Creators of the 19th and 20th Century W I L L I A M M O R R I S founded the Kelmscott Press in London in 1891 to have the ability to produce books through traditional methods of both technology and style of the fifteenth century. He was responding to the lackluster design of current mass-production of contemporary book-production methods, as well as, lithography that was created just years earlier. Based on fifteenth century models, he designed three readable blackletter typefaces for use in the Kelmscott Press. “Golden” type was his first in 1890 and was a
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Roman inspired by the type of early Venetian engraver Nicolaus Jenson. It’s name is directly from The Golden Legend, a popular 13th Century text that used it. His type “Troy” in 1892 followed by “Chaucer” were two very similar blackletter type for the machine. Golden was used for body text while Troy and Chaucer were sized smaller for contents and glossary. Not only did he create type, but also the floriated borders and initials for the books. These forms were based on designs found in incunabulas.
Typography from the 19th to the 20th Century
In the 1880‘s chromolithography became a method for making multi-color prints, stemming from the process of lithography. Alois Senefelder, a german man, was given credit for his documenting of his plans to print in color one day in the book Vollstaendiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerey. Countries all over were looking for new ways to print
In 1890 the Linotype machine by OT T M A R M E R G E N T H A L A R was demonstrated in New York. By depressing keys on a keyboard the machine assembles a line of matrices from a magazine above the keyboard. This casts together the letters into one piece of metal called a “slug” by the injection of molten metal. After its use, the metal is delivered to a galley to
in color. Though disputed on being the first, GODEFROY ENGLEMANN of France was awarded the patent for the new process in July 1837.
which it is redistributed back to the magazine by the machine. It was a machine that allowed the operator to be the machinist, typesetter, justifier, typefounder, and type-distributor. Mergenthaler saw little use in seperating these functions to multiple machines, thus inspiring him to his creation.
-Godefroy Engelmann
Creators of the 19th and 20th Century
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