Looking Back
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRINTING.
E.C. Bigmore (1838–1889), C.W.H. Wyman (1832–1909). London: Bernard Quaritch, 1880. Octavo.
Though titled “A Bibliography of Printing,” and indeed the main text is an alphabetical listing of books and journals pertaining to the subject, this volume is far more than that, since most entries are supplemented by substantial and informative commentaries. The commentaries not only flesh out details, but also express sound opinions about the contents. In three volumes totaling almost a thousand pages, A Bibliography of Printing has become a key resource for the study of the art.
LENDER: The Grolier Club
TYPOGRAPHIA.
Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833). London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1825. Octavo.
Hansard’s manual is divided into two parts: historical (over 400 pages) and practical (over 500 pages). The large tome is a thorough investigation of the craft of printing from both angles, drawn to some extent from earlier works such as Stower’s Printer’s Grammar and Rowe Mores’ work on the English typefounders. Then-modern technologies such as stereotyping and lithography are covered in this comprehensive volume.
Hansard was not hesitant to express his opinions: he condemns modern types with very fine serifs (such as Bodoni and Didot), and praises (perhaps too much?) George Clymer’s Columbian Press.
LENDER: The Grolier Club
SPECIMEN OF OLD-STYLE TYPES.
Alexander Phemister (1829–1894). London: Miller & Richard, c. 1868. Octavo.
In England, the vogue for modern neo-classical types in the manner of Didot and Bodoni was followed by a revival of old-style types, as represented by the work of William Caslon, c. 1844. A couple of decades later, Alexander Phemister cut a series that was even more regular than other neo-classical types, while incorporating some old-style characteristics, such as a sloped axis to the shading of some (though not all) round letters and bracketed serifs. Thus Phemister could be said to have developed a new, hybrid typeface style.
Also included among the types shown are examples in the new sans serif and slab serif styles.
PROVENANCE: The American Type Founders (ATF) library; later Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library
TYPOGRAPHIA, OR THE PRINTER’S INSTRUCTOR.
John Johnson (1777–1848). London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Greene, 1824. Two volumes, issued in octavo, duodecimo and sixteenmo formats.
In 1817, Johnson moved to London, where he set up shop on his own and began work on his nearly 1300-page history and manual of printing, Typographia. The first volume is mainly historical, while the second is devoted to practical information for the practicing printer, along the lines of Moxon and Fertel.
Typographia is notable not only for its length, but also for the care devoted to its composition in an extremely small type. In the larger edition each page is surrounded by an elaborate border made of hundreds of metal type ornaments, while a simple two-line border is used for the smaller issues.
PROVENANCE: Antiquarian bookseller Colin Franklin; later David R. Godine
THE BIOGRAPHY AND TYPOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CAXTON.
William Blades (1824–1890). London: Trübner & Co., 1877. Octavo.
William Caxton was England’s first printer, and therefore of great importance in the history of typography. A successful merchant and diplomat, Caxton began his work as a printer in Bruges in 1473, after being somewhat involved with a printing operation in Cologne in 1471-72. In 1476 Caxton brought the skills he had learned on the Continent to London, where he set up a press in Westminster Abbey.
A couple of Caxton’s types were not very elegant, but they did possess a crude charm. However, his second type is a fine bastarda.
LENDER: Jerry Kelly
A HISTORY OF THE OLD ENGLISH LETTER FOUNDRIES.
Talbot Baines Reed (1852–1893). London: Elliot Stock, 1887. Quarto.
Reed was manager of the Fann Street Foundry in London. He is best remembered not for his work as a typefounder, but rather for his in-depth history of British type founding, from the time of the first printers up until 1830. Even though an extensive amount of research has been done since A History of the Old English Letter Foundries was first published almost a century and a half ago, the information contained therein has for the most part not been superseded. Chapters on Caslon, Baskerville, Martin and others relate directly to types still in use today, in their digital incarnations.
PROVENANCE: Inscribed by the author to the Grolier Club
SPECIMENS OF CHROMATIC WOOD TYPE, BORDERS, ETC.
William H. Page & Co. Greenville, Connecticut: Wm. H. Page & Co., 1874.
One of the most unusual byways in the field of typography was the development of wood type in the nineteenth century. As early as the fifteenth century titles and initials were cut in wood, but only in the nineteenth century were fonts of individual letters meant to be assembled to produce words produced in wood.
Since these wood types were meant to attract attention, color printing was often involved. Page boasted of manufacturing seven-eighths of the wood type used in the United States. A group of wood type revivals was issued by Adobe Systems in the late 1980s.
PROVENANCE: The American Type Founders (ATF) library; later Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library
JACOBUS DE VORAGINE / THE GOLDEN LEGEND.
William Morris (1834–1896). Hammersmith: The Kelmscott Press, 1892. Quarto.
In Morris’ time, books were printed in thin, spindly perversions of Bodoni and Didot’s modern style fonts. Such types were very weak in comparison to the work of the early printers, which Morris admired. After seeing projected enlargements of the pages of Gutenberg, Jenson, Zainer and others in a slide lecture given by Emery Walker, Morris decided to start his own press, which he named the Kelmscott Press, in order to print books in the manner he admired.
The Golden type was an amalgam of the work of Jenson and Jacobus Rubeus, as seen through Morris’ mediaevalist eyes.
LENDER: Jerry Kelly
J.W. MACKAIL / WILLIAM MORRIS.
Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840–1922), Emery Walker (1851–1933). London: Doves Press, 1901. Octavo.
Cobden-Sanderson was trained as a bookbinder. He would revitalize that art in the late nineteenth century, much as William Morris revitalized the art of fine printing a decade earlier. Emery Walker was a printer and photoengraver who was Morris’ consultant at the Kelmscott Press.
It should come as no surprise that Walker and Cobden-Sanderson became partners during the wave of the English private press movement. The result of their partnership, the Doves Press, was decidedly different from Kelmscott: for Morris decoration and illustration were a key element of “the book beautiful.” At the Doves Press, hand-drawn initials and titles were the only ornament.
PROVENANCE: Emery Walker’s copy, one of fifteen printed on vellum; later Jerry Kelly
NOTES ON A CENTURY OF TYPOGRAPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD.
Horace Hart (1840–1916). 1693–1794, Oxford: Printed at the University Press, 1900. Folio.
The Oxford University Press is probably the oldest continuously operating publisher in the world, with origins dating back to 1633. Over the centuries the Press accumulated a large amount of typographic material from an extremely wide assortment of sources. Notably, when Bishop John Fell became the head of the operation in 1672, he saw the need to expand and improve upon the types available at Oxford.
By the time Horace Hart became controller of the press in 1883, these resources were something of a disorganized mess. Hart took on the task of cataloguing and organizing this disparate material.
PROVENANCE: Inscribed by the author to the Grolier Club
THE MONOTYPE RECORDER.
Beatrice Warde (1900–1969), Editor, and others. London: The Monotype Corporation, 1902–1970 (original series). Quarto.
Gutenberg’s method for producing type and printing texts remained remarkably unchanged for almost five centuries, but in the late nineteenth century several developments made for more efficient production of type and printed matter. A tremendously important advance was the invention of the Linotype machine. A nearly contemporary development (but a wholly different system) was the Monotype machine invented by Tolbert Lanston.
To promote their machines and typeface designs, the company issued a periodical called The Monotype Recorder. After 1922 the journal took on greater gravitas under the editorial direction of Stanley Morison, who was succeeded in that position by Beatrice Warde in 1927. Warde, one of the few women in the twentieth-century type world, made significant contributions to type scholarship and promotion.
LENDER: Jerry Kelly
THE AMERICAN CHAPBOOK.
Will Bradley (1868–1962). Elizabeth, New Jersey: American Type Founders, September 1904–August 1905. Duodecimo.
Will Bradley had a remarkable and diverse career as a graphic designer. As a matter of fact, he may very well be the first to whom the term “graphic designer” could aptly be applied: not only did Bradley design advertisements, pamphlets, and books, but also typefaces, ornaments, magazines, and even movie titles. His style was eclectic, ranging from art nouveau, somewhat in the vein of Aubrey Beardsley, to arabesque, classical, avant-garde, and even a crude early American look.
Among Bradley’s many clients were the Strathmore Paper Company, Harper & Row Publishers, Ladies’ Home Journal, Hearst Magazines, and American Type Founders, for which Bradley designed a monthly series of small chap books to promote their types and ornaments.
LENDER: Jerry Kelly
FOUNDERIES DE CARACTÈRES ET LEUR MATÉRIEL DANS LES PAYS-BAS DU XVe AU XIXe SIÈCLE.
Charles Enschedé (1855–1919). Haarlem: Joh. Enschedé en Zonen, 1908. Folio.
The Enschedé type foundry in Holland has a distinguished history, dating back to 1703. The company had been owned by the descendants of Johannes Enschedé for many generations, well into the twentieth century.
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the firm, Charles Enschedé, a sixth-generation descendant of the founder of the company, Johannes Enschedé I (1708–1780), compiled a history of typefounding in the Netherlands from its beginnings up to 1900. The text also touches on the very beginnings of the printer’s craft.
LENDER: The Grolier Club
TYPEFOUNDRIES IN THE NETHERLANDS FROM THE FIFTEENTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
Charles Enschedé (1855–1919). Haarlem: Stichting Museum Enschedé, 1978. Folio.
Like the original French edition, the English edition is printed letterpress on a fine mold-made paper in a generous format. It is also handset from foundry type, this time using Jan van Krimpen’s Romanée type instead of the Fleischman fonts employed for the 1908 French text. The book, designed by Bran de Does, is one of the most beautiful productions of its time, and one of the most substantial letterpress books to appear after the 1960s.
LENDER: The Grolier Club
HISTORIC PRINTING TYPES.
Theodore Low De Vinne (1828–1914). New York: The Grolier Club, 1886. Quarto.
Theodore Low De Vinne was a practicing printer who, from humble beginnings, rose to head one of the largest printing companies in New York. In addition to his very significant accomplishments as a printer, De Vinne was also a student of the craft.
In Historic Printing Types, based on a lecture delivered at the Grolier Club on January 25, 1885 (when the Club was less than a year old), De Vinne offers great insight into the evolution of printing types, from the invention of printing to his own time.
De Vinne was one of the nine founders of the Grolier Club, and he printed most of the Club’s early publications.
PROVENANCE: Given to the library of the Grolier Club by the author; one of two copies printed on vellum
TYPOGRAPHICAL PRINTING SURFACES.
Lucien Alphonse Legros (1866–1933), John Cameron Grant (b. 1857). London & New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1916. Octavo.
Typographical Printing Surfaces is one of the first, and still one of the best, scientific analyses of printing types. Coming at the end of the industrial revolution, and a few short decades after key inventions such as the pantographic punchcutting machine, the Linotype machine, and the Monotype machine, the book surveys major developments in the production of printing types.
The authors were both civil engineers, not printers, so they approach the subject with a scientific objectivity that might be lacking in others more closely tied to the printing industry.
PROVENANCE: David R. Godine
MAURICE DE GUÉRIN / THE CENTAUR.
Bruce Rogers (1870–1958). Montague: privately printed, 1915. Quarto.
William Morris had a tremendous influence on typography. Among the currents of Morris’ thinking that succeeding typographers followed was the idea of adapting an early typeface. The great American book designer Bruce Rogers was inspired by Morris to create books employing old typefaces.
Rogers made his first attempt at producing his ideal Jenson-revival type around 1900. Dissatisfied with the result, he began work on a new Jenson-inspired roman. Taking pains to correct the errors he perceived in the earlier font, Rogers created a masterpiece of type design; one which Robert Grabhorn called “the finest roman of them all.”
About a dozen copies of The Centaur (including the one displayed here) were hand-ruled in red.
PROVENANCE: Inscribed by Rogers to the printer of the volume, Carl Purington Rollins; later Jerry Kelly
KALENDERS.
Gebrüder Klingspor. Offenbach-am-Main: Schriftgiesserei Gebrüder Klingspor, 1910–1941. Duodecimo.
One key aspect of a type foundry’s output is the printing of promotional literature. The Klingspor Kalenders, issued annually (with occasional breaks in the series) over the course of more than a quarter century, are among the most charming and varied of this class of printing.
“Kalender” may be a bit misleading in this instance: these bound volumes exhibit a wide variety of typographic styles. In fact, their functionality as calendar pages is made subservient to their use as type specimens.
Gebrüder Klingspor is well known for issuing typefaces designed by Walter Tiemann, Rudolf Koch, and other German type designers. Much of the credit for these calendars belongs to the mostly unheralded typographic designers Ernst Engel (1879–1967) and Max Dorn (1887–1974).
PROVENANCE: Presented by Melbert Cary, importer of Klingspor types into America, to Will Ransom, bibliographer of private presses, some of whom used fonts from Gebr. Klingspor; later Jerry Kelly
PRINTING TYPES: THEIR HISTORY, FORMS, AND USE.
Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860–1941). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1922. Two volumes. Octavo.
Covering four centuries of typographic practice in the Latin alphabet from Germany, France, and Italy, to England, the lowlands, Spain, and the New World, Updike reviews in depth the development of typography from its beginnings to the time of his writing. He delves into a complex subject with clarity, insight, and style.
Updike’s historical chapters are sandwiched between an introduction and conclusion relating the study to contemporary printshop practice. Almost all of the advice provided in those sections are as applicable today as they were a century ago, when Printing Types first appeared in print.
PROVENANCE: Martin Hutner, author of several books and articles on Daniel Berkeley Updike and the Merrymount Press