Big Caslon Cc Font

[Niklas Terki]

Caslonworked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp the moulds or matrices used to cast metal type.[1][2][3] He worked in the tradition of what is now called old-style serif letter design, that produced letters with a relatively organic structure resembling handwriting with a pen. Caslon established a tradition of engraving type in London, which previously had not been common, and was influenced by the imported Dutch Baroque typefaces that were popular in England at the time.[4][5][6][7] His typefaces established a strong reputation for their quality and their attractive appearance, suitable for extended passages of text.[8][9]

The letterforms of Caslon's roman, or upright type include an "A" with a concave hollow at top left and a "G" without a downwards-pointing spur at bottom right. The sides of the "M" are straight.[10] The "W" has three terminals at the top and the "b" has a small tapered stroke ending at bottom left.[10] The "a" has a slight ball terminal.[11] Ascenders and descenders are relatively short and the level of stroke contrast is modest in body text sizes. In italic, Caslon's "h" folds inwards and the "A" is sharply slanted.[10] The "Q", "T", "v", "w" and "z" all have flourishes or swashes in the original design, something not all revivals follow.[10] The italic "J" has a crossbar, and a rotated casting was used by Caslon in many sizes on his specimens to form the pound sign.[3] However, Caslon created different designs of letters at different sizes: his larger sizes follow the lead of a type he sold cut in the previous century by Joseph Moxon, with more fine detail and sharper contrast in stroke weight, in the "Dutch taste" style.[12] Caslon's larger-size roman fonts have two serifs on the "C", while his smaller-size versions have one half-arrow serif only at top right.

Caslon's typefaces were popular in his lifetime and beyond, and after a brief period of eclipse in the early nineteenth century returned to popularity, particularly for setting printed body text and books. Many revivals exist, with varying faithfulness to Caslon's original design.[13] Modern Caslon revivals also often add features such as a matching boldface and "lining" numbers at the height of capital letters, neither of which were used in Caslon's time.[14][a] William Berkson, designer of a revival of Caslon, describes Caslon in body text as "comfortable and inviting".[15]

Caslon's type rapidly built up a reputation for workmanship, being described by Henry Newman in 1733 as "the work of that Artist who seems to aspire to outvying all the Workmen in his way in Europe, so that our Printers send no more to Holland for the Elzevir and other Letters which they formerly valued themselves much."[4][29][c] Mosley describes Caslon's Long Primer No. 1 type as "type with generous proportions and it was normally cast with letter-spacing that was not too tight, characteristics that are needed in types on a small body. And yet it is so soundly made that words that are set in it keep their shape and are comfortably readable...It is a type that works best in the narrow measure of a two-column page or in quite modest octavos."[31] Caslon sold a French Canon face he did not engrave that may to have been the work of Joseph Moxon with some modifications, and his larger-size faces follow this high-contrast model.[17] He publicised his type through contributing a specimen sheet to Chambers' Cyclopedia, which has often been cut out by antiquarian book dealers and sold separately.[16]

Compared to the more delicate, stylised and experimental "transitional" typefaces gaining ground in mainland Europe during Caslon's life, notably the romain du roi type of the previous century, the work of Pierre-Simon Fournier in Paris, Fleischmann in Amsterdam and the Baskerville type of John Baskerville in Birmingham that appeared towards the end of Caslon's career, Caslon's type was quite conservative. Johnson notes that his 1764 specimen "might have been produced a hundred years earlier".[32] Stanley Morison described Caslon's type as "a happy archaism".[33]

Besides regular text fonts, Caslon cut blackletter or "Gothic" types, which were also printed on his specimen. These could be used for purposes such as title pages, emphasis and drop caps.[35] Bold type did not exist in Caslon's time, although some of his larger-size fonts are quite bold.[14]

One criticism of some Caslon-style typefaces has been a concern that the capitals are too thick in design and stand out too much, making for an uneven colour on the page. Printer and typeface designer Frederic Goudy was a critic: "the strong contrast between the over-black stems of the capitals and the light weight stems in the lower-case...makes a 'spotty' page". He cited dissatisfaction with the style as an incentive for becoming more involved in type design around 1911, when he created Kennerley Old Style as an alternative.[36]

Caslon's types fell out of interest in the late eighteenth century, to some extent first due to the arrival of "transitional"-style typefaces like Baskerville and then more significantly with the growing popularity of "Didone" or modern designs in Britain, under the influence of the quality of printing achieved by printers such as Bodoni.[39][18][d] His Caslon foundry remained in business at Chiswell Street, London, but began to sell alternative and additional designs.[40][41] His grandson, William Caslon III, broke away from the family to establish a competitor foundry at Salisbury Square, by buying up the company of the late Joseph Jackson.[42] Justin Howes suggests that there may have been some attempt to update some of Caslon's types towards the newer style starting before 1816, noting that Caslon type cast by the 1840s included "a handful of sorts, Q, [an open-form italic] h, ſh, Q, T and Y, which would have been unfamiliar to Caslon, and which may have been cut at the end of the eighteenth century in a modest attempt to bring Old Face up to date. The h, ſh and T are to be seen [in a book from] 1816, large parts of which appear to have been printed from well-worn standing type."[3]

At the commencement of the 18th century the native talent of the founders was so little prized by the printers of the metropolis, that they were in the habit of importing founts from Holland, ...and the printers of the present day might still have been driven to the inconvenience of importation had not a genius, in the person of William Caslon, arisen to rescue his country from the disgrace of typographical inferiority.[43]

Interest in eighteenth-century printing returned in the nineteenth century with the rise of the arts and crafts movement, and Caslon's types returned to popularity in books and fine printing among companies such as the Chiswick Press, as well as display use in situations such as advertising.[45][46][47][48]

Fine printing presses, notably the Chiswick Press, bought original Caslon type from the Caslon foundry; copies of these matrices were also made by electrotyping.[45] From the 1860s new types began to appear in a style similar to Caslon's, starting from Miller & Richard's Modernised Old Style of c. 1860.[49] (Bookman Old Style is a descendant of this typeface, but made bolder with a boosted x-height very unlike the original Caslon.[49]) The Caslon foundry covertly replaced some sizes with new, cleaner versions that could be machine-cast and cut new swash capitals.[45]

In the United States, "Caslon" became almost a genre, with numerous new designs unconnected to the original, with modifications such as shortened descenders to fit American common line, or lining figures, or bold and condensed designs, many foundries creating (or, in many cases, pirating) versions.[50] By the 1920s, American Type Founders offered a large range of styles, some numbered rather than named.[51] The hot metal typesetting companies Linotype, Monotype, Intertype and Ludlow, which sold machines that cast type under the control of a keyboard, brought out their own Caslon releases.

According to book designer Hugh Williamson, a second decline in Caslon's popularity in Britain did, however, set in during the twentieth century due to the arrival of revivals of other old-style and transitional designs from Monotype and Linotype. These included Bembo, Garamond, Plantin, Baskerville and Times New Roman.[53]

Caslon type again entered a new technology with phototypesetting, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, and then again with digital typesetting technology. There are many typefaces called "Caslon" as a result of that and the lack of an enforceable trademark on the name "Caslon", which reproduce the original designs in varying degrees of faithfulness.

Many of Caslon's original punches and matrices survived in the collection of the Caslon company (along with many replacement and additional characters), and are now part of the St Bride Library and Type Museum collections in Britain. Copies held by the Paris office of the Caslon company, the Fonderie Caslon, were transferred to the collection of the Muse de l'Imprimerie in Nantes.[54] Scholarly research on Caslon's type has been carried out by historians including Alfred F. Johnson, Harry Carter, James Mosley and Justin Howes.

Some Caslon faces were augmented by adding new features, in particular swash capitals for historicist printing.[45][55] From around 1887 the type was sold with additional swash capitals.[56] Howes describes these as "based rather closely on Franois Guyot's [popular 22pt] italic of around 1557...found in English printing until the early years of the eighteenth century."[3] From around 1893 the company started to additionally recut some letters to make the type more regular and create matrices which could be cast by machine.[3] Due to the cachet of the Caslon name, some of the recuttings and modifications of the original Caslon types were apparently not publicly admitted.[45] The H.W. Caslon company also licensed to other printers matrices made by electrotyping, although some companies may also have made unauthorized copies.[45]

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