Here are a few san serif typefaces, with a focus on Curwen type from The Curwen Press Miscellany, edited by Curwen Press typographer Oliver Simon (1895-1956) and published in London for the Curwen Press by the venerable Jewish publishing house Soncino Press in a limited edition of 275 copies in 1931.
San serif types made their first appearance in England in the early 19th century when William Caslon IV cast the first san serif type for the Latin alphabet. But san serif types really came of age in the 20th century, first with Edward Johnston's typeface for the London Underground (1916). Eric Gill designed Gill Sans ten years later in 1926 and Rudolf Koch created Kabel (displayed here as Cable) in 1927. Harold Curwen, a student of Johnston and Gill, designed the Curwen Sans alphabet in 1912, which was revised and cut as type in 1928 exclusively for the Curwen Press. A lowercase was added for the 24pt size and cast in 1931.
Our copy The Curwen Press Miscellany is a gift from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick (1946-2022).
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In 1999, anachronistic things were found at some ruins in France, including a lense from a pair of modern glasses and a note written in modern English claiming to be from Professor Edward Johnston. It was learned that a company called ITC used technology to send Professor Johnston back to France to the year 1357. A team of researchers went back in time to look for him. (Timeline, Bk)
One of our most beautiful Doves Press titles--and a gift from the late Jack Walsdorf--is this two-volume Men and Women, by Robert Browning published in 1908. Notable about this set is that its Doves Bindery binding, but most spectacular is the unique flourishing by hand throughout each volume after publication by the father of modern calligraphy, Edward Johnston (1872-1944)...
This week we present a few plates from the portfolio Manuscript & Inscription Letters for Schools & Classes & for the Use of Craftsmen by Edward Johnston (1872-1944) and Eric Gill (1882-1940), two of the most celebrated and influential calligraphers and type designers of the early 20th century. Originally published in 1909, our copy is the fifth printing of 1922 published in London by John Hogg. It was intended as a working supplement to Johnston's highly influential 1906 work Writing & Illuminating & Lettering, also published by John Hogg.
Gill is the English sculptor, stonecutter, type designer, and printmaker most noted for his Gill Sans typeface and the proprietary typeface he designed for the Golden Cockerel Press. This publication appears to be Gill’s first. Johnston, remembered most popularly for his type design for the London Underground, is arguably the most influential calligrapher of the 20th century. Among his students who later became well-known in their own right were Anna Simons, Graily Hewitt, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, Percy Smith, Florence Kingsford, Dorothy Bishop Mahoney, and of course, Eric Gill. Johnston taught at the Royal College of Art in London from 1901 until his death. Johnston’s student Irene Wellington succeeded him at the Royal College of Art in 1944, and through that position she in turn influenced another generation of calligraphers and illuminators.
The great British designer and calligrapher Edward Johnston is principally remembered for two things: almost single-handedly reviving calligraphy as an art form in the 20th century and designing the famous sans-serif Johnston typeface that was used throughout the London Underground system from 1916 until it was redesigned in the 1980s by Banks & Miles.
Frank Pick, the Commercial Manager of London Underground Railway, commissioned a “block letter” alphabet from Edward Johnston in 1916. It is thought to be the first modern sans serif typeface, preceding the Erbar-Grotesk of Jakob Erbar (1922), Paul Renner’s Futura (1927), Rudolf Koch’s Kabel (1927), and Eric Gill’s Gill Sans (1928). Johnston’s distinctive font was actively used by London Transport (LT) for half a century, but began to fall into disuse by the 1970s until its revival in modified form for digital reproduction in the 1980s.
In designing the font, Johnston did not follow centuries-old typographical conventions. The design was originally intended for use in lithographic tracing sheets, and only became metal and wood typefaces in the 1920s. The design’s unconventionality created some spacing challenges when transformed into solid type. Colin Banks, the co-founder with John Miles of Banks & Miles in 1958 which conducted the digital redesign, writes:
Johnston was curiously unaware or willfully indifferent to those five hundred years of typographical experience. The main principle of his block letter was that the thickness of strokes in the letterforms should be absolutely consistent throughout each fount and that is the way he drew them. . . . [He] was determined on his dogma of keeping all stroke thicknesses precisely the same, irrespective of whether they were horizontal, vertical or changing from one to the other, or of how dense or constricted were the shapes that these strokes encompassed. . . . [making for] some very uncomfortable letters. . . .
Johnston realized this problem only later, and as the London Transport’s special sans lettering became predominately used in wood, Johnston applied himself to the problem, producing a table of spaces for LT’s printers to follow.
The specimens shown here were letterpress printed in 1995 by the Libanus Press using Johnston’s Sans wood type from the London Transport Museum on Aquarelle Arches paper, and inserted into Colin Banks’s article “Edward Johnston and Letter Spacing” in Matrix 15 (1995), published in England by John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press. Our copies of Matrix are donations from our friend and benefactor Jerry Buff.
