Recent Updates
Newest information first…
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Forgot to mention (last week?) that I added some background to the home page about the Historical Importance of Display Type. In case you haven’t seen it lately, you may be surprised to learn how really important it was!
Published a new page on Andreas V. Haight, first of the 19th-century independent type designers to be discussed.
Recent correspondence with Stephen O. Saxe [Johnston, A.M.; Saxe, S.O. [Editors](2009): William E. Loy|Nineteenth-Century American Designers and Engravers of Type. Oak Knoll Books, New Castle, DE] has nearly resolved confusion about BTF Morris cut by J.F. Cumming most likely ≤1884. Hopefullly, conclusion of this “to be continued” page will happen soon!
While re-examining UK and French specimens of “Runic” fonts pre-dating BTF Morris by some two decades, I discovered a dual-case specimen of ATF Marble Heart <http://typeheritage.com/community/revivals/undigitized/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/51266334@N08/sets/72157627995564504/> in BTF 1860—ten years earlier than reported by Lieberman and McGrew. So I updated the pages linked above accordingly. Marble Heart is an o-l-d 3D sans-serif face still effective today. It has a super-interesting history, so I hope someone will digitize it for posterity!
More apologies for a l-o-n-g “dead air time.” Taking a holiday from the featured article on John F. Cumming, I switched to one about 19th-century type designers vs type cutters vs type producer execs who patented their work—with a sidebar on “part-time” type designers. Along the way, the sidebar loomed in interest and importance since these guys were not documented by Loy. Previews… Andreas V. Haight, cutting-edge letterpress printer/Artistic Printing guru (Card Gothic, Atlanta#, Vassar#, Fashion Antique, Rogers#) plus illustrators/lettering artists like George Halm, Edwin Abbey, Ludwig Ipsen, Will Bradley and W.W. Denslow. This article is nearly finished (with specimens stored at Flickr) and will be published soon—please stay tuned!
Apologies for difficult navigation of the featured article. As a one-woman (WordPress) website-designer “newbie,” I must learn in an “organic” fashion: tackling One Technical Challenge at a Time as needs arise. Please bear with me as I figure out a better way to index “child” and “grandchild” pages for visitors’ convenience. In the meantime, the site map is recommended (open it in a separate tab) for “skipping around.”
Published Part 7f. Part 7g will discuss Rubens and Duerer, one of two final fonts JFC cut before leaving Boston TF.
Almost ready to publish Part 7f of the featured article about John F. Cumming on BTF’s “German Cities Collection.” The facts of this case are so confusing that I changed conclusions multiple times, then changed back to the original ones! The sidebar records for posterity a personal communication from Dan X. Solo regarding Lubeck, a face that JFC reported to Loy that he cut in ±1881–1884.
Corrected a typo on the “About THP” page: Gustav Schroeder designed Art Gothic in 1886, not 1880.
Part 7f of the featured article on J.F. Cumming will explore four BTF faces named for German cities, one of which JFC designed. There is evidence that, in his account to Loy, he mis-remembered which ones he cut.
Included BTF Banner with Part 7b on Italic Caps.
Added a Site Map for navigation, especially through the featured article.
Updated links for Luc Devroye’s newly hosted site and added St. Bride Library, where Nicolette Gray conducted most of her research—the St. Bride Foundation asked permission to distribute a link to THP.
Published Part 7e on BTF Kismet#. In the course of writing this installment, it occurred to me how very stressed JFC must have been with a “moonlighting” job plus multiple family obligations on top of his type career. So I added the following observations to Part 1 (Biography):
The fact that he held a second job suggests that he may have needed extra income and accounts for his “spare time.” Surely he was too preoccupied with earning a living, too busy (or too tired!) to independently imagine and draw new typefaces.
The simple family gravestone represents a man of adequate, far from affluent, means.
There is a great deal of commonly accepted mis-information “out there” about John F. Cumming’s best-known BTF type design, Kismet#. The next installment of THP’s featured article will settle the record once and for all with “smoking gun” evidence published in The Inland Printer edition of July 1898 by William E. Loy, an expertly qualified eye-witness to 19th-century type history and biographer of more than two dozen pre-ATF US designers and engravers of type. Nutshell Preview: Since Cumming was hired by BTF as a “clue-less” type cutter in 1881, it is not possible that he designed Kismet# two years earlier (1879) as reported by digital foundries who may (or may not) own the tradename. The letterform design has always been “public domain” because it was never patented.
Needed a change from writing and research, so I prepped, documented and uploaded some new specimens of as-yet undigitized fonts: the sparkling Double Gothic Shade=Marble Heart, possibly of German origin ≤1867, shown by at least two pre-ATF members and revived by ATF several times starting in 1933; and a set of three color-separation registration-worthy “little black dress” Caslon faces of the early 1840s likewise acquired and re-marketed by ATF in 1933 and 1949.
THP Bibliography. It became increasingly difficult to squeeze constant updates into letter-size page layouts, so I transferred the document from PDF format to continuous web pages and learned how to “redirect” the URL for seamless browsing via pages cached by search engines.
Ooops! Withdrew Mural# from “Cool Undigizited Fonts” and linked specimens. Dan X. Solo offers a revival at MyFonts, where it is duly “endorsed” as authentic by inclusion in a THP Album. DXS added a lower case to the caps-only original, so either I didn’t recognize it as shown or just-plain forgot it was available. Apologies to all concerned! A second one, more like a stylized Mural# Bold, is less true to the original.
Added a bit more information on Caslon Enchorial=BTF London in Part VIIc.
Published Part VIId of the article on J.F. Cumming. This one concerns the BTF script collection; JFC cut four of the six original cursive hands produced in 1870–1892.
Finished discussion of the first three of four BTF fonts cut by Cumming that involve the Caslon TF, Part VIIc of the Featured JFC Article. This incomplete part will be generally accessible when I learn how to enable navigation between/among multiple sections of this extensive (and technically daunting) history of JFC’s type career. Discussion of the fourth font (Morris) is postponed pending consultation with another type historian who may be willing to share sources of tradenamed specimens. For now, it may be viewed via the “next” sequence or a temporary link.
Added yet another “Niggling Question” to the Featured JFC Article.
Added an illustration to Part VI of the Featured JFC Article.
Corrected a “mistaken identity” error in the Caslon sidebar, Part VI.
Added a bit more historical info to the Type Tradenames article.
Added JFC “memory disclaimer” context to Part II of the featured article on Cumming.
Revised info on Phinney’s appointment as DTF Partner (yet another case of historian disagreement).
Added illustrated examples to Type Tradenames. A guaranteed-interesting read, especially for revival font developers!
Added italic caps to JFC Part VII. The next installment will cover BTF Caslon fonts cut by JFC in 1881-1884. This one is complicated by an obscure, poorly documented specimen of a typeface already in common worldwide use during the 1860s, so please bear with me…
—Anna
