The Brylski typeface I designed for Hamilton Wood Type recently became available for free syncing via Adobe Fonts to anyone with a Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Activate it on your account and the museum will get some extra money without costing you anything. fonts.adobe.com/fonts/hwt-bryl…

I’m extremely sad to hear Stephen O. Saxe has passed. printinghistory.org/home-page/ Saxe was a veritable fount of knowledge on the history of type design, type specimens, and printing presses, and he was extremely generous with that knowledge. circuitousroot.com/artifice/lette… He’ll be missed.

… I am personally indebted to the memory of Stephen O. Saxe because so much I know about the history of my own work (specifically: type design and type specimen design) came through him, often directly. He also largely fueled my fascination with 19th-century typography. R.I.P.

Rob Roy Kelly’s seminal book on American wood type was officially published 50 years ago today. David Shields wrote a piece on its publication and reception to commemorate the anniversary: woodtyperesearch.com/50th-anniversa…

So who placed the $10,200 winning bid for that 1874 chromatic wood type specimen book from Wm. H. Page & Co. the other day? ebay.com/itm/Super-rare…

I’m sad to hear of the passing of Sue Shaw, who founded the Type Archive. Her efforts have preserved centuries of historical type material, including collections from Stephenson Blake & Co, Robert DeLittle Woodletter Factory, and the Monotype Corporation. stbridefoundation.wordpress.com/2020/07/07/sue…

“Early American newspaper printers acted as slave brokers. Many of the founding figures in early American print played this role …” Important research from @PubliusorPerish on an ugly chapter in the history of letterpress printing in the USA: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7d6dcd…

There’s a new book about Ludlow (a hugely under-appreciated type company) written by Paul Gehl (who cared for an amazing collection of type books at Newberry Library for almost 30 years). I couldn’t have ordered my copy from Oak Knoll Books any faster. oakknoll.com/pages/books/13…

Stephen Saxe’s collection of type specimen books is legendary. It’s good to see it finding a new home among the other treasures at RIT’s Cary Collection, along with a research grant in Saxe’s name. rit.edu/news/rit-cary-…

I made a promo site for Mark Simonson Studio’s new font family, Etna, with an essay by David Shields about the historical “Aetna” genre of wood type that inspired the design. It also includes an interactive mix-and-match sampler with different settings of the fonts. ☞ etna.marksimonson.com

A wonderfully wholesome British stop-motion animation about letterpress poster printing and wheatpaste billsticking, from the 1967 ‘Trumpton’ TV series: youtube.com/watch?v=hqZvuU… (via Debbie Ward 💙❤️💛🖤 & Tanya George) Also see the spoof news article about it: thespoof.com/spoof-news/ent…

Later today: a conversation with @[email protected] & Dan Reynolds on “nineteenth-century German wood types and sans-serif foundry designs”, plus a talk by Jessica Farrell-Jobst on “jobbing printers working for local government in 16th- and 17th-century Nuremburg”. eventbrite.co.uk/e/typographic-…

Awesome specimen page for an awesome typeface. archive.org/details/Centra…

… Sidenote: While putting together info and a sample for the Rogers typeface at Fonts In Use (fontsinuse.com/typefaces/1880…), I learned it is … monospaced. 🤯 archive.org/details/specim…

I have no words to express how excited I am about this. If I could only buy one book in 2022, it’d be this one. David is one of the most legit type historians alive and I have no doubt this book will be an exceptional companion / continuation for Rob Roy Kelly’s pioneering work.

Assuming the content is as good as other books by Frank Romano (from Museum of Printing), and the future availability will be as scarce, I would recommend any type-tech-history fans pick up a copy of his new book on the Ludlow Typograph posthaste.

The herculean effort to digitize @stbridelibrary’s collection of pre-1830s type specimen books in now being finalized: stbridefoundation.wordpress.com/2022/09/12/an-… Most of them can now be browsed at the Internet Archive for free: archive.org/details/early-… (Higher-res images are available for a fee.)

5:30 AM Sunday reading google.com/patents/US4028…

Soirée Fantastique: a very cool publication by @[email protected] with 1800s Leipzig posters and photos. Highly recommended! institutbuchkunst.hgb-leipzig.de/series/15#105