#hadriano

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Typography Tuesday

Last #Feathursday we posted a folded broadside featuring nursery rhymes and wood engravings by Enid Marx from a collection of forty broadsides entitled Forty Sheets to the Wind, printed by Graham Moss and Kathy Whalen in 1999 to showcase the enormous collection of typefaces at their Incline Press in Oldham, England. The portfolio is part of a set of 150 copies that also includes a letterpress-printed introductory booklet.

Today we present ten more typographic broadsides from this collection. Here is some commentary on each broadside from the booklet, from top to bottom:

Forty Sheets to the WInd: “Focusing on bookwork we have little use for wood type as even the smallest sizes then to be too large for our use. . . . But somehow a few cases have slipped in and stayed, The two colour face is above a line of Cheltenham . . . .”

Beatrice Warde. Verses Written to the Sound of Fire Engines: The line drawing of Beatrice Warde is by Eric Gill, and is printed from a zinc plate. The hair color is produced by pochoir. Gill also designed the Perpetua type that the verses are set in .  

New games of cards: printed in 24 pt. italic and 14 pt. roman Weiss as a keepsake for the International Playing-Card Society Convention.

Hung Out to Dry: chiefly printed in Goudy Old Style, 18 pt. roman and italic with a little 14 pt. bold. The display face is Castellar 30 pt., surrounded by an illustration by Philip Woollard printed from  a zinc plate.

Little Fishes: printed using 36 pt. Centaur roman, with a line of 12 pt at the foot, designed by Bruce Rogers, and Frederic Warde’s Arrighi italic. The wood engraving is by Anna Ravenscroft.

Spirit of Joy: The caption line is set in Fry’s Ornamented from the Stephenson Blake foundry, in 36 and 30 pt.; the rest is in 24 pt Fry’s Baskerville with some Monotype Baskerville italic, printed on Fabriano Rosapina. The drawing is by Claud Lovat Fraser with pochior coloring.

Some Papers Are Not Used: 24 pt Hadriano Stone Cut and 12 pt Hadriano designed by Frederic Goudy printed on Fabriano Ingres paper over a course handmade paper from La Papeterie St-Armand in Montreal.

Sonnet Thirty: 18 pt Monotype Garamond italic with Stephenson Blake borders on handmade paper from Griffin Mill.

The Fist: 18 pt Scotch type printed on Fabriano Ingres. The large manicle or “fist” at the bottom is a wood cut from Delittle of York.

I Like Discipline: 30 pt. Monotype Bembo and 12 pt Monotype Bembo italic on Fabriano Artistico. The circular decorative borders were made of four pieces designed for Monotype by David Bethel, lined with some Linotype fleurons.

Our copy of Forty Sheets to the Wind is a gift from our friend Jerry Buff.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

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Lanston Type Company

The Lanston Monotype Company was founded in Philadelphia at the end of the nineteenth century by Tolbert Lanston. Later refinements led to the Monotype casting machine and the emergence of the Lanston Monotype Company as one of the most renowned type supply companies in the world. The Monotype caster was revolutionary and along with other automated typesetting machines helped to usher in a new age of printing technology. 

In the late 1800s, Tolbert Lanston licensed his technology to an English sister company and became a major international force, competing with the Mergenthaler company, whose “Linotype” was a slightly different approach to the same problem. 

Lanston Monotype grew rapidly with America’s pre-eminent type designer Frederic Goudy as art director from 1920 to 1947. 

The Philadelphia-based company eventually parted ways with its English counterpart. The thriving English Monotype became simply known as Monotype. By contrast Lanston went through mixed fortunes and lost ground to Mergenthaler. Customers were upset, and the firm was sold on several times until American Type Founders bought it in 1969.

In November 2004 P22 type foundry of Buffalo, NY acquired Lanston Type. P22 studios will re-master Lanston’s fonts, including the classic designs of Frederic Goudy and Sol Hess.

website - myfonts

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