#indian type

Typography Tuesday

This week’s post is drawn from the article “An Unexpected Legacy, and its Contribution to Early Indian Typography” from Matrix 7, Winter 1987, pp. 69-79, by the leading Linotype designer for Indian typefaces Fiona Ross  and historian of South Asian printing Graham Shaw. The article begins:

Among the more curious and unexpected items still preserved in the India Office Library and Records, London, beside prototype pistols and muskets, ceremonial chairs and model ships, is a small collection of typographical material -- letter drawings, punches, matrices and types -- which give a new and fascinating insight into the development of certain Indian typefaces in England during the early nineteenth century. These materials originally belonged to Sir Charles Wilkins, the first librarian to the East India Company . . . .

The “typographical material” being addressed are for Bengali, the fifth most widely used writing system in the world, and Modi, a cursive script used for writing Marathi, the language of the Maharashtra region of western India. Ross and Shaw observe that Wilkins, who they call the ‘Caxton of Bengal,’ played a seminal role in the early development of Indian typography in England, and use this cache of original type designs by Wilkins to demonstrate that.

Matrix 7 was printed by John and Rosalind Randle at the Whittington Press in Andoversford, Goucestershire, in an edition of 960 copies. Ours is one of 850 copies bound by Smith Settle & Co. in patterned paper designed for the Curwen Press by Enid Marx.  

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