Wood Type ID

Unicorn Graphics has a couple of catalogs online:

http://www.unicorngraphics.com/wood%20type%20museum.asp

But my favorite source is David Greer’s photographs of his (and Lyons’) specimen books at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39182740@N04/

Neither is a guide to typeface identification, though, which is what you’re really seeking.

Regards,
David M.
www.CircuitousRoot.com

Thanks, David. I am familiar with the Unicorn Graphics site which is really helpful. I was not aware of David Greer’s flikr posts - both are great.
I am ideally looking for specimen sheets of fonts (once I’ve properly identified them) so I can accurately replace missing sorts.

to emthree and others

You are to be congratulated on your enthusiasm that you wish to replace missing sorts accurately.

You brought to mind an incident where I worked, we were short of some characters of Mergenthaler Metrolite duplexed with Metrobold (linotype matrices). So, some mats were ordered, and we tolerated a discrepancy till the proofreader came across the word Saab which had the two styles of a together; one is in the style of the a which appears in most roman-face type, the other a had the style which appears in authentic italic-style faces. That is, the roman-style face usually has three horizontal pieces of strokes in its shape, while the italic loses the uppermost part of the a. Comprehend? Fortunately, there are very few words used in this country which have two letters a together.

Alan.

Three more resources, the last of which might be closest to what you’re looking for.

First, in their rather nice collection of scanned books, the Silver Buckle Press at the Univ. of Wisconsin has several wood type specimen books, including some by Hamilton and one by Morgan (a collector). These are pretty good scans. See:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/SilverBuckle/Browse.html

Second, the Silver Buckle has also produced a specimen of their own holdings of wood type. I do not actually have this one yet, but here’s the page for it:

http://silverbucklepress.library.wisc.edu/printworks/WoodTypeBook.html

Finally, the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press has in print (I think they do it print-on-demand; it’s spiral-bound) “A Specimen Portfolio of Wood Type in the Cary Collection.” It’s a collection of specimens of all of their holdings, done as completely as space allows (so it isn’t “completely complete,” but it has a lot - though a bit lighter on ornamented types than I might have wished). Moreover, it is arranged with a systematic classification system intended to help you locate a typeface by its features. At $19.95, it’s quite a deal.

http://ritpress.rit.edu/

(search on the title)

Regards,
David M.
www.CircuitousRoot.com

There are actually some very nice books out there. John Horn recently published a reprint of Hamilton’s 1907 catalog. Dave Peat has published a reprint of Page’s 1888 catalog (and others) and Greg Ruffa has published a book titled The Art of Wood Type which has photos of complete fonts as well as black and white renderings of them. The first two books from the original manufacturers will NEVER show full alphabets. Just samples of each style and size.

As a general rule, most of the older manufacturers stamped their name on the capital “A”. If you can post a picture/sample of the font you are trying to ID - AND tell us if there is a maker’s mark of the cap A, there are a few of us that will be happy to try to nail it down for you. I do not have an extensive collection of wood type catalogs, but a decent enough number to be fairly successful in finding IDs of posted fonts. The usual dissapointment that is often encountered is to find the original face only to discover that it was given a number and not a name.

Rick

emthree,

Rick’s suggestion, about showing a picture/sample, of the face that you are trying to identify, is excellent! Letting us know what country you are from, first, will narrow it down, a little. I only have catalogs of faces that were cut in the United States. The main purpose of printing full alphabets, of my collection, was just for the purpose of identification, if you might be missing a letter, or only have one character. I agree that my specimens are not “user-friendly.”

If you are missing a letter, and the particular face and manufacturer are identified, it is possible that the dimensions of the block, on which the letter was cut, might even be possible, since there are many of us that might have access to an actual duplicate font.

Unfortunately, early specimen books did not show every character that was cut, and few early manufacturers put maker’s marks on their cap A’s.

A picture really-is worth a thousand words of explanation.

Dave Greer

Wow, thanks very much to all for the great tips. I was hesitant to start posting all the fonts/characters I would like to replicate sorts for without doing my diligent research first. Now I have a few sources and hopefully can avoid barraging the list with ID requests.

Thanks, all!

Be aware that some of us really enjoy the ID requests. Don’t be afraid to post them here!

Dan