Back to the shop!

After a lengthy drive to the Wayzgoose, committing typographic excess, I'm back to my little (typograhic) composing room. I laid away three fonts today, and a fourth yesterday. Perhaps some examples are in order.

Ransome Initials 

Missal Initials

 Pencraft Initials (BB&S), name courtesy of John Horn
from the Letpress Discussion List

These aren't the only ones: these were some used faces I purchased. I also have five brand-new fonts to put away. Typographic excess wasn't hyperbole!

Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, back at the Type Addiction

I found a single piece of wood type, a "sort," at the Printers' Fair in Los Angeles (actually, there are a couple of others, but this one is the problem child). (Event held at the International Printing Museum, Carson, California)

After years of perusing type catelogs I thought it looked familiar. I needed a classy M for the occasional printing I do for myself. When I got home, I eagerly thumbed through a couple of type books, and it isn't there! What is it?

Looks most like something in Dan X. Solo's Solotype Catelog. On page 44, in the left column, is a font he called "Harlech." The M in Menu looks only kind of like my M, as you can tell.

And now, since I am posting this on Letpress, the granddaddy of the Letterpress discussion lists, I hope to be able to post a sequel to this, giving the font my nice M sort comes from.

Another Font ID

Several years ago I bought out a hobby shop which was long disused. It had not been well-kept, and it has taken me this long to begin taking a closer look at what was in the cases.

One case was labeled "Antique Egyptian Shaded," but I looked more closely at it while cleaning up today. Oh my-- it is an old face, and the pinmark tells me it's from Johnson typefoundry in Philadelphia. I'm posting the photo so my listward friends can see it, and determine if the name on the case was correct. I don't have a Johnson specimen book to check it against.

Stay tuned. Under all that dirt, the font is in pretty good shape.

CLICK TO BIGGIFY (and hopefully see the entire font!)


And the rest of THIS story, courtesy of Letpress and Steve Saxe:

Your type is Radiant No. 1, designed by Herman Ihlenburg, patented 18 July 1876 for MacKellar Smiths & Jordan. (I'm happy to say that it's in my new book, Loy's  "Nineteenth-Century American Designers and Engravers of Type".) [ SHAMELESS PLUG: $59.95, Oak Knoll Press, with 800 high-resolution scans of typefaces pictorial borders.]   It's very similar to Condensed Ray Shaded, the Bruce foundry's competing face. . It's not an Antique or Egyptian - no slab serifs, they are bracketed.

After the death of Lawrence Johnson, the new owners, who had been his former employees, continued to call the new company ( MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan) "The Johnson Foundry" out of affection for their former employer. This type was designed well after the new owners were in place, from 1868 on.