#type specimens

Typography Tuesday

Here are some examples of chromatic wood type borders from an untitled and undated specimen catalog of the Luzern, Switzerland, wood-type manufacture Roman Scherer (1848-1922), produced ca. 1905. Scherer founded Holztypenfabrik Roman Scherer in Luzern in 1877, designing and manufacturing wood type using wood from local fruit trees. Scherer’s company was the first and probably the only Swiss wood-type manufacturer, operating until the late 1970s. 

The business remained prosperous after Scherer's death, but in the mid-1960s the foundry had to shut down because of the construction of Swiss Autobahn 27, and in 1966 the company was acquired by the Haas Type Foundry and moved to Münchenstein near Basel. Manufacture of wood type slowed and in 1976 production was moved to Gedi-Schriften of the Diller brothers company in Bamberg, Germany. Today, Scherer type catalogs are much sought after.

View more posts from this specimen book.

View more posts with wood type.

Join us at Typographics 2024 in NYC this weekend! Draw Down will be participating in the book fair, which is free and open to the public!

From O.I. Leman (Moscow) type specimen book, 1914

Type Specimens featuring Taviraj & Roboto

Typography Tuesday

Pelican Press Borders

The Pelican Press, founded in 1916 by British printer and activist Francis Meynell (1891-1975) -- who also founded the more well-known Nonesuch Press in 1922, used a wide range of typographic ornaments and borders. The press published this specimen book, Typography: Type Specimens . . . of the Pelican Press in London in the 1920s for the benefit of their customers "to assist the amateur to a right appreciation of type-forms." Furthermore,

. . . it shows what can be commanded into his service by any buyer of printing; and it attempts to demonstrate what a commercial press can do to enrich the craft by ransacking the treasure houses of the past and breathing into old bodies the living spirit of our day.

Here are a few specimen pages that serve as examples. Typography. . . . is a donation from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).

View another post from this publication.

View other type specimen books.

Typography Tuesday

Here are some more typefaces from the Book of American Types published in 1934 by the American Type Founders (ATF). The designs shown here are:

Georgian and Stationers Initials: designers and release dates unknown.

Nubian: designed by Willard T. Sniffin for ATF around 1928.

Keynote: designed by Willard T. Sniffin and released by ATF in 1933.

Comstock: unknown designer, initially released by the Inland Type Foundry in 1902 and acquired by ATF when it bought Inland in 1911.

Raleigh Gothic Condensed: designed by Morris Fuller Benton and released by ATF in 1934.

Cloister: designed by Morris Fuller Benton ca. 1913.

ATF was the predominant producer of metal type in America for the first 50 years of its existence beginning in 1892, producing about 85 percent of all type manufactured in the United States at the time, and remained influential in the industry almost until its closing in the early 1990s. Our copy of Book of American Types is another donation from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick.

View more typefaces from the Book of American Types.

View other type specimen books.