Welcome to the sixteenth ‘What Face Wednesday’ metal typeface identification competition! This week’s prize is a choice of any two hand-printed letterpress greeting cards (including free International p&p) from the selection on my Typoretum website.
All correct answers will be placed in a hat and one winner will be randomly drawn. To enter the prize draw, all you need to do is identify the typeface shown below and email your answer to me.
Congratulations to the winner of this week’s competition, Catherine Dixon, who correctly identified the typeface as Fry’s Ornamented. Originally cut by Richard Austin in 1796, it was reissued in 1949 by the Sheffield typefounders’ Stephenson Blake who had acquired the matrices. Three additional sizes were cut in 1950.
Recently I was commissioned by John Boardley of ilovetypography.com fame to letterpress print a typographical design that he set in the recently released digital typeface Restraint. I was delighted to have been asked and had a 16 gauge magnesium relief plate etched from John’s artwork for printing on my 1963 Swiss-made Gietz Art Platen printing press.
A small edition was printed onto 100% cotton 175gsm Somerset Book paper and these prints will soon be available for purchase from the iLT shop at shop.ilovetypography.com. More images showing the printing of this commission can be viewed on our Flickr Photostream.
Welcome to the fifteenth ‘What Face Wednesday’ metal typeface identification competition! This week’s prize is a choice of any two hand-printed letterpress greeting cards (including free International p&p) from the selection on my Typoretum website.
To enter, all you need to do is identify the typeface shown below and email your answer to me. Whoever correctly identifies the typeface first will be the winner. If you are also able to name the typefoundry that still casts this typeface, I’d be very impressed!
Congratulations to the winner of this week’s competition, Indra Kupferschmid, who correctly identified the typeface as Ratdolt Titling. This typeface was designed by Victor Hammer, based on a typeface by Ehrhardt Ratdolt, circa 1480. It is still cast, in 24 point, by the Dale Guild Type Foundry in the US. Theo Rehak, proprietor of theDale Guild Type Foundry, laboured many years to complete Victor Hammer’s punches, begun in 1940s.
Since you’re reading this and you are almost certainly interested in typography, it is highly likely that you will have already heard about Type Daily, the newly launched RSS aggregator. Type Daily is the brainchild of John Boardley, creator of I Love Typography and We Love Typography and has already become my browser home page!
Along with RSS feeds from a comprehensive list of typography-related blogs, Type Daily also features feeds from YouTube and Flickr, highlighting movies and images of letterpress and typographic interest. I fear that Type Daily will swallow up the first couple of hours of my days but it is an informative and inspirational resource for anyone that has more than a passing interest in typography.
Using a quote from the film An American Werewolf in London as inspiration, Bradley visited the Typoretum recently and set about typesetting and printing a handful of woodletter posters. The Gill Sans Condensed woodletter was printed in dense black ink on my hand-operated 1960s Farley 24a proofing press. The moon image was achieved by taking a print directly from the ink disc of my late 19th Century Model No.2 parlour press, that we inked in a pale transparent fluorescent green.
Welcome to the fourteenth ‘What Face Wednesday’ metal typeface identification competition! This week’s prize is a choice of any two hand-printed letterpress greeting cards (including free International p&p) from the selection on my Typoretum website.
All correct answers will be placed in a hat and one winner will be randomly drawn. To enter the prize draw, all you need to do is identify the typeface shown below and email your answer to me.
Congratulations to the winner of this weeks’ competition, Stewart Luetchford, who correctly identified the typeface as Castellar. This typeface was designed by John Peters and introduced by The Monotype Corporation in 1957.
The second meeting of The Occasional Print Club (OPC) took place at JMG – the letterpress studio of Jonathan Kielty and Ross Shaw – last weekend and we produced a collaborative experimental letterpress poster, based upon F.W. Goudy’s famous ‘I am type’ quotation. This poster was printed, in three colours, on a Stephenson Blake proofing press onto acid-free Zerkall mould-made paper and a small number of these posters are now available for purchase via my Typoretum website.
Of my earliest ancestry neither history nor relics remain. The wedge-shaped symbols impressed in plastic clay by Babylonian builders in the dim past foreshadowed me: from them, on through the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians, down to the beautiful manuscript letters of the mediaeval scribes, I was in the making.
With the golden vision of the ingenious Gutenberg, who first applied the principle of casting me in metal, the profound art of printing with movable types was born.
Cold, rigid and implacable I may be, yet the first impress of my face brought the Divine Word to countless thousands. I bring into the light of day the precious stores of knowledge and wisdom long hidden in the grave of ignorance. I coin for you the enchanting tale, the philosopher’s moralising and the poet’s fantasies; I enable you to exchange the irksome hours that come, at times, to everyone, for sweet and happy hours with books – golden urns filled with all the manna of the past.
In books, I present to you a portion of the eternal mind caught in its progress through the world, stamped in an instant and preserved for eternity. Through me, Socrates and Plato, Chaucer and Bards become your faithful friends who ever surround you and minister to you.
I am the leaden army that conquers the world. I am type.
Welcome to the thirteenth ‘What Face Wednesday’ metal typeface identification competition! This week’s prize is a choice of any two hand-printed letterpress greeting cards (including free International p&p) from the selection on my Typoretum website.
All correct answers will be placed in a hat and one winner will be randomly drawn. To enter the prize draw, all you need to do is identify the typeface shown below and email your answer to me.
Congratulations to the winner of this weeks’ competition, Alan Pittard, who correctly identified the typeface as Francesca Ronde. This typeface was introduced by the venerable Sheffield typefounders’ Stephenson Blake circa 1948.
The Atelier Press came into being in 1970 as the private press of Stan Nelson. Stan has been interested in printing since the age of nine, and formerly operated as the Nelson Job Shop and later as Norse Custom Printing. After becoming aware of the world of Fine Printing, Stan chose to name his press using the French word for the workshop of an artist or craftsman.
At the Atelier Press & Letterfoundry, Stan casts printers’ type using methods first developed in the 15th century. In this series of four short films, filmed byOut of Sorts Film, Stan demonstrates the preparation of matrices, assembling of a hand mould, casting type and ‘dressing’ the cast letters.
