Today we present some fancy Caslon capitals, borders, and ornaments from The Manual of Linotype Typography, printed by the Plimpton Press for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923. William Caslon (1692-1766) famously introduced the first superior British Roman font in his 1734 specimen sheet. Various iterations of the Caslon typefounding house persisted until the 1930s when it was acquired by Stephenson Blake, but the Caslon Roman typeface remains the classic British font.
This Friday we turn once again to our recent donation from the estate of artist and book collector Dennis Bayuzick with an edition of Nataniel Hawthorne's 1837 short story from Twice-Told Tales, Sights from a Steeple, printed here by Ronald Keller in 1988 at his Red Angel Press in Bremen, Maine, with an original 38 x 18-inch color wood engraving by Keller, printed in an edition of 100 copies signed by the artist/printer.
The engraving sits folded above the text, but can unfold and surround the text when opened. Hawthorne writes as an observer sitting in his lofty perch of a steeple in a New England seaport, presumably Salem, where he describes the surrounding countryside, distant sea, and gathering storm clouds. The text was printed in hand-set Plantin type, with Caslon titling, on Frankfurt paper, with the wood engraving printed in green, blue, and black on Sekishu paper.
View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.
This year marks the 300th anniversary of James Franklin’s truly independent-minded newspaper The New-England Courant, employing his younger brother Benjamin as an apprentice, and to which the 16-year-old Ben clandestinely wrote letters in the persona of "Silence Dogood," a middle-aged widow. These letters also had an independent streak, which did not sit well with James when he discovered it was all a ruse, as he was already in a lot of hot water with the government over his challenging periodical. In 1723, Benjamin ran away to Philadelphia, and a year later traveled to London to continue training as a printer. It was here that Franklin became interested in the art of typefounding. Most types being used at the time in both England and the Colonies were of Dutch origin, as England’s typefounding industry was meager and sub-par, and there were no type founders in America at all.
The great English type designer William Caslon, who would alter Britain’s typographic landscape, was just beginning his career at this time, and Franklin may have been familiar with Caslon’s work, as Franklin’s English employer James Watts partially funded Caslon’s enterprise. Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1726 to start his own printing house, for which he imported English-made (mainly those from the foundry of Thomas James) and Dutch types. Two years after Franklin launched his Poor Richard’s Almanack, William Caslon published his famous specimen sheet in 1734. In 1737, Franklin introduced Caslon typefaces in his Pennsylvania Gazette, beginning a trend in American printing that established Caslon fonts as the typeface of America.
Throughout his career, Franklin corresponded with the major type designers of his day: Baskerville, Caslon, Fournier, Didot, and Bodoni. He was a great champion of Baskerville and his types, but it was mainly Caslon that Franklin used in his printed works. Type foundries would not be established in America until the late 1760s or early 1770s. Therefore, because of the expense and difficulty of importing type, Franklin and his American contemporaries would continue to print with the European types they already had even after they were worn, chipped, and broken. The popular American conception of Caslon derives from these worn faces, and some modern re-designs of “Caslon Old Style” bear the hallmarks of these overused types. We jokingly call these fonts “Pirate Type.” The P22 Type Foundry of digital type, for example, recently issued Franklin Caslon designed directly from Franklin’s publications, and has a beautifully worn quality about it.
Examples of Benjamin Franklin’s use of Caslon type, as well as some of its wear and spotty printing, can be seen in our copy of Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1751 (the Almanack was published continually from 1732 to 1758), authored under Franklin’s pseudonym "Richard Saunders," and printed and sold in Philadelphia by Franklin and his business partner David Hall in 1750.
