Diphthongs
I think that I have opened a giant can of worms for those of us that love complete showings of typeface specimens.
Due to another thread, I got out my large Lanston Monotype book last night and started to systematically compare it to the specimens shown in Mac McGrew’s American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century. For whatever reason, there are at least 100 faces shown of McGrew’s book that do not include the diphthongs (AE, OE, ae, oe) that are shown in the Lanston Monotype specimens. They are either totally missing or, more strangely, partially missing. Some specimens include only the upper or lowercase ones in McGrew. Also missing are the ‘pound sterling’ characters included in many of the Monotype fonts. There are also long ‘s’ figures and ligatures not included in the book, as well as lining and non-lining figures that were an option in some Monotype fonts, as well as some small caps. I won’t even get into the variety of Monotype faces that offerred the choice of long and short descenders!
After several hours of jotting down notes, I was absolutely amazed!
To clarify an earlier posting, I have found that Goudy did design diphthongs for Kennerley, Kennerly Italic and Hadriano (AE only for Hadriano).
I have also seen Goudy’s drawings for diphthongs for Powell, Powell Italic and Pabst, BUT those are NOT shown in the Monotype specimens or McGrew’s book!!!!! Very baffling, because it appears that Monotype has actually added their own diphthong cuttings to many faces that probably otherwise were not initially designed with them. Goudy’s Italian Oldstyle for instance.
It is going to take a while to digest all of this, and add all of the information to a large list of additions, corrections and omissions to Mac McGrew’s book.
There are also designed Æ and æ for Goudys Monotype 38E and Monotype 381 (Goudy Light Old Style and Italic)
Regards Jens
Monotype 38E.jpg
Thanks Jens,
Your specimens show the additional accented vowels for setting European languages (something I haven’t broached yet) but, interestingly enough, your specimens show no dollar sign or pound-sterling characters.
Regards,
Rick
Hello Rick
Yes, of course the specimen shows European characters, the types the specimen was printed from has been used at Egmont H. Petersens Royal Printing Office in Copenhagen from ca. 1920 to 1949. I only added the scan to the informations regarding the diphthongs Æ and æ to show them.
The interesting thing with this types is that it is very unusual, for this period to find Lanston Monotype faces which has not been issued by English Monotype, in Europe.
Egmont H. Petersens issued a lot of different magazines, and as far as I can se they purchased the types after WW I, for modernizing some of them. The American way was very popular and shows something new instead of the old worlds traditions.
To buy matrices in US instead of Europe must have been a very big decision. Not only was it necessary with special adjustments to European standards, the manufacture should also design letters as Ø, ø and å – and if they was not already designed Æ and æ. In Denmark we never have used £ and $.
In 1949 Egmont outsourced the types and they were purchased by a small printing office in Svendborg, from were I purchased them in 2007.
Regards Jens
Monotype 38E 36pkt.JPG