When In Doubt, Use Caslon

Excerpt from Anatomy of a Typeface by Alexander Lawson

Caslon

“ When in doubt, always use Caslon.”

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Although infrequently the case, one of the most widely known of all historic printing types indisputably bears the name of its designer, William Caslon. He was an English engraver who cut the face about 1720. It is also an indisputable fact that the reputation of the design has been sullied by too many eulogies on the part of the outstanding typographers of a generation ago —Beatrice Warde, in her 1933 essay ‘On the Choice of Typefaces,’ mentions the ‘almost superstitious regard for Caslon Old Face’ that existed at that time.

Contemporary typographers, with the choice of a variety of printing riches far greater than that of their predecessors (if we may take as evidence the bulging current specimen books), are not to be blamed if they express disenchantment with Caslon and the period it seems to represent. Still, their disapproval runs counter to the opinion of the more traditionally oriented type professionals, who point as usual to such printing stalwarts as Daniel Berkeley Updike who in 1922 stated in his seminal Printing Types, ‘In the class of types which appear to be beyond criticism from the point of view of beauty and utility, the original Caslon type stands first.’

The typographers who grew to maturity before 1930 learned to love Caslon and, more important, acquired expertise in its use. During his formative years the eminent Bruce Rogers employed Caslon in book after book, while Carl Purington Rollins, the estimable Printer to Yale University, acquired and international reputation for his handling of the type. Even on Madison Avenue, the New York advertising typographer Hal Marchbanks was widely known as ‘a Caslon

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A N AT O M Y o f a T Y P E FAC E • CASLON

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A

The capital letter A has a concave hallow at the apex.

printer’; it was he who was responsible for bringing the type out of the library and in to the hectic world of commercial and advertising printing.

The result of all of this activity by printers who had received their initial inspiration from the English private-press movement —as represented by the Kelmscott, Doves, and Ashendene presses — was to place Caslon today in an ambiguous position. The contemporary typographer may very well ignore the design, but at the same time one feels uncomfortable rejecting it out of hand.

Certainly, Caslon is far from forgotten. It continues to turn up regularly in national advertising. All of the manufacturers of phototypesetting equipment have transferred the type to their film grids for both text and display typography. In 1966, the American Type Founders Company (then practically at the end of the its existence as the most important supplier of new types) brought out still another version, Caslon 641, even though the firm already had its vaults matrices for some three dozen variations on the design.

The original Caslon was devised in the early eighteenth century when a group of London printers and booksellers prevailed upon the young engraver William Caslon to cut for them a font of Arabic language types for a series of religious tracts then being planned. (Through these tracts, it was hoped, the natives in newly discovered land would be

e

The success of the Caslon-designed fonts and the growing reputation of this most competent English punchcutter no doubt contributed to the lack of appreciation by English printers for the typographic developments then taking place on the Continent. Exciting things were happening there, however. Although during much of the 1600s the Dutch types had dominated European printing, in the last years of the century there took place a most interesting experiment in France, which was to have a long-range effect on the design of printer’s types. About 1692 Philippe Grandjean, the French punchcutter, created for the Imprimerie Royale the famous Romain du Roi, a revolutionary design, the first to be drawn to mathematical principles, that eventually led to the type style now called modern. For though these types

A LE XA N D E R L AW S O N

The lowercase e has a high horizontal crossbar.

induced to take up Christianity.) According to one account, when Caslon had finished the task and was ready for proof, he cut his name in pica roman (12-point), in order to indentify the proof. It was these few letters of his signature that attracted the interest of his sponsors and which eventually resulted in Caslon’s devoting all of his energies to the cutting of non-exotic types.

In that period there was little typefounding being done in England; for some time printers had been dependent on Dutch sources for their types. This was owing largely to the restrictions on printing engendered during the preceding century by the censorial Star Chamber which had severely limited competition in the field. Though by Caslon’s time these obstacles had been removed, their effects were still felt in the trade.

The preponderance, therefore, of Dutch types in English printing offices made it almost inevitable that Caslon would be influenced by their characteristics. Indeed, although his types have been praised as the embodiment of English typography, they were in fact modeled on the earlier Dutch forms, albeit better fitted and cast.

Caslon completed the work on his first fonts about 1720, but it was not until 1734 that he issued his first specimen sheet, a broadside that has since been widely produced in printing histories and is thus well known to all students of typography. In addition to the roman and italic types, this sheet shows a number of exotics, such as Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.

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were restricted to use by the French royal press, they had considerable influence on the styles developed by the commercial typefounders. One such, Pierre Simon Fournier ‘le jeune,’ a younger contemporary of Caslon’s, was profoundly impressed by these types and later produced several important variations on them. But despite its impact in Europe, Romain du Roi had little immediate effect on English typefounding, Caslon’s excellence in his craft apparently deterring experimentation with new forms in England.

William Caslon died in 1766, but his foundry remained in the family for another century. The last of the Caslons to be active in the firm, Henry William, died in 1874, yet the Caslon name has been retained through subsequent changes of ownership. The firm later was acquired by Stephenson, Blake & Company, of Birmingham, which now appends to its name ‘The Caslon Letter Foundry.’

Meanwhile, in the mid-eighteenth century the types of John Baskerville had brought about the changes in English typographic taste that resulted in the eventual decline of the Caslon types. Later in the century the styles of the Didots in France and Bodoni in Italy radically affected European typography, with the result that the old style types, such as Caslon, which had been dominate for almost three centuries, were soon completely out of favor. In the 1805 Caslon specimen book, for example, not a single old-style type appears.

The in 1844 Charles Whittingham produced at the Chiswick Press in London The Diary of Lady Willoughby, which was set in Caslon. It is this volume that is credited with returning the type to popular esteem, regaining much

Baskerville’s lowercase g does not connect.

(!?*)

g

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Caslon’s lowercase g does connect to the letter.

g

In 1837, the American typefounder Peter C. Cortelyou displayed in his specimen book several sizes of a type called simply Old Style, but which was in fact Caslon, although not at all well produced. But the great resurgence of Caslon type in the United States can be dated from 1858, when the Philadelphia foundry of L. J. Johnson (later MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan) brought fonts from England and duplicated them by manufacturing electrotype matrices, a process by which a founder could duplicate a competitor’s type without cutting punches.

The firm’s periodical, The Typographic Advertiser, showed thirteen sizes of Caslon in its July 1859 issue. The type later appeared in Johnson’s 1865 specimen book under the name Old Style No. 1. This face gained in popularity, so

A LE XA N D E R L AW S O N

of the reputation it had earlier enjoyed. By 1900 Caslon was being produced by typefounders on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was ready to be elevated to the unique position that prompted the aforementioned Updike panegyric.

In the United States, Caslon was a historically important type. During the late-eighteenth century it was the principle type of the colonial printers, most of whom depended on English sources for the equipment in their printing offices. When first set in type, the most important document of American history, the Declaration of Independence, appeared in those types cast by William Caslon. Thus there is an old tradition of enthusiasm for Caslon on the part of American printers, who were largely responsible for its popularity in the years up to the Second World War.

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The lowercase italics have a rhythmic calligraphic strokes.

A N AT O M Y o f a T Y P E FAC E • CASLON

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z

much so that in 1892, when Vogue magazine was restyled in Caslon type, the Johnson version was chosen, constituting the foundry’s largest type order in more than thirty years.

The Caslon revival took a huge leap.

The use of Caslon in Vogue was followed by its employment by some of the nations best typographers, including Will Bradley who purchased fonts from the Dickinson foundry in Boston in 1895. As an innovative young designer, Bradley further popularized the face. Caslon was therefore an early candidate for the composing of machines then being introduced. The Monotype company was the first to make it available in 1903 with a version based on the Johnson type, by then the property on the American Type Founders Company through that firm’s amalgamation of the various American typefoundries.

There are now numerous versions of Caslon, all but one of which bear similarity to one another. Caslon Old Face, owned

by Stephenson, Blake & Company, is of course the original, but the ATF Caslon 471, based on the Johnson copy, is very close indeed. For advertising printing, ATF shortened the descenders and named the new version Caslon 540, and over decades of newspaper advertising R.H. Macy’s department store made 540 practically its private type, at least in New York City.

The last Caslon to mention is that ubiquitous but unrelated Caslon Antique, which possesses no similarity whatsoever to the original. This old reprobate was a victim of bad timing when, late in the 1800s, it was introduced by Barnhart Brothers of Chicago under the name Fifteenth Century. Its negative reception lasted until about 1918,

w

Caslon’s dependence on the seventeenth-century Dutch forms resulted in a letter more old-style features than modern. The wedge-shaped serifs of the lowercase characters are a case in point.

Even in the original version, as well as in copies made by the American Type Founders, Monotype, and Linotype, there are inconsistencies in the fitting and the alignment of several letters. Most typographers who work closely with types have learned to be aware of such incongruities, particularly in the comparison of sizes. For example, the 24-point Caslon seems to lack the grace of the 18-point, and in relation to the larger sizes appears to be considerably bolder.

Owing to this discrepancy, a 22-point was cut in order to provide an in-between size.

Such variations produce the individuality that has apparently charmed many a typographer unhappy about the regularity of the modern pantograph-designed typefaces.

Others, however, take a dim view of such individuality, making it difficult to understand why the type has been a long-lived favorite throughout the world.

But for whatever reason, Caslon persists, offering all the usual variants — bold, condensed, openface, swash­­— of any successful type. It seems that this design is bound to survive, although even well-informed typographers are hard-pressed to explain why. In period when so much that is traditional is viewed as suspect, Caslon’s enduring popularity is encouraging to any printer admiring the classic forms.

The letters m,w, and z have a suggestion of a swash.

when, with a simple name change to Caslon Antique, it became the most commonly selected type for reproductions of colonial American printing. It is now seen in everything from liquor advertisements to furniture commercials.

Caslon in most systems of type classification is known as an old style (in England it has had the name Old Face, and more recently, in the British Standards System, is listed under ‘Garalde’). It represents probably the final development of those romans that were first cut by Nicolas Jenson of Venice in 1470. Among printers interested in type classification, a fairly strong case can be made for calling Caslon a transitional type, as it predates the Baskerville design of 1757. However, most typographic historians have held that

A LE XA N D E R L AW S O N

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C O L O P H O N This essay is an excerpt from Anatomy of a Typeface by Alexander Lawson, published by David R. Godine, Boston.

The body of the text is set in variations of Adobe Caslon and Caslon 540 at 11/14.

This book was designed by Jennifer Betz under the instruction of Debra Drodvillo at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA in the Fall of 2011.