Redfield-Kendrick-Odell Company
Published: 2019-02-11
Total Pages: 32
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Excerpt from A Printed Specimen of Caslon Old Style Type, With Appropriate Ornaments: Being the First of a Series of Books Showing the Many Beautiful Types in the Composing-Room of Redfield-Kendrick-Odell Co In this crisis a small group of famous London printers, among whom were William Bowyer and John Watts, cast ing about for some one capable of raising the printing art out of the slough of despond in which it seemed hopelessly mired, hit upon William Caslon as the one likely to succeed. Then in the full flush of ambitious young manhood, the latter, who was born in the west of England in I 692, had added the making of bookbinders' tools and stamps to his regular work of engraving gun-locks and barrels, and it was the fine workmanship of his bookbinders' letters that convinced his printer friends of his ability to cut the type faces of which they were so desperately in need. Like many another who has achieved distinction in the world, Caslon began in a garret in Helmet Row, Old Street, London. There, with 500 which Bowyer, Watts and a third printer advanced him to make a start with, he set up in the business of type-founder in 1720. Success smiled upon him from the beginning. The exact sequence of events in his little establishment is somewhat befogged, but he seems to have cut in that first year a pica Roman and Italic and also to have made at the order of the Society for Pro moting Christian Knowledge a fount of Arabic on English body for use in a Psalter and New Testament, which were published several years later. In I 722, it is related, he cutthe beautiful fount of English, which four years afterwards was used in the famous three - volume edition of the works of John Selden, the celebrated lawyer and antiquary. This noble fount, says Talbot Baines Reed, historian of English type-founding, marked a distinct turning-point in the career of English typography, which, from that time for ward, entered on a course of brilliant regeneration. By I 730 Caslon had so far justified the early hopes and expectations of the friends who had financially backed their faith in him that he had distanced all competitors, both in the excellence of his type faces and in the scope of their sales. The earliest of his broadside specimens which has come down to us, printed in 1734, displays thirty-eight founts, all except three of which were cut either by the master himself or under his close personal supervision. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
