Type bodies compared

Pica has survived as a familiar unit of measurement, although it is not what it was. (In digital terms it is 4.236 mm, or 12 points of 1/72 inch or 0.353 mm.) But what about Nonpareil, or Brevier, or Great Primer? Or Gros Parangon and Petit Romain? What exactly were they?

Several of the works that deal with the history of type, including those by authorities like H. D. L. Vervliet, Harry Carter and Philip Gaskell, print tables of ‘typical’ or ‘average’ numerical values for these names which are useful for giving a general notion of their size. But, disconcertingly, an average value may not fit any specific example. As Harry Carter once wrote, ‘Nonpareils and Picas varied: there were local traditions about them’.

What were these traditions? The purpose of the table above (click on it to view it) is to try to begin to discover some of them. It aims to say how big the named sizes were in different places. How Caslon’s Pica differed from Moxon’s. And how Fournier’s Cicéro related to Plantin’s Mediane. I made my measurements directly from original type specimens, and the result, however approximate, is at least drawn from real life, and is not a homogenized average quantity.

The traditional names for type sizes, like Cicéro, began to appear in France during the 16th century, when they were used in the bills submitted by punchcutters to their clients and in lists of printers’ stock. No doubt some names like Cicéro and St Augustin were originally a reference to the type used in specific editions of these writers, though claims that have been made to be able to identify them are not convincing. Other names, like Brevier in French and English and probably Pica in English, refer to the types commonly used in certain liturgical works. And there is a whole series of names for the smallest types of all, which sometimes have winsome names like Nonpareil (meaning ‘nonesuch’ or ‘incomparable’), Robijn (Ruby), and Diamant (Diamond), or alternatively bear the names of cities where they were made, beginning with Sédanoise (Jannon), and including Parisienne (which was already used in the 17th century and is named in Truchet’s document shown below), Parmigianina (Bodoni), and – in the 19th century – Milanina (by the Milanese punchcutter Wilmant).

But how big were they? And did two Nonpareils make a Pica? The answer to that question is, sometimes but not always. The Parisian book trade regulations of 1723 defined the relationships of some of the sizes, but avoided the question of their real measurement.

Named bodies continued in use in different European countries until numerical point systems were generally adopted, but that was not until the later 19th or early 20th centuries. One reason for having this information is that historical types were made to fit the bodies used in the foundry that originally cast them, and when they were later cast from original matrices on bodies based on one or other of the ‘point systems’, which in the smaller sizes have relatively crude arithmetical increments, they often look different. That is something it is useful to be aware of.

This table gives some information about the size of the bodies of the types made in some major foundries before the introduction of such standards. The basic unit is the millimetre. There is one fundamental problem in trying to ascertain the exact size of type by measuring from printed matter of the hand press period. When the paper was damped for printing it expanded. The print was made on the expanded paper, which then shrank as it dried. The size of the print must therefore always be slightly smaller than the type that made it.

In order to counteract this effect, the measured values that are given first in most of the columns are adjusted to show a notional value for the real size of the type by making a rather arbitrary allowance of 1.5 per cent for the shrinkage of the dampened paper when it dried after printing. The measurements that were actually made from the original printed documents are the figures that follow and which appear in square brackets. A rigorously scientific observation of the degree of the shrinkage of damped paper after printing during the hand press period seems never to have made, or at any rate published. Philip Gaskell added a very cautious note on the subject to his New introduction to bibliography (1972), p. 13, noting shrinkage of between 1 and 2.5 per cent, with a more pronounced shrinkage across the chain-lines than along them. My own experiments with old paper roughly agree with his. But there are all kinds of problems involved. Different kinds of papers and degrees of damping would probably give very different results. Some systematic experiments on handmade papers of different periods would be worth making and publishing.

The values given here under the names of Joseph Moxon (which are from his Mechanick exercises, 1683) and John Smith (Printer’s grammar, 1755) are calculated from their lists of names for bodies, in which both authors gave the number of them contained in one foot, how accurately we cannot tell. Since the figures in the two scales do not all correspond, it looks as if Smith did not copy Moxon’s list but gave his own, based on type in current use, perhaps Caslon’s. Moxon’s Pica, for example, is much smaller than Smith’s. Smith’s Pica is not only more or less that of Caslon in London, but as can be seen from this table it is close to the Cicéro of the contemporary typefounder Sanlecque in Paris. Moreover it is also close to the equivalent body of Le Bé in Paris and Berner in Frankfurt am Main, two of the major commercial foundries of the late 16th-century. Moxon’s Pica is similar to Plantin’s Mediane in Antwerp, and may reflect the influence of the Low Countries on British typefounding.

In the column headed ‘US points’ the figures in parentheses or round brackets give the number of US points that are equivalent to the millimetre value that precedes them, based on the established value of 1 US point = 0.351 mm. This measurement is included simply in order to give a familiar standard for the purposes of comparison, but (as mentioned above) for use in modern computer software, the point has been made equivalent to one seventy-second of an inch, or 0.353 mm. For the purposes of this exercise the difference is insignificant.

In the column of the French names for type bodies, the names are followed by the number of ‘typographical points’ assigned to them by Fournier le jeune. Fournier studiously avoided giving an exact measurement for his points and never indicated their values in the specimens of his types. There can be little doubt that his ‘typographical points’ drew on the example set by Sébastien Truchet, member of the Carmelite order, mathematician, hydraulic engineer, and member of the ‘Commission Bignon’ that in 1693 began to plan a ‘Description des Arts et Métiers’ or description of trades. It was also responsible for the new type for the Imprimerie royale, which was first used to print the Médailles sur les principaux événements du règne de Louis le Grand, 1702. In about 1694 Truchet began to plan a series of related type bodies of which the initial unit was a ligne seconde of 0.188 mm, one twelfth of the ligne, which was one twelfth of an inch and thus 1/144 of the official pied de roi of 324.8 mm. One of Truchet’s working documents shows how in measuring different examples of works printed in type called ‘Petit Romain’ or ‘Cicéro’ or ‘St Augustin’, he found two or three or even four different values for these bodies, and by their side he set out his recommended reformed system, the nouvelle proportion à imiter:

Bodies based on Truchet’s system appear to have been used throughout the 18th century by the Imprimerie royale, until a ‘millimetric’ point of 0.4 mm was introduced at the Imprimerie impériale in about 1810 by Firmin Didot. This was effectively the ‘point IN’ of 0.39877 mm that is still used for the metal types of the Imprimerie nationale.

In about 1781 François-Ambroise Didot followed the example of Truchet and made new types with bodies using a unit based on the pied de roi, one sixth of the ligne, or 0.376 mm. The Didot family never used the term ‘point’ – a type on a body of 12 Didot points was designated ‘corps 12’. However eventually the unit that became known as the Didot point was adopted as the common unit of the French and German typefounders, the basis of what was later known as the Cicéro system.

One reason for the variety of the bodies among founders must be that each founder worked independently from all the others and there was no movement towards uniformity. It may have suited some of them to know that the printer who bought a fount could only use it conveniently with another from the same source.

Something to bear in mind in approaching this question is that the setting of standards for the accurate measurement of very small sizes does not appear to have been possible in any technology before the introduction of precise tools, like micrometers, during the 19th century. But this is a subject on which I can find no reliable information, and shall be glad of help. However the lack of such independent standards does not mean that typefounding was not performed to a very level of precision indeed, probably to a greater degree than in any other pre-industrial small-scale technology. It is simply that the dimensions of the body (and also the ‘set’ of the registers of the mould, governing the side bearings of the type) were established by matching samples of the same type that had been kept as a standard and used when a new fount was cast or a mould was refurbished.

I do not claim absolute reliability for these measurements. I hope, though, that they go a little way towards showing some kind of relative picture in an area where one was almost wholly lacking. The measuring was done from time to time on occasions when I had the opportunity of visiting the libraries where the original documents are kept, and I am grateful to those who made them available. Most of the figures are derived from measurements of several lines at a time, and the size of the single body is calculated from this overall figure, which should reduce error. At the same time, by way of a check, single lines were measured with a magnifying glass that incorporated a scale of tenths of a millimetre. Even so, where measurements are made in millimetres to two places of decimals, the first of these figures, and a fortiori the second, must be approximate. Human error must be allowed for. Rulers vary, and so does the rate of the expansion of paper and its shrinkage. Caveat lector.

The table above and its notes were put together as part of a historical study of type bodies that is work in progress. I can think of some improvements to make. It would be worth measuring several copies of the common specimens (Caslon, Fournier, Enschedé) to see what variations there are. But three of the specimens – Berner, Le Bé and Jannon – exist in unique copies in Antwerp, Frankfurt and Paris. So it seemed to me that, since the topic seems never to have been tackled systematically, the table in its present form might be worth publishing on its own.

For more on Truchet’s type bodies, see my article, ‘French academicians and modern typography: designing new types in the 1690s’, Typography papers, 2 (1997), pp. 5–29. And see also my contribution and that of Jacques André in the catalogue of the exhibition at the Musée de l’Imprimerie, Lyon, Le romain du roi: la typographie au service de l’État 1702–2002 (Lyon, 2002), the stock of which is now available from Frits Knuf Antiquarian Books (26 rue des Beguines, 41100 Vendôme, France).

There is quite a large bibliography relating to type bodies, although very little of it addresses the questions that interest me. Perhaps the nearest (and a very useful piece of work it is) is David Shaw, ‘Standardization of type sizes in France in the early sixteenth century’, The Library, 6th ser., vol. 3, no. 4 (December 1981), pp. 330–6. Philip Gaskell’s note on ‘Type sizes in the eighteenth century’ (Studies in bibliography, 5 (1952–3), pp. 147–51), another useful piece based, like Shaw’s, on an extensive knowledge of the books of its period, illustrates the problem with which I began this post: the table he gives ‘is based on measurements taken from ten eighteenth-century specimens by Caslon, Wilson and Fry. The average of these measurements is given, so that the table is unlikely to be completely accurate with regard to the products of any one foundry.’ John Richardson, ‘Correlated type sizes and names for the fifteenth through twentieth century’ (Studies in bibliography, 43 (1990), pp. 251–272), brings together a mass of data – 400 measurements – from publications that are not always wholly reliable. It is a useful reminder of the problems involved.

Like the Index to Smith’s Printer’s grammar (1755) in an earlier post, this table was made in InDesign, converted to a pdf file, and from that to a jpeg. Clicking on it will produce a large image that can be read on screen or printed out. I am afraid that, as in the Smith document, the image quality is not high and the type size is small, but the text and figures do just about seem to be legible. Thanks to the generosity of its makers, I was able to set them in the 8-point size of the G4 font of the Hoefler & Frere-Jones typeface Mercury, which is designed to work in extreme conditions.

These were the specimens measured for the table

Plantin c. 1585
Folio specimen.
Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp. Arch. Varia II.
Facsimile in: Type specimen facsimiles [16–18]: reproductions of Christopher Plantin’s Index sive specimen characterum, 1567, and Folio specimen of c. 1585, together with the Le Bé-Moretus specimen c.1599; with annotations by H. D. L. Vervliet and Harry Carter. London, 1972.

Berner 1592
Conrad Berner, Specimen characterum seu typorum probatissimorum… Frankfurt am Main, 1592.
Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main. Gustav Mori, Schriftprobensammlung, Mappe 1, 19. (Other press marks: Mf 7024a, HM6: Em 6)
Facsimiles in: Gustav Mori, Eine Frankfurter Schriftprobe vom Jahre 1592: Studie zur Geschichte des Frankfurter Schriftgießer-Gewerbes. Frankfurt am Main, 1920. Type specimen facsimiles [1–15]: reproductions of fifteen type specimen sheets issued between the 16th and 18th centuries, accompanied by notes mainly derived from the researches of A. F. Johnson [and others]; general editor, John Dreyfus. London, 1963.

Caslon 1766
A specimen of printing type by William Caslon. London, 1766.
St Bride Library, London. 7518.
Facsimile in: Journal of the Printing Historical Society, 16 (1981/2).

Le Bé c. 1599
Fragmentary specimens sent by Guillaume II Le Bé, Paris, to the Moretus printing office, Antwerp, c. 1599.
Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp. Arch. 153.
Facsimile in: Type specimen facsimiles [16–18]: reproductions of Christopher Plantin’s Index sive specimen characterum, 1567, and Folio specimen of c. 1585, together with the Le Bé-Moretus specimen c. 1599; with annotations by H. D. L. Vervliet and Harry Carter. London, 1972.

Jannon 1621
Espreuue des lettres nouuellement taillez. Sedan, 1621.
Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris. A.15226 (2).
Facsimile in: The 1621 specimen of Jean Jannon, Paris and Sedan : designer and engraver of the caractères de l’Université: edited in facsimile with an introduction by Paul Beaujon. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1927.

Lamesle 1742
Épreuves générales des caracteres qui se trouvent chez Claude Lamesle. Paris, 1742.
St Bride Library, London. 20228.
Facsimile in: The type specimens of Claude Lamesle; a facsimile of the first edition printed at Paris in 1742, with an introduction by A. F. Johnson. Amsterdam, 1965.

Fournier 1764
Les caracteres de l’imprimerie. Par Fournier le jeune. Paris, 1764.
St Bride Library, London. 20666.
The same settings of type were used in vol. 2 of the Manuel typographique, Paris, 1766. Facsimile: Darmstadt, Technische Hochschule, 1995.

Sanlecque 1757
Épreuves des caracteres du fond des Sanlecques. 1757.
Houghton Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts. TypTS 715.57.767.

Enschedé 1768
Proef van letteren welke gegooten worden in de nieuwe Haarlemsche lettergietery van J. Enschedé. Haarlem, 1768.
St Bride Library, London. 20248.
Facsimile in: The Enschedé type specimens of 1768 and 1773: a facsimile with an introduction and notes by John A. Lane. Haarlem: Stichting Museum Enschedé, 1993.

Big brass matrices again: the Enschedé ‘Chalcographia’ type

In the post of March 2007 it was suggested that existing brass matrices for big types could not have been struck with steel punches in so hard a hard metal as brass, but were probably reproductions cast in brass of strikes that had been made in lead with steel punches. Examples that were cited were the ‘large capitals’ of Garamond at the Museum Plantin-Moretus, titling capitals among the ‘Fell types’ at the University Press, Oxford, a titling from the French foundry of Claude Mozet that was acquired by Benjamin Franklin, and the series of two-line capitals of the romain du roi at the Imprimerie nationale in France. The brass matrices for the Garamond titling are accompanied by strikes in lead. In the case of the titling letters of the romain du roi there is a claim from the punchcutter that strikes were made with the steel punches in lead, and that these were used as patterns to cast replicas in brass.

A passing reference was made to a titling type in the museum of Joh. Enschedé en Zonen in Haarlem of which the height of the face measures 16 mm and for which there are ‘matrices’ in brass and lead, and relief ‘punches’, also of brass. Johannes Enschedé acquired them with other materials from the foundry of Jan Roman in 1767, and showed some characters under the heading ‘Chalcographia’ in his specimen of 1768, of which a facsimile was published in 1993. In a note below them Enschedé says, ‘The punches of these types are cut in brass, and struck and cast in leaden matrices, following the practice of the first typefounders.’ He does not refer to the matrices in brass, but there are reasons, given below, for thinking that the types that he shows were not cast from the strikes in lead.



The type can be dated to the middle of the 16th century, when its use in Lyon is documented. It was later used in Frankfurt am Main, and it is shown (with some altered and additional characters) in a specimen of titling capitals from the typefoundry of Johann Erasmus Luther dated 1665. For further details see the introduction and notes by John Lane that accompany the facsimile of 1993. The conclusion of Harry Carter, endorsed by Lane, was that the alphabet can be attributed to Jacques Sabon, originally of Lyon, the former owner of the Luther foundry, who had a German privilege for his method of casting large letters.

In his history of typefounding in the Low Countries published in 1908, Charles Enschedé printed an alphabet cast from the brass matrices. The face of these types was defective, like that of the types shown in 1768, which, despite the note by Johannes Enschedé, were pretty certainly also cast from the same brass matrices. Charles Enschedé added that he had not dared to try to cast from the thin strikes in lead. These were in excellent condition, as they still are, with an unblemished face. He had them copied by electrotyping, which produced good matrices, and he also showed an alphabet cast from these.



The strikes in lead are only 4 mm thick, and the depth of strike of 2 to 3 mm reduces the thickness of the metal still further at the face of the letter: if an attempt had been made to use them as matrices to cast type they would have suffered damage, since the overall thickness of the lead matrix is not much greater than that of the pattern. In the words of a note written by Stan Nelson, ‘the bottom of the lead matrix is very, very thin and impossible to use for casting type. There isn’t enough metal to absorb the heat of molten alloy being poured into the matrix.’ Given the good condition of the lead ‘matrices’, one must conclude that an attempt to cast type in them has never been made.

What then is the purpose of the little brass letters that accompany the matrices. They fit the lead strikes snugly. Are they – as Johannes and Charles Enschedé believed – the original ‘punches’ that were used to drive the impressions in the lead plates? Their thinness and flimsy construction, with completely open counters, makes them seem less than ideally suited to the purpose. Harry Carter thought that they were ‘castings reproducing punches of steel’ (A View of Early Typography, p. 15) . The lead plates were almost certainly made with some kind of punch, for there are impressions showing at the back of some of them.



This is what Charles Enschedé wrote in 1908 (as translated by Harry Carter for his English edition of 1978):

‘We have always shrunk from using the [lead] matrices. … I doubt whether any casts were made from them before their acquisition by Johannes Enschedé; the more so because we found brass reproductions with the originals. It may be that Enschedé or an earlier owner had found means to avoid the risk of damaging these precious relics by casting in them. The brass matrices appear to be castings from clay moulds. The moulding, however, is unskilful; [the illustration] is set in letters cast in the brass facsimiles, and it shows that these matrices are too poor to produce clean casts …’

If brass punches – the present letters or others related to them – were used to make the impressions in lead, the limitations of this method become clear. They could not be used afterwards to ‘clean up’ the cast replicas in brass, as was probably done with the steel punches that accompany the brass matrices at Antwerp, Oxford and Paris. So despite the fact that (notwithstanding the criticism of Charles Enschedé) the casting seems to have been done skilfully enough, it was inherently impossible to achieve a perfect reproduction of the face by this method alone, and the type cast from them suffered accordingly.

The notion that the original steel punches were used to clean up the face of matrices cast in brass has hitherto been guesswork – although in the last post I cited an 18th-century account which indicated that this was the practice when medals with a high relief were struck. Now a source has been found which confirms that this practice was also used by typefounders. In his extensive and well-informed discussion of early typefounding, all of which is well worth reading (Essai sur la typographie, Paris, 1851, col. 607, note 3), Ambroise Firmin-Didot has this passage (the English translation is mine):

‘Fournier le jeune is mistaken when he asserts in his work on the origin and progress of printing, page 20, that ‘matrices have never been cast: they are struck with a steel punch’. In order to assist the striking of very delicate punches, like the capitals of the large ‘ornamented gothic’ cut for our own typefoundry with such remarkable skill by Monsieur de Cornouailles, I had matrices cast in brass after matrices in lead that had been struck with the steel punches. After cleaning them out with care, to accommodate the effect of shrinkage in cooling, I drove the steel punches again into the cast brass matrices obtained in this way.’

If no steel punches were available to clean up the cast brass matrices in the Enschedé collection at Haarlem, this may explain the roughness of their face, and the signs they appear to show of a rather crude attempt to smooth it out. Their visible graininess suggests that, as in the case of the big matrices at the Imprimerie nationale, sand, rather than clay, was used for the moulding.

I am much indebted to the Stichting Museum Enschedé, Haarlem, for permission to make the images shown in this post, and to its curator Johan de Zoete and to Stan Nelson for their advice and help.

Esszet or ß

The German character ß includes the only surviving form of the long s in modern typographical usage. Since its sound is ss, it might be thought to be a ligature made up of ſ and s, to be used at the end of a word or a syllable. But the matter is not nearly so simple. What ever it may look like, it is essentially ſ and z, and the rules for its use have more to do with the sound of associated vowels than with its position. It is still required in Germany and Austria for printing in German with roman types (and if the printing is in gothic types, ſ must also be used). The roman form appears to have been first introduced in the 1660s by a printer in Sulzbach, a place that is commemorated in the name by which its design was later known, and it was reintroduced in the 1820s by the philologist Jacob Grimm, who subsequently rejected it. German printers using roman type did not normally employ ß at all until its use became one of the topics raised in the 1870s in the context of spelling reform, and a movement began that led to a requirement in 1903 for its universal use in German schools. As might be guessed from these dates, its modern history has been bound up with the unity and identity of the German state.

Whether ß is used or not for ss depends on the quality of the vowel that it follows. It is used after a long vowel, as in Straße, street, but not after a short one, as in Gasse, alley. New and wide-ranging spelling rules in Germany, introduced in 1996 and legally required in schools since 2006, have reduced the occasions that require ß. The rules have not met with universal assent. The use of ß died out during the 20th century in German-speaking Switzerland, but its retention has been strongly defended in Germany. Latin Small Letter Sharp S, as ß is known, not only has its place among the glyphs of the ASCII character set (since 1986) and Unicode (U+00DF), but it is accessible on mobile phones. Young Germans (and Swiss and Hungarians) currently use it in their texting as a substitute for ss or sz, regardless of spelling rules, in order to reduce the overall character count of their messages. Moves are currently under way, not for the first time, to introduce a majuscule version.

Since ß is a ligature that is made up of ſ and z it is called by the names of these letters, Esszet, Eszett or Eszet: the spelling is inconsistent because it does not appear generally to be recognized as a real word, but merely the phonetic rendering of the two letters. (Grimm used the term eszet – so spelt – in the foreword to his own dictionary, but there is no headword for it in the body of the work, and it does not appear in some other dictionaries.) It is sometimes also known as scharfes S, or unvoiced letter s. (The expression ‘sharp s’ in the title for the ASCII and Unicode glyph quoted above is of course not an English term but a literal rendering of the German.)

In the historical form of the language known as Old High German, and the subsequent Middle High German, until about 1500, there were two closely related sounds for unvoiced s for which the letters s and z were used. Since z was also used (as it still is) for the sound ‘tz’ (as in Zug, train), the second s-sound was spelt sz. And because the s component did not come at the end of the word or the syllable, it appeared as ſ.



The ſz combination can be seen above in separate letters in the word boſzheit in the Weltgericht, a surviving fragment that was presumably printed by Gutenberg in about 1450, using an early state of the so-called DK type. The ligature ß is used in the name of the printer Peter Schöffer, Petrus Schoiffer de Gernßheim, in this colophon of 1477.



The early history of this combination in both manuscript and type is complex and in need of further investigation, as an essay by Max Bollwage of 1999 indicates. The form of z used with long s does not always correspond with the normal z in writing or type, and may have a different derivation. (See the bibliography at the end of this post.) However, ß is visible in the Fraktur of the early 16th century which became the dominant German national type. Below is a detail from Dürer’s Underweysung der Messung, printed in Nürnberg in 1525 by Hieronymus Andreae, whose Fraktur type was made following patterns drawn by the calligrapher Johann Neudörffer. The Esszet can be seen in lines 1, weyß, 3, auß, and 6, reyß. There are two other points of typographical interest worth noting in this example. The round, or ‘ragged’ r, as it was known in English, that follows letters that are rounded behind like b and o, as in breiten in line 2 and vor in line 3. By the 18th century its use had largely ceased in Germany. Note too that lower case is used to begin nouns, such as strich. In Germany by the end of the 16th century they nearly all began with a capital letter, and by and large they still do.



The widespread confusion that still exists about the nature of ß derives from the fact that a shift in the pronunciation of modern High German had led by the 18th century to the same pronunciation of ss and sz, so that the ß character was now used purely as a visual sign to distinguish the use of the long and short vowel. In the late 18th century the dictionary-maker Johann Christoph Adelung noted the complexity of keeping so many letters for the single s-sound: initial and medial ſ, final s, and ß after the long vowel; and also for double s: medial ſſ, final ſs, but ß following the long form of the vowel. He added that this had led to discontent among teachers: ‘It is certainly true that that having four different ways of writing the sound s has its difficulties and irritations, especially when ß is used not only for the unvoiced sound but also for double s. But nothing better has been suggested in its place.’

Roman type was rarely used for setting the German language before the 19th century, but it does appear in a work printed in Sulzbach in East Bavaria by Abraham Lichtenthaler, who attracted attention to his printing-office by printing Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala denudata (1677, etc) there. The lines above, in a tiny type, apparently of the 16th-century and French in origin, with the addition of W and w and vowels with Umlaut as well as ß, are from the German translation by F. M. van Helmont of Boethius, The consolation of philosophy, printed by Lichtenthaler in 1667. (The preliminary pages and the text are set in Fraktur, but the roman type is used for additional verses which appear throughout the translation.) He left his mark on German typography by introducing in the Boethius a design of ß that would be adapted for use in roman type by reformers in the 19th century and called the Sulzbacher form. His use of this ß is referred to by Uta Stötzner in an article in the journal Signa, no. 9 (2006).

Printers who in Germany who began to flirt with the use of roman type for German texts at the end of the 18th century had no easy answer to the rendering of ß with the new founts. When Goethe’s Römische Carneval was printed by Johann Friedrich Unger in Berlin in 1789 in a roman type by Firmin Didot, long s was not used in the text, following the current practice in France – except, paradoxically, for the words in which ß would have been used, which he printed ſs, using a Didot-style long s which must have been cut for this purpose. The contrast in contemporary attitudes to the use of roman types for works in German is nicely shown in two well-known letters that were written in 1794. The poet Wieland expressed to his publisher Göschen his feelings about the roman types made ‘after Didot’ by Justus Erich Walbaum that were used for his own collected works: ‘I cannot say how much I enjoy the pure beauty of those letters. Each is in its way a Medici Venus.’ Goethe’s mother, Elizabeth, wrote to her son, ‘I am more pleased than I can say that your own works have never seen the light of day in those terrible Latin types. Well, they may have been tolerable in your Roman Carnival, but otherwise do stay German even in your type, I beg you. I was going to subscribe to the works of the good Wieland – but I was put off by the new Fashion, and let it go.’ The wars with Revolutionary and Imperial France helped to damp enthusiasm for the alien types. Mrs Goethe’s dislike of roman and strong attachment to ‘German’ type is evidence of a feeling that was widespread and lasted for a long time.

Nonetheless there was some use of roman types for learned publications during the early years of the 19th century. In many German type specimens at this period the showings of roman and italic types, where they occur, are set in Latin or French. Where German is used, ß is generally set as ſs. However in the specimen of Carl Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1825, the German texts set in the ‘French’ roman and italic types use simply ss, which would become the common practice of German printers.



The second edition of the Deutsche Grammatik of Jacob Grimm (Göttingen, 1822–6), is set in a French-style (but probably German-cut) roman, using not only ſ but also an ß that was presumably made for him, reminiscent of the character used some 160 years earlier by Lichtenthaler. The illustration above is from the second volume, dated 1826. The italic version, shown below, from a headline in the first volume of 1822, seems closer to the cursive ſs character that is discussed later. (In the same work Grimm reverted to the early 16th-century practice of using small letters for all nouns, the beginning of the so-called Kleinschreibung that would have echoes in the 20th century in the poetry of Stefan George and the work of modernist designers. It seems worth noting that Lichtenthaler’s Boethius of 1667 had used small letters to begin most nouns in both the Fraktur and the roman parts of the text, unusually for its date.) Grimm had changed his mind when, with his brother Wilhelm, he began publication of his great German dictionary in 1854. In this work, which is set throughout in roman types, although he repeated his use of small initial letters for nouns he proposed the total rejection of Fraktur types. To distinguish ß, he proposed to go back to the spelling sz, a combination which, as he noted, was philologically correct, currently used in Hungary and Lithuania, and had the advantage that it worked equally well in capitals.



By and large the German printing trade took little notice of Grimm’s proposals. Although most books and newspapers were set in Fraktur type throughout the 19th century, roman type was increasingly being used for scientific and technical books and journals. Capital letters were used for all nouns, and words with ß in Fraktur were spelt in roman with ss, and neither ſs nor sz. The Journal für Buchdruckerkunst, a major printing trade monthly, was set in Fraktur until 1874, when it changed to roman, remarking simply that, ‘we have put on new clothes’. It printed notes of congratulation from readers in Germany and abroad. For some years, advertisers in the journal had used roman type, and ss for ß. Similarly, another printing trade journal, the Archiv für Buchgewerbe, changed to roman in 1886, and again used ss for ß. So far as I can tell this usage reflects the general practice of German printers and typefounders during the larger part of the 19th century, as the use of roman type spread. The typefounders did not make ſ and ß for roman and italic founts, nor for new types like sanserifs, and the printers did not ask for them.

And so things might have remained. But after the making of the new unified German state that began with a customs union and led in 1871, after the defeat of France, to the creation of the German Empire, with its capital city in Berlin, the first of several successive moves was made towards the reform of German spelling and its consistent teaching in German schools. At a conference in Berlin in 1876 a move was made towards the introduction of ß in roman type for the first time. A trade society in Leipzig, the Typographische Gesellschaft, reviewed a series of designs that were submitted for discussion and these were published in 1879, in a report in the Journal für Buchdruckerkunst.



It is was noted that some of them were based on ſz and others on ſs. The pattern that met the greatest support from the typefounders, notably Ferdinand Theinhardt of Berlin, were 1 and 3 at the bottom left, which it was noted were based on the ß introduced by Grimm. Later, presumably from an awareness that the original model was the character used by Lichtenthaler, this became generally known as the ‘Sulzbacher Form’. Here is an early use, in a work on the invention of printing, J. van der Linde, Geschichte der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst, Berlin, 1886. The setting is in one of the ‘old style’ romans known in Germany as ‘Medieval’, of which the design originated in Britain, and exceptionally – or was the practice commoner than we think? – it uses Grimm’s Kleinschreibung or small initial letters for nouns. In this instance the design of the ß, which seems to have been intended for a relatively narrow modern-face type, does not match that of the old style.



In 1903 a pronouncement was made in the name of the association of printers of Germany, Austria and Switzerland that a ß character of the Sulzbacher form, consisting of a ligature of ſ and z, would henceforth be used in roman type. In his essay of 2006, Mark Jamra illustrates the document that was published in a trade journal dated 9 July 1903 (Zeitschrift für Deutschlands Buchdrucker, Steindrucker und gewandte Gewerbe) in which the approved forms of the ‘Sulzbacher’ form of ß were described, with examples, as comprising ‘the so-called lower case long ſ, attached at the head to a z, of which the lower bow ends in a thin or medium-thin line, or a full-point’. The Sulzbacher ß has often been criticised for being ugly and too easily confused with roman capital B and Greek Beta. But it is essentially the model for the ß that has been used in many types ever since, including the Georgia screen font in which some readers will see this text.

Since the use of roman type made a majuscule form at least possible (as it was not in Fraktur, of which the majuscules are rarely used to make words), it was suggested that, since no agreement had been reached concerning its design (and SS was incorrect), SZ would provisionally be used in its place, as in PREUSZEN for Preußen (Prussia). But it was also decided that the typefounders should give their attention to it, perhaps by offering a prize for a design. There was some discussion of possible models in the printing journals, and capital forms do appear in the Kleukens Antiqua of the Bauer foundry (1910), and the Schelter Antiqua of Schelter & Giesecke (1912), shown below. They seem rarely to have been used, and their existence was largely forgotten.



A new type, with a Sulzbacher ß that inclines towards the appearance of a combination of ſ and s, was introduced by the Archiv für Buchgewerbe from the date of its first issue under a new publisher in 1900. It is the Römische Antiqua (1888) of Genzsch & Heyse, designed by H. König:



During the next few years the journal published a number of articles on the subject of ß. A selection is listed at the end of this text. Other designers headed in the opposite direction, making a more explicit combination of s and z. The example below is the Ingeborg Antiqua (1910) of F. W. Kleukens, cast by the Stempel foundry:



And in Koloss (Ludwig & Mayer 1923) by Jakob Erbar, the z comes loose from the s altogether:



Many founders kept closely to the basic Sulzbacher form, which even found its way into the new sanserifs of the late 1920s, some of which were also provided with long s, like Renner’s Futura (Bauer 1927) and Koch’s Kabel (Klingspor 1927), below:



It remains to note how designers eventually subverted what many perceived as the ugliness of the Sulzbacher form, and the oddity of some of the versions that emphasized the z, by changing ß more clearly to a ligature of ſs. To this end a note is needed of the ligatured form of long and short s that had in fact existed in the Italian humanistic cursive since the end of the 15th century, and was included in the chancery cursive.



In his Operina of 1522, above, Arrighi shows it as one of two permissable ligatured forms for ss in the chancery cursive: the other is formed from two long esses.



In his own writing book of about the same date, above, the Venetian writing master Tagliente shows this ligature not only in his cursive but also in his Lettera antiqua tonda, or roman script (neceſsario in line 3).



Two alternative ligatures for ss, ſſ and ſs, are seen in the italic type above, the Parangon italic of the French punchcutter Robert Granjon, a type of which the use was widespread in many countries during the 16th and 17th centuries. The combination of types for long and short s, ſs, is also used together within words in many texts in both roman and italic types in Italy and France during the 16th century, apparently as an alternative to the normal ligature of two long esses which is seen in the example above.

There is a technical matter that needs explaining here, since commentators are often unaware of its relevance. In metal printing types, long s, like f, kerns or overhangs the letter that follows, and if the letter that follows is a tall one, there is likely to be a collision and the kerned part may bend or break. It was for this reason that single ligatured types were eventually made for most of the awkward combinations, like f and i, or ſ and i. Long s followed by short s is a safer combination in type, physically, than two separate long esses.

Nonetheless, the example above in the Granjon Parangon, showing a ligature of two long esses, followed by ligatures for ſi and ſs, all in the same line, is a puzzle. Perhaps there were not enough ſſ ligatures in the case, or perhaps the compositor used the alternative form for the sake of variety. But the lack of ligatures hardly seems to explain the frequent use of the medial and final form together in the middle of words in several 16th-century Italian and French texts set in roman types, such as the example below, from a work printed in Venice in 1571. Note ſteſsi in line 2 and cariſsimi in line 8, but miſſero, with a ligatured form of ſſ, in the first line. (Is the intention possibly to distinguish the voiced ſſ of miſſero from the unvoiced consonants of the other words, in the manner suggested earlier in the century by the spelling reformer Trissino?)



Whatever the explanation, it should be noted that the combination of ſs on a single piece of type is seen only in italic type, presumably on the model of the calligrapher’s ligature, and has not been found in roman type – unless, as seems not unlikely, Lichtenthaler’s ß was indeed an exercise in making an upright form of the existing italic ligature.

In 1940 Jan Tschichold published an essay on ß in which he asserted with his characteristic force and dogmatism that its basis was ſ and s, and that all the suggestions that it was ſ and z had simply been wrong. He repeated the assertion in his Meisterbuch der Schrift (1952), issued later in English as Treasury of alphabets and lettering. Later writers agree that in this instance it was Tschichold himself who was mistaken, but perhaps it was his authority that encouraged more type designers to explore this new model for the roman ß. Hermann Zapf’s Palatino, drawn for Stempel in 1948, is an early example. It has now become familiar in such fonts as Adobe Garamond, in which the italic form is borrowed from the original by Robert Granjon, which had also been a special character made for the Monotype Garamond of 1923. The Sulzbacher form of ß had been made by Monotype for Times New Roman and its other types before the Second World War. Here are examples of setting in the 17th-century ‘Luther Fraktur’ of the Stempel foundry (from a modern adaptation), Times, Linotype’s Palatino, and Adobe Garamond:



It is currently claimed in Germany, among reasons why ß should be preserved, that it distinguishes some different words with different sounds and meanings that would otherwise look the same. It is also said that since some personal names are traditionally spelt with ß, and since legal forms must be filled in using capital letters, there is a need for the majuscule version that once existed but has now been forgotten. Cases are cited in which the discrepancy between the look of a name in minuscules in a birth certificate and in capitals on a form has caused real confusion and bureaucratic obstruction. Here is a problem to which the simple, logical suggestion made by the brothers Grimm in 1854 (use sz) would have had provided an answer. There is an active movement reviving the idea of the addition of majuscule Esszet to the character set, and the latest news indicates that it should shortly have an identity in Unicode. The subject is reviewed in detail in the journal Signa.



In Hungarian the letters sz, as the brothers Grimm noted, are treated as a single consonant with the sound of s. When he returned home and printed in his native Kolozsvár, Nicholas Kis made ligatures for sz, with initial long s, for his own use in both roman and italic. The design illustrates the problems in a roman type of uniting ſ with a broad letter like z, and this ſz ligature never seems to have caught on generally. The example above is from György Haimann, Nicholas Kis (Budapest, 1983). But, as noted on the website Signographie, a ß not unlike that of Lichtenthaler was used for sz in a roman lower case in a Latin–Hungarian–German dictionary in 1782.

Sources

There is still work to do on the origins of the ß. The work of Uta Stötzner on this subject is especially valuable. The essay published in 2006 by Mark Jamra, to which reference is made above, is also a useful and well-informed summary, and so is the entry on Wikipedia. (Search under Eszett, or the character ß.) The German-language version is the most extensive. Belatedly I find, as this link to Typophile Forum shows, that the revival of the debate concerning the majuscule version of ß, which originally arose over century ago in the context of the creation of a German national orthography, was set going some time ago and still continues. My news is thus out of date, and parts of this post are probably redundant. But writing it and correcting it has been an instructive exercise, and I suspect that it may make some useful material publicly accessible. My initial suspicion is confirmed: the use and retention of ß, and consequently its belated insertion into the majuscule character set, is felt in Germany to be bound up with national identity. The feeling is undoubtedly strong, but how widely it is shared is difficult to gauge. In German-speaking Switzerland ß was gradually abandoned over a long period during the 20th century, and there its loss seems hardly to be noticed, let alone regretted.

These are some printed sources:

Uta Stötzner, ‘Die Geschichte des versalen Eszetts’, Signa, Nr. 9 (2006), pp. 21–38.

Herbert Brekle, ‘Zur handschriftlichen und typographischen Geschichte der Buchstabenligatur ß aus gotisch-deutschen und humanistisch-italienischen Kontexten’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 2001, pp. 67–76.

Max Bollwage, ‘Ist das Eszett ein lateinischer Gastarbeiter? Mutmaßungen eines Typografen’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1999, pp. 35–41.

John Flood, ‘Jacob Grimm’s advocacy of roman type’, in ‘Das unsichtbare Band der Sprache’: studies in German language and linguistic history in memory of Leslie Sieffert (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1993), pp. 279–312.

‘Das Antiqua-sz: Referat der Typographischen Gesellschaft zu Leipzig’, Journal für Buchdruckerkunst, 42 (1879), col. 852–6, 43 (1879), col. 873–7.

Heinz König, ‘Vom Antiqua-Eszet’, Archiv für Buchgewerbe, vol. 40 (1903), pp. 7–9.

H. S. [= Hermann Smalian?], Leipzig, ‘Nochmals das Antiqua-Eszet’, Archiv für Buchgewerbe, vol. 40 (1903), pp. 103–4.

Heinrich Schwarz, ‘Das Antiqua-Versal-SZ’, Archiv für Buchgewerbe, vol. 43 (1906), pp. 93–6. ‘Nochmals das Antiqua-Versal-SZ’, Archiv für Buchgewerbe, vol. 44 (1907), pp. 111-12.

Wilhelm Hellwig, ‘Das lange s in der Antiqua und die Rechtschreibung’, Archiv für Buchgewerbe, vol. 49 (1912), pp. 306–9.

The original version of this post, intended as a brief supplement to the earlier one on long s, was an ill-prepared venture into the topic. The present considerably revised and corrected version owes much to the kind intervention of others. More correction, if it is needed, will be welcome.

Long s

In most works printed before about 1800 two forms of the lower-case s were used. One was the s that is still in use today; the other was the long s, a character which looks like f without the right-hand part of its crossbar. The italic form of long s usually lacks the ‘crossbar’ altogether. (The image above is a detail of the showing of Pica No. 2 in William Caslon, Specimen of Printing Types, London, 1766.)

The present form of the minuscule s (called ‘short s’ here for convenience) resembles the capital letter S in Roman inscriptions. The long s originates in the straggling form given to this letter in Roman cursive script.



In the late Roman cursive of the fourth century the letter had already acquired the shape that it kept when it was was adopted in more formal hands, such as the ‘half uncial’ of the sixth century and other minuscule hands of the middle ages, including the Carolingian script. (The example above, a letter written on papyrus in about 400, reads ...sam uilissima...) The inscriptional S was used in uncial scripts, and in capital letters for headings and initials. Some minuscule scripts used both the long and the short s: the script of the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in Northumbria in the ‘insular’ form of half uncial in about 698, is an example. (Is there any rule that governs this early use of two forms of s?) The Carolingian script of the ninth century used only long s, but in late Carolingian or early gothic scripts from the twelfth century onwards, the convention was adopted of using long s at the beginning and in the middle of words, and short s at the end.

The first types were based on gothic hands, and the early printers followed the established use of long s and short s. However the first writers of the humanistic script, which was based on the Carolingian hand, had followed its convention of using only long s thoughout. Some printers who began to use types influenced by the humanistic script (Sweynheym and Pannartz, Subiaco, 1465, for example, and Ulric Gering, Paris, 1470) did the same, but they soon reverted to the ‘gothic’ use of initial and medial long and final short s, and this became the almost universal rule in printing until the end of the eighteenth century. Because long s was kerned and overlapped adjacent characters, the short s was sometimes used as an expedient in front of the tall letters with which the long s would have collided. Special ligatured types were eventually made for many of the combinations, such as (for printing English) sb, sh, si, sk, sl, ss, st, ssi, ssl.

Like the printers, writers of the formal humanistic script in the later fifteenth century generally reverted to initial and medial long s and final short s. But writers of the cursive form of the script and the hands that developed from it (chancery cursive and the later ‘Italian’ hands) often made no use at all of long s, and the relaxed and inconsistent usage of calligraphers is strikingly different from the rigid practice observed by printers. Examples of initial and medial short s can be found towards the end of the fifteenth century in the work of Bartolomeo Sanvito, and perhaps a significant figure in this context (as in many others) is the reforming sixteenth-century calligrapher and teacher Giovan Francesco Cresci in Rome who, unlike earlier writers of the cancellaresca corsiva, including his arch-rival Giovanni Battista Palatino, made little use of long s in his own manuscripts and writing books. His new style, adopted by his pupils and followers, changed the look of Western handwriting.

From the fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries there are very few exceptions in printed texts to the rule that the initial and medial s was long and the final s was short. One of the exceptions is seen in the series of works printed at Vicenza in the 1520s for the Italian linguistic reformer Gian Giorgio Trissino, in which long and short s are used to distinguish the voiced and unvoiced consonant. Pierre Moreau, Paris, who printed in the 1640s with types based on a current version of the Italian cursive hand, followed the practice of contemporary calligraphers and used only short s. The long s was not used in Joseph Ames, Typographical Antiquities (London, 1749), nor in the Virgil of 1758 printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis of Glasgow and a few of their other titles. Examples of printing without long s are also found in Spain during the late 18th century, the earliest example so far identified being Tomas Lopez, Descripción de la Provincia de Madrid (Madrid: Joaquín Ibarra, 1763). Other examples include Andres Xímenez, Descripción del ... Escorial (Madrid: Antonio Marín, 1764), the type specimen of Antonio Espinosa (Madrid, 1771) and Ibarra’s Sallust (Madrid, 1772). See D. B. Updike, Printing types, 2nd ed. (1937), figs. 233–44. There seems to be no printed explanation by any of these printers why they did this, but it seems likely that these eighteenth-century examples in Britain and Spain represent the beginning of a revolt against the irrational use of two different forms for one letter, which meant that as well as the long s itself the printer had to find room in the case for its many ligatured sorts as well as the inevitable five for f.

The general discarding of the long s by printers is probably due to François-Ambroise Didot, Paris, who in about 1781 initiated the cutting of the new style of type that later became known in English as ‘modern face’. Long s was not included in the new types, and Didot’s example was quickly followed by other printers under his influence. One of these was John Bell, printer and typefounder in London, to whom the movement for its disuse is sometimes mistakenly attributed. Bell did not use long s in his newspaper The World, first published on 1 January 1787, nor in the text of the specimen of the new types cut for his British Letter-Foundry by Richard Austin (1788), although the synopsis of the fount shows that long s and its combinations were made for it. Bell was familiar with contemporary French books, which he imported into England, and he had made use of a small size of one of the types cut by Firmin, son of François-Ambroise Didot. In the ‘Prolegomena’ to his Shakspeare (1788) Bell explained that his objects in omitting long s were to give the lines ‘the effect of being more open’ (an aim of many printers of the late 18th century, when texts were commonly leaded) and to avoid the confusion of long s with f.

When typefounders in Britain introduced ‘modern-cut’ types during the decade from 1795 to 1805, long s was often not supplied in the fount, and as these new types were bought by printers its general use quickly declined. It was revived for a time for the sake of its antiquarian flavour by printers like Charles Whittingham and Louis Perrin when old face types were again used for printing towards the middle of the nineteenth century, but the long s never returned in everyday printing with roman types.

Long s and its combinations are still used when German is set correctly in gothic types like Schwabacher and Fraktur. The character ß, a ligature which is known as Eszett (or some such spelling) since it is essentially based on sz, is still used when the German language is set in roman type, except in Switzerland, where it has disappeared. Some attempt is made to give its history, some models for its design and the rules for its use in the post that follows. Recent changes to German orthography have modified the rules and reduced the occasions for its use.

Several other scripts, notably Arabic and Hebrew, have differing initial, medial and final forms for many letters. Greek retains two forms of sigma, one for initial and medial and one for final use, but the existence of the two forms seems completely unconnected with the duplication of s in the Latin script.

This text was written years ago for giving out in classes, and it has occasionally been printed. I am adding a revised version of it to this blog because it still seems to give rather more historical information about the use of long s by printers and professional calligraphers than can easily be found. However for early manuscript examples see also The Long and Short of the Letter S.

Long into the 19th century it was still common practice in English handwriting to use long and short s for double s, notably in ‘Miss’ in the address on letters. William Bulmer’s grand folio Shakspeare [sic], 1792, and Milton, 1794, were a British rejoinder to the austere magnificence of the books printed by Pierre Didot with the types of Firmin. They display a certain conservatism. The forms of the types are almost closer to those of Baskerville, cut forty years earlier, than to those of the Didots. The warmly-tinted Whatman wove paper avoids the icy whiteness of the French papers. And although the long s was generally omitted in the text, it was retained – as in handwriting – for the combination ss:

The Caslon tomb at St Luke’s, Old Street

Historically minded typographical visitors to London sometimes go to the churchyard of St Luke’s in Old Street, about a mile to the north of St Paul’s Cathedral, a public space with some tall plane trees and a single free-standing 18th-century tomb surrounded by iron railings. The tomb commemorates William Caslon I and several members of his family, and the churchyard is historic ground in other respects. Caslon was said to have had his first foundry in a small house, which Edward Rowe Mores called ‘a garret’, in Helmet Row, the street that flanks it to the west. (But the date is not certain: there is evidence that in 1723 he was still working from his first London address in the Minories.)



From 1727 he was established as a ratepayer in Ironmonger Row, the street just to its east, which is the address that appears on his first type specimen sheet, dated 1734. (The image above is from Rocque’s map of London, 1746. That below is of the unique known complete copy of the specimen of 1734, at Columbia University Library, New York.) By 1737 the Caslon foundry had moved to Chiswell Street, still in the newly-created parish of St Luke, which is the address given on the later issues of the specimen sheet that appeared in successive editions of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, and it remained there until the firm ceased trading in 1936.



St Luke’s church is worth a visit for its own sake. It was built on land bought in 1721 for £900 from the Ironmongers’ Company, part of a ten-acre property that had been left to it in 1547. The two names associated with its design are those of John James (c. 1672–1746) and Nicholas Hawksmoor (c. 1662–1736), to whom, when he was clerk of works at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, James was attached as assistant. Hawksmoor and James were among the surveyors responsible under the Act of Parliament of 1711 for finding locations for building fifty new churches in the expanding London suburbs to the north, east and west. The steeple of the church is in the form of an obelisk, a motif that is known to have pleased Hawksmoor, although the details of the design are attributed chiefly to James.

The building of the church was begun in 1727 and completed in 1733, so that the dates of its planning and construction coincide closely with those known for the location of Caslon’s foundry next to the churchyard. Nor does the coincidence end there. Thomas James, a brother of John James the architect, was a typefounder, with his premises in what had been the Lady Chapel of the church of St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, a little over half a mile to the south, and in about 1730 both brothers were involved in an unsuccessful attempt to launch the system of stereotyping devised by William Ged. While Caslon was at Ironmonger Row he must have cut many of the roman and italic types that made his reputation. Although there is little direct evidence about relations between the two rival foundries they must have been complicated by figures like the printer Samuel Palmer, who shared the premises at St Bartholomew’s with Thomas James and had some dealings, not always happy ones, with Caslon. Inevitably one wonders whether Caslon’s choice of addresses next to St Luke’s churchyard was in any way connected with interests there of the James family. Although there is no known proof of anything of the kind it is tempting to speculate that they may have had a hand in the leasing out of neighbouring premises.

For many years during the latter half of the 20th century the church was disused and an embarrassment to the Church of England. It had not been significantly damaged by bombing during the Second World War, but the effects of subsidence were becoming visible and would have been expensive to repair. The original interior woodwork and fittings were stripped out and installed in other churches, the roof was removed, and the churchyard was locked up, leaving the church to become a ‘managed ruin’ which although it had a Piranesian charm seemed to have a precarious future. It was rescued from this state by the London Symphony Orchestra, which raised funds to put a roof back on and to place rehearsal rooms and a small concert hall within the surviving walls, a project that was completed in 2002. The churchyard to the south of the building, with the Caslon tomb, is now a public garden in the care of the Borough of Islington.



T. B. Reed (who to judge from his account of the inscription may not have looked at it very carefully) wrote that the Caslon tomb was kept in repair by a bequest from Mary Hanbey, daughter of William Caslon I, who died in January 1797. In fact it is clear from her will that the present tomb, which she paid for, replaced the original monument of the Caslon family, and was dedicated to her husband Thomas Hanbey, who had been born in Sheffield and died in 1786. He was a Liveryman of the Ironmongers’ Company and Master of the Company in 1775. He was also a freeman of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, and left money to establish charities in Sheffield, and also to support sons of freemen of the Ironmongers’ Company at Christ’s Hospital in London. Mary Hanbey’s bequest was administered by the Ironmongers’ Company. This is the passage :

And whereas upon the death of my said late Husband I erected a new Monument for him where the Monument of the Caslon Family had formerly been in the church yard of Saint Lukes Old Street at the expense of twenty pounds or thereabouts And whereas I am very desirous that the same should be kept in decent and proper Repair from time to time as it may be necessary I now therefore Hereby give devise and bequeath unto the Master and Wardens of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers for the time being the sum of Three hundred pounds three per cent Reduced Bank Annuities Upon this special trust and confidence that they do once in every four years at least after my decease as I have directed the said Monument to be put in Compleat Repair by my Executors immediately after my decease cause the said Monument to be inspected by a proper Workman and out of the dividends and proceeds of the said Three hundred pounds three per cent Reduced Bank Annuities Paint and Repair the said Monument in such manner as the same may want and as to the Remainder of the said dividends and produce after paying for such Reparations upon trust to dispose of and distribute the same every four years as aforesaid to and among the poor Freemen of the said Company.

When the iron railings, which seem to date from the 19th century, were damaged early in 2007 by a branch that was blown from one of the remaining plane trees and an approach was made to Ironmongers’ Company to see if they could help, there was a sympathetic response. (They said, reasonably enough, that they regarded it as the ‘Hanbey’ tomb.) In the end Islington Council, as the authority that is now reponsible for the public space, had the railings expertly restored and repainted. The Council is also considering what can be done about a problem that, paradoxically, seems to derive from the tidying up of the churchyard and its monuments by the restorers of the site. During the period when the railings to the graveyard were locked up, the limestone slab which forms the top of the tomb seemed to have been painted white – perhaps, recalling the reference to painting in the will, a relic of its original state. The paint looked horrid and had begun to flake, but it did seem to have protected the surface of the stone. Now that the paint has gone a thick layer of moss is creeping over the horizontal surface, making it difficult to see much of the lettering, probably degrading the surface of the stone, and offering a temptation to well-meaning typographers to make hazardous attempts at its removal. The Environment and Regeneration Department of Islington Council is aware of the problem and is seeking advice on how to deal with it.

To judge from its style, it looks as if the inscription on the top slab may have been cut (or recut) at some date in the first half of the 19th century. Was it possibly added as an afterthought, belatedly supplying references to the other members of the Caslon family buried there? John Nichols, referring to the burial of William Caslon I at St Luke’s in his Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, 1783, page 317, has a note that ‘a handsome monument is erected to his memory, with this slight inscription: W. Caslon, Esq. ob. 23 Jan. 1766, Aet. 74. Also W. Caslon, Esq. (son of the above) Ob. 17 Aug. 1778, aet. 58 years.’ The present top inscription, with all the additional names, cannot be called slight (nor especially ‘handsome’, if by that term Nichols meant ornamented). Nor does the present wording exactly match that given by Nichols, which has the Latin terms ‘ob.’ for ‘died’ and ‘aet.’ for ‘aged’. So it seems unlikely that this slab is from the monument that had been seen by Nichols. Perhaps its wording was adapted and added to for the inscription that was cut on the top slab – whenever that was done.

Since the top inscription is no longer completely legible, it seems useful to reproduce here all the texts that are at present on the tomb. Here they are.

Top inscription

William Caslon Esqr. Died Jany. 23d. 1766 Aged 74 years.
Also William Caslon, Esqr. Son of the above died Augst. 17th. 1778 Aged 58 years.
Also Miss Elizath. Mary Caslon, daughter of William & Elizabeth Caslon and Grand Daughter to the above William Caslon, Esqr. who died October 30th. 1780 Aged 7 months and 18 days
Also Mr. Thomas Caslon, Son of the above William Caslon Senr. died March 29th 1783 Aged 56 Years
Also Miss Harriot Caslon daugher of Henry and Elizabeth Caslon and Grand Daughter of the above William Caslon, Esqr. who died May 1st. 1785 Aged 2 months and 9 days
Also Edward Caslon Son of the above Henry and Elizabeth Caslon Died Oct. 29th. 1787 aged 12 weeks and 3 days
Here lyeth the Body of Elizabeth Caslon Widow of William Caslon Senior Esqr. who died October the 24th. 1795 Aged 65 years.

Slate tablet on the north side

Mary Anne Caslon, Wife of Henry Caslon Son of Henry and Elizabeth Caslon Born Aug. 21st. 1785 Died March 31st. 1816.
Sacred to the Memory of Henry Caslon, Esqre. of Higham Hill Walthamstow Essex only Surviving child of Henry Caslon and Elizabeth eldest daughter of William Rowe Esqre. of Higham Hill Born in Gower Street London May 15th. 1786 Died at Boulogne sur-mer May 28th. 1850

Slate tablet on the south side

Thomas Hanbey Esqre. late of Hackney, Died December the 25th, 1786, Aged 74 years.
Here lyeth the body of Mary Widow of the above named Thomas Hanbey Esqr. who died 14th day of January 1797 Aged 75 years. And also Relict of Godfrey Sherwell Esqr. late of this Parish and likewise Daughter of William Caslon Senior Esqr. Formerly of this Parish.



So far as possible I have reproduced the spelling and the punctuation as they appear on the tomb, but not the use of capitals and of superior letters for abbreviations. Where the lettering can no longer be made out I have used the text that appears on an undated sheet set in Caslon Old Face type that was among items loosely inserted in Talbot Baines Reed’s own copy of his History of the Old English Letter Founders, 1887. The sheet bears a photograph of the tomb, reproduced above, taken from the north and showing the railings entwined with ivy.

Some references

The St Luke’s web site of the London Symphony Orchestra gives the background to their project and hosts a pdf of the St Luke’s Conservation Plan, the document relating to the church and its environment that was prepared in 2000 by Purcell, Miller, Tritton. Another document accessible on the same site is a report by Angela Boyle, Ceridwen Boston and Annsofie Witkin on the tombs and gravestones at St Luke’s, The Archaeological Experience at St Luke’s Church, Old Street, Islington, published in 2005 by the Oxford Archaeology Unit. This is a detailed account of the burials in the church and its graveyard, with much useful information about the site of the church and extracts from the minutes of the commissioners appointed under the Fifty New Churches act. It is a pity that it makes some errors in the text of the inscriptions on the Caslon tomb (which is listed as GR13S or ‘chest tomb 6’), of which the oddest of all is to give the family name as ‘Carlson’. For authoritative and up to date references regarding William Caslon and also the architects Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James, see the articles in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessible online in many libraries.



The Lady Chapel, which once housed the foundry of Thomas James and the printing-office of Samuel Palmer, is now again a part of the Church of St Bartholomew the Great, having been restored by Aston Webb in 1897 to what might have been its 14th-century appearance. Since the summer of 2007 it costs four pounds, paid in cash at the door, just to enter St Bartholomew’s, an unwelcome innovation among London parish churches and not one that I am inclined to support.

John Smith’s Printer’s Grammar, 1755

Many English printers’ manuals derive to some extent from Moxon’s of 1683–4, and even those of the early 19th century by Stower (1808), Johnson (1824) and Hansard (1825) include passages taken directly from Moxon’s text. The Printer’s Grammar of John Smith (if that was his real name), published in London in 1755, is different. He deals with compositors’ work but not with presswork. Although he shows that he knows Moxon’s manual, he includes detailed observations that are clearly drawn from personal experience. On the title page his name is followed by the unexplained term in italics, Regiom. He mentions some aspects of printing in France and gives an English translation of a passage from Fertel’s manual of 1723, but it is clear that he also drew on previous experience of German printers and printing. Although he sometimes distances himself from German practice (was he perhaps for a time, like Moxon, an Englishman working abroad?), he had known Samuel Struck of Lübeck (‘Mr. Struke’ on page 10), who published one of the earliest German printers’ manuals there in 1713, he had worked in Danzig, and he remembers how in Germany ‘fifty years ago’, large letters were cast hollow, continuing, ‘whether this has been practised ever since, we cannot tell with certainty’. It has been suggested, plausibly, that Regiom. stands for Regiomontanus, the Latin for a citizen of Königsberg (in this case, probably the city in East Prussia), so perhaps he may have been born there. But he when he wrote his book he was certainly familiar with London printers and printing, and his detailed references to current usage in some sections, such as that on type bodies (pages 19 ff.) suggest that he practised the trade in some capacity, whether as a master printer or, perhaps more likely, as a compositor or a reader.

The original printing of Smith’s manual is rare, but an adequate facsimile was published in 1965. Since it has neither a table of contents nor an index, it is not easy to get an idea of the details of the text. To make it more accessible I have compiled my own index, and I place a jpeg of this (the only image format I can make that this blog seems to accept) at the head of this post. Clicking on it will bring up a larger image which seems fairly legible, and if this is printed to a size of 190 by 237 mm it can be folded to fit the reprinted edition.

And here is an image of a table of contents compiled for the same purpose:

Casting Bodoni’s type

In June, with the support and cooperation of the Museo Bodoniano, Parma, Stan Nelson and I carried out a pilot project for casting type from one of Bodoni’s own matrices in one of his original moulds. The result, seen above, shows a letter B for a Palestina body (about 24 point), cast from a matrix of the type named after Crema (a town in Lombardy) which is shown on page 117 of Bodoni’s Manuale tipografico of 1818. The ladle is one of a set newly made by Stan Nelson and presented by him to the Museo Bodoniano. The aim of the exercise was to be able to demonstrate the technique of hand casting, and not to make a complete fount. Not any time soon, at any rate. But even if the scale of the exercise is modest in the extreme, the reason for this post is to record the return of the casting of type to Parma after the lapse of some time, and the use of Bodoni’s own materials.