of, 161, 166, 168; Zapf
Hitler, Adolf, 24 redesign of, 166
Hobson, Charles, 92 Janson-A Definitive Coller:tion
Holbein, Hans, 114 (Stauffacher), 166
Holla type, 361-621 Jan van Krimpen: A Letter to Philip
Horton, Hilary Douglas, 10 Hofer on Certain Problems
Houghton, Henry 10., 221-22 Connected With the Mechanical
Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 63, Cutti¥J ofPunches (ed. Dreyfus),
64 398
Hoyern, Andrew, ~ Jefferson, Thomas. See Papers of
Hubbard, Elbert, sv, 264 Thomas]efferson
Humanist Roman \:ype, experimental Jenson, Nicolas, 21, 57, 64, 75, 97,
drawings for, JJI, 332-36 180; De Praeparatione Evangelica
Hypnerutomachia Poliphili (Colonna), printed by, 53; Griffo and, 80-81;
80, 132 Historia naturalis printed by, 49;
influence on Bruce Rogers of, 50-
Ideal type,288, 29i 53; Roman type of, 52; Rotunda
Ikarus computer system, 146, 403 type used by, 27, William Morris
Imperial type, 29I, ;292 and, 48, 49, so
Imprimerie Royal<; 136-37, 175, 184, 199 Jenson type, so
Imprint, The (periodical), 224 Jessen type, 2!'r-32, 31
Indulgence Letter of Mainz (1455), Johnson, A. F., 22, 88, 89, 357;
18, 19, 22 foundry of, 177; Type Dt:signs:
Ink-trapping, 280, 28o, 287 Their History and Development by,
Inland Printer, The (periodical), 264 160
International Club ;of Printing 344; Italic type of, 96;
House Craftsmen, u8 Underground type of, 337-39,
International Typeface Corporation, 339; Writing and llluminating and
126-27, 128 Lettering by, 122
Intertype Baskerville type, 192-93 Jones, George W., Granjon type of,
Inrerrype Corporaqon, 292; 147, 148, 149, ISO
Cheltenham variations produced Jost, Heinrich, 319
by, 258 Journal of a Voyqqe to lisbon, The, 226

421
Justowriter machine, 73 Lawson, Evelyn T., IO
Layout in AJi:vertising (Dwiggins),
Kabel Bold type, 34-4 246,344
Kabel Light type, 343 , Legend type, 355, 367
Kabel type, 327, 342, 343, 34-4, 347 Legibility ofPrint, The (Pyke), 271
Kainen, Jacob, 242 Legibility types, 270-71, 287-94
Karnak type, 316, 320 Legros, Lucien Alphonse, 271
Karow, Peter, 146 Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmut, 20
Kaufmann Bold type, 363 Letter of Indulgence, Mainz (1455),
Kells, Book of See Book of Kells 18, 19, 22
Kelmscott Press, 21, 49, 50, 63, 92, Lettere italienne, 357
169,256,265 Liberty type, 361
Kelrnscott type, 50 Library, The (periodical), 133, 162,
Kenilworth type, 261. See also 163
Cheltenham type Libra type, 43, 45
Kennerley, Mitchell, n3, 114 Libro NUOJ?o_d'Imparun a Scrivere
K~nnerley Old Style type, IIf (Palastino ), 124
Kent, Henry Watson, 65, 67, 68, 71, Life (periodical), n3
73, 95 Life of St. George (Jacobus), 34
Kessler, Count Harry, 92, 99 Lightline Gothic type, 301
Kimball, Ingalls, 256 Lilith type, 375
King James Bible. See under Bible Lining Jenson Oldstyle No. z type, 49
Kis, Nicholas, 162-65, 386 Linotype Matrix (periodical), 162
Klingspor Foundry, 28, 38, 42 Louis XIV, King of France, 184, 199
Knopf, Alfred A., 209, 330-31 Ludlow Typograph Company,
Koch, Paul, 40 Cheltenham type variations
Koch, Rudolf, 40, 121, 122, 333, 342; produced by, 258
counterpunching diagrams by, 404; Lumitype machine, 302
Kabel type designed by, 323, 342, Lydian Cursive type, 356, 367
343, 344; sans-serif types of, 327 Lydian type, 327, 328, 356
Koch Bibel Gotisch type. See Jessen
type McConnick, Colonel Robert R., 292
Kredel, Fritz, 120 McCutcheon, John T., 62
Krimpen, Jan van, 398,404 MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, 177,
229, 237, 253
Lady ofQuality, A (Burnett), 178 McMumie, Douglas C., 255
Lange, G. G., Boulevard type of, Mainz Indulgences, 18, 19, 22
366; Solemnis type by, 43, 45 Malin, Charles, 95, 100, 102, 106
Lansron Monocype Machine Manuale Tipograftco (Bodoni), 198,
Company, 14, 32, 71, 83, II3, 224; 199-200, 205
Janson revival of, 160-61; type Manuel Typographique (Fournier),
revival program of, 74, 92 188, 199, 370, 384-85
Lardent, Victor, 273 Manuscript style, 15, 16-19, J1;
Last Sea Flight of the Bnenge chancery cursive and, 84-85;
(Raleigh), 54 development of printing types
Laurentian Library, 124 and, 349; standardization of; 18-
Lavinia type, 374 19; uncial, 35-37, 37

422
Manutius, Aldus, 58, 74, 100, 125, Middleton, R. Huni:er, 41, 61, 325,
132, 134, 354; 1biography of, 75-78; 345, 381
and Italic type, 86-87; as scholar, Mifflin, George H., 63
89 Miller, William, 244
Marchbanks, Hal, 169 Miller and Richard Foundry, 267,
Mardersteig, Giovanni, 81, 82, 87, 321
98-109, 109, 162; Bembo type Milwaukee Journal, 292
used by, 79; Bodoni's influence Mistral type, -366, 369
on, 205; D'Annunzio's works Modernistic type, 375
printed by, 100; modem printing Modem type, 8, 49, 175, 224-27, 285,
plane foundtj:I by, 108, 109; 293
Morison and; 99, 100, 102, 109; Monotype Corporation Limited, 73,
printing philosophy of, 99; Warde 106
and, 99, 102; Zeno type designed Monotype Plantin type. See Plantin
by, 102-5, 103 type
Marshall's Lift of George Washington, Montague Press, 62, 66
24-0 Montaigne type, 56, 65
Martin, William, 205, 2.09, 210-n; Montano, Lorenzo, 105
Bulmer italic ,cut by, 214; Monticello type, 240, ur, 242
influences on, 214-15 Moore, Isaac, 194
Matrix engraving machine, 350, 3.90- Morgan Library, 1o8
98 Mori, Gustave, 122
Maximilian I, 23 Morison, Stanley, 58, 74, 86, 92, 109,
Methanick Exerc'ises (Moxon), 24, 147, 158, 228, 398; and Bell's
384-85; type mold illustration reputation, 223-24; Calligraphic
from, 384 Models ofAmghi, 99; on Jansen
Medici, Cosiino' de, 165 types, 160; Mardersteig and, 99,
Melbert B. Cary, Jr., Graphic Arts 100, 102, 109; On Type Designs Past
Collection, 73; 95, 108, 332 and Present by, 160; Printing the
Melior type, 17.6'., 293, 293 Times by, 27s; on sans-serif types,
Memphis type, 318-19, 319, 320 330; Times of London critiqued
Mercator type, 304-5, 306 by, 270
Mergenthaler, Ottrnar, 277 Morris, William, 21, 28, 37, 54, 216,
Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 243, 264, 270, 280; on Bodoni, 200;
240; Janson revivals of, 160-61; Golden type of, 65; printing ideals
newspaper ~ experiments of, of, 47-49, 50; Venetian printers'
286-87;. type-making process at, influence on, 48--49, 75, Bo
396-97 Mountjoye type. See Bell type
Mergenthaler Linotype Machine, 390 Moxon, Joseph, 24
Merrymounr Press, 63, 158, 222, 238, Munder, Norman T. A., 68-71
274
Merrymoum type, 50, 255 Nash, John Henry, 59, 61, 73
Metal. See Type metal Nash, Ray, 384
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 65, Nazism, and typography, 24-25, 123,
67-68 153
Metro type, 246,, 344-45, 345 Nebiolo Typefoundry, 205, 305
Michelangelo type, 121, 124, 124 Neudorfer, Joliann, 23

423
Newark Evening News, z86 Optima type, 126, 325, 327, 336;
Newberry Library, 65, 73 popularity and uses of, 329
New Bookman type, 266 Orga,wn (Aristotle), 77
New Clarendon type, 321 0vink, Professor G. W., 162, 265
Newly Discwered Treatise on Classic Oxford English Dictionary, 315
Later Design Printed at Parma by Oxford Lectern Bible, 72, 79, 95-97
Damianus Moyllus ca. 14/JO (ed. Oxford type, 236, 237, 239
Morison), 99-100 Oxford University Press, 72, 95, 97,
News Got.'1.ic type, 300 160
Newspaper types: legibility of, 286-
87; sizes of, 277, 287-88, 292, 294 Pacioli, Luca de, 106
"New typography," 337, 340 Pacioli type, 104, 105-6
New York Times, 292 Paladium type, 126
"Nicholas Kis and Janson types" Palarino, Giovanbacrista, 124
(Carter/Buday), 162-63 Palatino type, 98, 120, 121, 123; as
Nicol, George, 210, 215 book type, 125; italic of, 123;
Nineteenth Century Ornamented legibility of, 125; success and
Types and Title Pages (Gray), 316, popularity of, 125-26; swash
377-80 characters of, 123, 124
"Nineteenth Cenrury Reactions Palladius, Blodius, 84
Against the Didone Type Model" Palmer Method, 3.58
(Morris), 265 Palomba type, 356
Note by William Morris on His Aims Pantograph machine, 55, 82, 391-96
in Founding the Kelmscott Press, A Papermaking, 187-88
(Morris), 47 Papers ofThomar Jefferson, 240, 242
Nussbaumer, Charles, 41 Paragon type, 283, 290 ·
Paraphrasis in Elegantiarum Libros
Odyssey ofHomer, The, 72 Laurentii Vallae (Erasmus), 132
Offenbach type, 326, 327 Parisian Ronde type, 357
Officina Bodoni, 95, 98, 100, 1o8, Park Avenue Script type, 28
109, 162, 205 Parker, Mike, 141
Old English type. See Ooister Black Parker, Wadsworth A., 115, 267
type Peignot, Charles, 194
Old Style Antique No. 310 type, Peignot, Remy, 375
264-, 267 Pen and Graver (periodical), 120, 122
Old Style type, 8, 184 n
Peifetto Scrittore, (Cresci), 356
Olive Foundry, 366 Penguin paperbacks, 154-55
Olympian type, 287, 294 Perusinus, Lautitius, 89
On Being Blue (Gass), 107 Peters, John, 375
Ondine type, 356 Pfeil Antiqua type, 261. See also
"On the Choice of Type Faces" Cheltenham type
(Warde), 169 Pharon type, 319
On Type Desigm Past and Present Phinney, Joseph Warren, 235-36
(Morison), 16o Photon machine, 302
On Type Faas (Morison), 160 Phototypesetting, 398-403
Operina (Arrighi), 84, 88, 89, 90, 356 Pickering Press, 34
Opticon type, 284-, 289 Pindar type, 40, 41

424
Pine, William, 194 Profile type, 377
Pirating of rype, 126-27, 315, 330, P. T. Barnum type, 320, 323
376; electroplating and, 57, 77, Punchcutting, 368-88, 393
350, 390 Punchcutting machine, 394, 395
Pivotal Typecasting Machine, 350, Pyke, R. L., 271, 273
387, 389-90 Pynson, Richard, 24
Plagiarism. See Pirating of type Pynson Printers, edition of Tom
Plain Printing Types (De Vinne), 244, Sawyer (1930) produced by, 262-64,
265, 278, 315; punch and matrix 268
illustrations from, 383
Plantin, Christopher, 89, 134, 135, Quarendo (periodical), 265
150, 157, 273
Plantin-Morerus Museum, 134, 141 Raedisch, Paul, 141
Plantin type, 1+5, i73, 276; Times Raleigh Cursive type, 356, 364
New Roman type derived from, Ransom, Will, 95
143 Rationale (Durandus), 19
Playbill type, 323 Reed, Talbot Baines, 222
Plwnet, Charles, 95 Reform Grotesk type, 298
Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell, 210, Regal type, 290, 292
211, 214; advertisement for, 212 Renner, Paul, 330, 340-41
Point System, American, 57 Rex type, 289, 292
Poliphilus type, 74\ 78, So, 92, 100 Rhapsodic type, 355, 368
Pontiac type, 126 Richelieu, Cardinal, 136-37
Poster Bodoni ~ ' 2o8 Riverside Press, 50, 63, 222, 238
Poupy, Jean, 150 Robb, Alexander, 233
Praeparatione Evangelica. See De Rochester Institute of Technology,
Praeparatione Er/angelica 73, 108
Prang, Louis, 63 , Rockwell Antique type, 318, 320
Prayer Book ofMaximilian I, 25 Rogers, Bruce, 50-53, 92; biography
Prince, Edward, 49, so, 92 of, 62-65, 72-73; Centaur
Princeton University Press, 92, 231, designed by, 62, 66; Centaur type
240 drawings by, 64; correspondence
Printed Book in America, The with Updike of, 67; Fables ofAesop
(Blwnenthal), 72· designed by, 164; on Garamond
Printing Impressions: (periodical), 9 type, 140; Goudy and, 67;Journal
Printing press design, 187 of a Voyage to Lisbon produced by,
Printing process, 8~, 143-45 226;. Oxford Lectern Bible designed
Printing the Times ~Morison), 275 by, 70, 72, 95-97; Poems of
Printing types, classification of, 1-8, Shakespeare (1940) produced by,
310-11, 349, 354 167; reputation of, 62
Printing Types: An Introduction Rollins, Carl Purington, 62, 169, 227;
(Lawson), 7-8 Heritage Press Walden (1939)
Printing Types: Their History, Forms designed by, 262; Histury of the
and Use (Updike), 61, 72, 75, 86, Printed Book designed by, 228
158, 160, 169, 238, ,239, 278, 316- Romain du Roi type, 175, 192, 199
17, 330, 371, 377 Romantype,52,57-58,59, 184;
Prisma type, 377 · decorated versions o~ 33-74, 375,

425
 38o; and italics, 60 Shakspeare Printing Office, 205, 210;
Roman No. 1 type, 229, 230-1, 232, Dramatic Workr ofShakrpeare
234, 235, 237, 240 printed by, 213; Poems of
Roman No. 2 type, 244-45, 28o Goldsmith and Parnell printed by,
Ronaldson, James, 229, 232, 253 211, 212, 214
Ronde type, 357 Siegfried, Laurance B., 330
Rondo Bold type, 361 Signature (periodical), 162, 231
Rondo type, 356 Silve, David, 274
Rondthaler, Ed, 329 Sistina type, 121, 124, 125
Rosart, J. F., Caractere de Finance S. N. Dickinson Typefoundry, 18o,
type by, 352, 357; decorative types 235
cut by, 371, 375 Snell, Charles, 357-8, 360
Rosenberger, August, 120, 122 Snell Roundhand type,. 36o, 362
Rotunda type, 21-22, 27 Sniffen, Willard T., 356
Round Gothic type. See Rotunda Society of Typographic Arts, 35, 41
type Solernnis type, 4-3, 45
Royal type, 292, 292 Some Aspects ofPrinting Old and New
Roycroft Press, 264; Thoreau's (Updike), 274 ·
Friendship printed by, 26o "Some More Notes on Nicholas Kis
Roycroft type, 57 of the Janson Types" (Buday), 163
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Southern Gothic type. See Rorunda
Riverside Press (1900) edition of, type
222 Spartan type, 345, 346, 347, 348
Rudge, William Edwin, 72-73, 92 Spencerian writing method, 358
Ruzicka, Rudolph, 397 Spira, Wendelin da. See Da Spira,
Wendelin
Sabon, Jacob, 135 Stamperia de Sanruccio, 40
Sabon, Jacques, 156 Stamperia Reale, 201
Sabon type, 152, 156; development Stamperia Valdonega, 108,109
of, 151-52, 155-57; drawings for, Standard type, 299-300, 301, 301, 302
m; popularity of, 157 Starr, Edwin, 350, 390
Samson Agonistes (Milton), 40 Stauffacher, Jack, 166
Samson type, 39 Stellar type, 325-27, 328, 336, 345
Sandades (Dabney), 222 Stempel Typefoundry, 120, 121, 122,
San Zerw VesCOPO, Patrono di Verona 125, 139, 329
(Montano), 105 Stendahl, 202
Sapphire type, 376 Stephenson, Blake & Company, 175,
Schelter & Giesecke, sans-serif type 194, 222, 261, 321, 323, 370
of, 296,297 Stereotyping, 350
Schlesinger, Stefan, 323, 356 Steven, Shanks & Son Foundry, 321
Schoeffc:r, Peter, 20, 21; Blacklc:tter Summa Theologica, 27
type of, 19-21, 20 Swash characters, 91, 121, 123, 124,
Schwabacher type, 23, 24, 30 265, 267
Scotch Roman type, 34, 244, 245-46,
24-8, 2+9, 250, 251 Tagliente, Giovantonio, 82
Script type. See Cursive type TemPo Bold type, 34-6
Shaar, Edwin, 292 Textura type, 16, 19, 21, 23-24, 329

426
Thomas, Isaiah, 235 350-54; technology of, 382-403;
Thome; Robert, 220, 224, 308, 310 type casting in, 388-89; type
Thorowgood,, William, 296, 310, 314 design and, 385-86
Tiemann, Walter, 152 Typefoundry Amsterdam, 45, 304-5,
Tiffany Uprig~t type, 357 323
Time-Life Books, 261 Type metal, 389
Times, The (London), 270,272, 274 Type molds, 384-, 396
Times New Roman type, 271, 272; Typographia (Hansard), 187, 313-14
American ~ of, 274-76; as book Typographic Advertiser, The
type, 274, 275; origin and (periodical), 177
development of, 273--74; Plantin Typographical Printing Suifaces
type and, 143 (Legros/Grant), 271
Times Roman type, 252, 293 Typographische Gestaltung
Tom Sawyer (Twain), Pynson (Tschichold), 153-54
Printers (1930) edition of, 262--04, Typo Script type, 36o, 365
268 Typo Upright type, 357,365
Torino type, 206
Tory, Geoffroy, 132 Ullman, Berthold Louis, 354
Trafton, Howard, 363 Ultra Bodoni type, 206, 208, 340
Trafton Scriptitype, 363, 369 Uncial manuscript sty.le, 35-37, 37
Transitional types, 8 Underground type, 337-39, 339
Trattatello in Lande di Dante Union Pearl type, 370,373
(Boccaccio),1Io6 United Airlines, 262
Trissino, Giangiorgo, 91 Universal Penman (Bickham), 358
Troy type, 21 Universal type, 339
Trump, Georg; 319, 356 Univers type, 303-4, 303
Trump Gravure type, 378 Unziale type, 38, 4-0
Tschichold, Jan: biography of, 152- Updike, Daniel Berkeley, 63, 75, 91,
53; drawing technique of, 153, 137, 262; on Arrighi type, 86; on
155; Penguin paperback series Baskerville, 188; on Bell type, 222,
redesigned by, 154-55 224; on Bodoni's two periods, 200;
Twentieth Century type, 347,348 on .Bulmer type, 215; and Caslon
Typecasting m~hine. See Pivotal type, 158; on Centaur type, 72; on
Typecasting Machine, Wicks Cloister Old Style type, 61;
Rotary Typ~caster Copperplate type used by, 222;
Type catalogues, 312 correspondence with Rogers of,
Type designers, 381-2 67; on decorated types, 377; on
Type Designs: Their History and Egyptian type, 316-17; on
Dmlopment ( Johnson), 160 Fournier's ornamented letters,
Type family cohcepc, 72 371; Janson type and, 166, 169; on
Typefounding: ;computerization of, newspaper types, 278; on the
399-403, 4-00, 4-01; historical origin of italics, 89; and Oxford
development' of, 385-86; type, 238; Printing Types by, 61,
industrialization of, 384-398; 72, 75, 86, 158, 160, 169, 238, 239,
matrix striking in, 388; steps 278, 316-12, 330, 371, 377; on
in the process, 386-88; sans-serif types, 330; and Times
technological advances in, 8-9, New Roman type, 274

427
Vale type, 50 Wedding Text type, 28, J4
Van Dyck, Christoffel, 385 Wells College, 35, 40
Vatican Library, 124 Western Type Foundry, 68,261
Venus type, 298, 299-300, 301, 302, Wheeler, Monroe, 329
302 White, Elihu, 233
Verard, Antoine, 23 Whittingham, Charles, 175, 215;
Verard Textura type, 23-24 Diary ofLady Willoughby produced
Vicentino, Ludovico. See Arrighi, by, 175, 176
Ludovico degli Wicks Rotary Typecaster, 390
Vicenza type, 87 Wiebking, Robert, 67, 71
Village Letter Foundry, 13, n7 Wilhelm Klingsporschrift, 31
Village Press, n3, 246 Wilke, M., 363
Village type, 50 William, Henry, 175
Virgil of Aldus, 6o, 86 Wilson, Alexander, 102, 194, 231, 244
Virtuosa type, 363-65, 36+ Winchester type, 261. See also
Vogue (periodical), 177-78, 344 Cheltenham type
Vogue type, 344 Wolf, Rudolf, 318-19
Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Wolff, Kun, 99
Maundevile, Kt., The, 29-32 Wolpe, Benhold, 335
Volta type, 321 Woman's Home Companion
Voskins, Dirk, 165, 386 (periodical), 274
Worde, Wynkyn de, 23
Walbaum, Justus Erich, 202-5 Word processing, 8
Walden (Thoreau), Heritage Press World, The (newspaper), 218
(1939) edition of, 262 Wove paper, 187-88
Walker, Sir Emery, 49, 50, 65 Writing and Illuminating and
Warde, Beatrice Becker [pseud. Paul Lettering ( Johnston), 92, 122, 337
Beaujon), 92, 145; on Caslon Wroth, Lawrence C., 228
type's reputation, 169; on
Garamond types, 137-38, 149; Yale University Press, 169, 228
"The Garamond Types" by, 149; Youthline Script type, 36o
on Jones' Granjon type, 150;
Linotype matrix sketch by, 391; Zainer, Gunther, 21
Monotype matrix sketch by, 392; Zapf, Hermann, 120-28, 128; adapta-
"On the Choice of Typefaces" by, tion of types to varied printing
169; punchcutting machine.sketch processes by, 123; calligraphy of,
by, 394; on Roman No. 1 type, m, 122; Goudy and, 122;
231 International Typeface Corp. and,
Warde, Frederic, 71-72, 95-97, 99, 128; Janson types redesigned _by, 166;
102 plagiarism of, 126-27; sources
Wardrop, James, 89, 124 of twentieth century sans-serif
Watts, Stevens L., 242, 295; on letter and, 327-28
Cheltenham type, 255 Zell, Ulrich, 21
Way to Keep Him, The, 218 Zetr~:91JC, l02-5, IOJ, Io6
W. Bulmer & Company. See
Shakspeare Printing Office
Wechel, Christian, 132