the Crafted Letter

The Height of Chromatic Type

These images are from a rare type specimen housed in Columbia University’s Butler Library.

Printed in 1874 by William H. Page & Co. The Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, Etc. contains over 100 pages of the most colourful, eye-popping type. These excellent photos are by Becca Hirsbrunner.

“Chromatic” typefaces are designed so that each character has separate layers that are intended to be typeset in alignment and printed in different colours. Many of the designs above overlap each other creating a third colour.

This specimen book was used to sell the woodtype to printers. The type is said to have cost around 25 cents per letter, per colour layer, certainly not cheap back then.

From the introduction to Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, 1874:

To Color Printers We have the pleasure of laying before you a Specimen Book of Chromatic Wood Type, and would say it is now eighteen years since we began Type making. Progress in the Art can be seen by comparing the present volume, with Specimens of that date. There were at that time five or six other manufacturers in the country. Now we manufacture seven-eights of all the Wood Type made, and are now able to show by itself a Book of Chromatic Type and Borders that is not excelled in the world. It has taken years of time to prepare and perfect it. The designs with two or three exceptions are entirely original with us. The demand for Chromatic Type is quite limited, therefore we cannot apply this book free, only to our Agents.  Most Respectfully Yours,  Wm. H. Page & Co. 

There are many modern versions of chromatic type, including Terrance Weinzierl’s award winning Pizza Press face.

We were just stunned by the beauty of this chromatic wood type posted by @typeworship on New Year’s Day, and the links provided offer page after page of eye-popping chromatic type. As a type nerd, it was a wonderful way to spend an hour on the first day of 2017.

William H. Page & Co. of Norwich, Connecticut, was founded by Page in 1859 (which was preceded three years earlier by his type manufacturing company Page & Bassett), and dominated wood type production in the U. S. until the 1880s, when it was seriously challenged by our own Hamilton Manufacturing Company in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. When Page retired in 1891, he sold his stock and equipment to Hamilton, eventually leading Hamilton by 1910 to become the largest manufacturer of wood type in the country. The Hamilton Company finally ceased production of wood type in the 1980s, but today the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers preserves the heritage of wood type manufacturing in the U. S. and continues to develop new fonts of type.

View our own posts on Hamilton Wood Type.