A History of the Old English Letter Foundries: with Notes, Historical and Bibliographical, on the Rise and Progress of English Typography.Reed, Talbot Baines
History
A History of the Old English Letter Foundries: with Notes, Historical and Bibliographical, on the Rise and Progress of English Typography.
Reed, Talbot Baines
Printing -- England -- History; Type and type-founding -- England -- History
_Proscription._―
20-line to 4-line.[499] [Caslon II]
SEPTENTRIONALS.
_Gothic._―
Pica. [Caslon I]
_Anglo-Saxon._―
English. [Caslon II]
Pica.[500] [Caslon I]
_Anglo-Saxon._―
Long Primer.[500] [Caslon I]
Brevier. [Caslon II]
_English._―
Double Pica. [Caslon II]
Great Primer. [Caslon II]
English. [Head]-[Mitchell]
English Modern.[501] [Caslon II]
Pica.[501] [Caslon II]
Long Primer. [Caslon II]
Brevier. [Caslon I]
2-line Great Primer. [Caslon II]
Small Pica.[502] [Caslon II]
MUSIC.―
Round Head. [Caslon II]
FLOWERS and the rest of the Apparatus.
Caslon II died in 1778, aged 58, and was buried in the family vault at
St. Luke’s, the following line being added to his father’s inscription:
Also W. Caslon, Esq. (son of the above) ob. 17 Aug., 1778, ætat.
58 years.
Of him, too, an excellent oil portrait is preserved at Chiswell
Street. He had married a Miss Elizabeth Cartlitch,[503] a lady of
beauty, understanding, and fortune, who, during the latter years of
her husband’s life, had taken an active share in the management of the
foundry.
Mr. Caslon dying intestate, his property was divided equally
between his widow and her two sons, William and Henry, the chief
superintendence of the business devolving on William Caslon III, at
that time quite a young man. The chief event of the new _régime_ was
the issue of the admirable Specimen Book of 1785, a work which, for its
completeness and excellent execution, has received high approbation.
It consists of sixty sheets, twenty-one of which are devoted to Romans
and Italics, ten to “learned” letter[504] and Blacks, two to Music,
two to {249} Script, and no fewer than twenty-six to flowers arranged
in artistic combinations and designs. The volume is dedicated to King
George III, Mr. Caslon assuming the title allowed a century earlier to
Nicholas Nicholls, of “Letter Founder to His Majesty.”
The “Address to the Public,” which prefaces this Specimen, naturally
lays claim on behalf of the Caslon Foundry to the merit of having
rescued the type trade in England from the hands of foreigners. But it
also suggests, by the somewhat acrid tone in which it refers to its
“opponents,” that the competition of the newly-established foundries
of Cottrell, Fry, Wilson, and Jackson was already beginning to tell on
the temper of the third of the Caslons, who evidently did not regard
as flattery the avowed imitation of the Caslon models by some of his
rivals.[505]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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