Hand & Eye Foundry: a (hopefully affordable) type foundry in London
Hi all; apologies for cross-posting, but I was a little worried that the ‘hot metal’ section might be a little niche all on its own.
I work at Hand & Eye Letterpress in Whitechapel, running our Monotype composition and super casters. With the arrival of some new matrices, we think it’s probably time to start offering founts of type properly.
To give you an (incomplete) idea of what we have, we can cast various sizes of Baskerville, Bembo, Bodoni, Bulmer, Caslon, Centaur, Clarendon, Ehrhardt, Fournier, Garamond, Gill Sans, Helvetica, Imprint, Joanna, Perpetua, Plantin, Sabon, Scotch Roman, Times New Roman, Walbaum, and various Grotesques.
Of course, we’ll cast however much type anyone wants, but we intend to offer 1/4 strength founts (10A 18a) for £25 in composition sizes (up to 14pt).
So, given the range of faces we have, would anyone be interested in type at that price?
A quick update: I’m casting some lovely Joanna type this week: we have 8pt, 9pt, 10pt, 11pt, 12pt, 14pt.
£25 1/4 fount (10A 18a)
£15 small cap fount
If you need more, then 1/2 fount is £50, full fount is £100; for more than that, we do a discounted rate of £25 per kilo.
We’ll ship anywhere. We’re friendly like that.
If you want to drop us a line, [email protected] is the place to do it.
Another cross-posting: Where I worked, we had a Scanagraver and later a Scanasizer (not Scanasiser?) which engraved a single-colour half-tone on plastic material which was combustible; the sheet material was about 3 points thick. Machine could be changed by operator to either of 2 screen rates, with 2 others available but needed a mechanic to change to the alternative 2; that is, two out of four available at any one time. From memory, 65, 85, and something like 115 and 150. We used 65 at first, then found that, because the plastic engraving printed directly onto newsprint, 85 worked OK.
I think the machines were made in Europe, they used type KT66 wireless (radio) valves (tubes) which may be the Philips equivalent of type 6L6G. Any machines still existent anywhere?
Alan.
P.S.: Interesting (?) story about how we experienced the flammability of the plastic
material. A.
More from Alan
From memory, the Scanagraver/Scanasizer machines were made by Philips of Holland, but I am not certain; anyone heard of them? I believe several were installed in Australia, but I am not even certain of that.
Alan.