Typography Tuesday
These are pages from a facsimile reprint of a very rare wood type specimen catalog, Specimens of Holly Wood Type Borders, Reglets, and Furniture from Hamilton & Katz in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, originally published sometime between 1884 and 1885, and reproduced in Rochester, N. Y., by Typeco Publications in 2023. Hamilton & Katz was a precursor to the Hamilton Manufacturing Company, once the largest manufacturer of wood type in the world. The catalog, previously unrecorded, was donated to the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection in 2014. Before this catalog came to light there were only two known and recorded Hamilton & Katz type specimen catalogs held in American archives.
The dates are surmised from the facts that it had to have been published before the company changed its name to Hamilton & Baker in 1885, but after the Hamilton & Katz 1884 catalog. The catalog includes ten type designs cut in Holly wood veneer showing Antiques, French Clarendons, and Gothics typical of the 1880s. The specimens range in size from 4-line to 30-line, and the catalog also displays Combination Dashes, Stars, Indexes, Star Rules, and 13 styles of End-wood Borders in a range of sizes.
You can find the full story about this catalog's discovery at the Wood Type Research blog maintained by Prof. David Shields at Virginia Commonwealth University. Our copy of this facsimile is a gift from our friend Leah Good, a graphic designer and typography instructor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.
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