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Typography Tuesday

The Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, just finished its annual wayzgoose (gathering of printers and designers) this past weekend. This provides a good excuse to showcase some early nineteenth-century British ornamented wood type displayed in MATRIX 7, Winter 1987. The article, “Ornamented Types: The Making of an Edition,” documents the printing of the first complete publication of the twenty-three sets of wood type from the collection of the St. Bride Printing Library. 

The origins of these fonts are unknown, but they were acquired by the Monotype Corporation from the type-founding firm H. W. Caslon & Co. when it closed in 1937. Produced sometime in the first half of the nineteenth century, these alphabet sets were engraved in end-grain wood, and were probably intended not as printing type, but for use as typefounders’ patterns for casting type. Nevertheless, these pattern blocks proved to make good impressions when printed. The photos show the process of their printing at I. M. Imprimit on specially-made Zerkall mould-made paper in an edition of 200 copies.

Matrix 7 was printed by John and Rosalind Randle at the Whittington Press in Andoversford, Goucestershire, in an edition of 960 copies. Ours is one of 850 copies bound by Smith Settle & Co. in patterned paper designed for the Curwen Press by Enid Marx.  

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