A Specimen of Cast Ornaments

What it is

A trade specimen from William Caslon's Salisbury Square Letter Foundry in London, printed by C. Whittingham under the royal arms and the line 'Letter-Founder to the King'. It shows 128 cast metal ornaments that printers could buy and set alongside type. Each cut is printed at full size with a caption that gives only its number and its price, from 3d. for the smallest pieces to 7s. for the largest. The subjects run from border units and small flower sprays to sailing ships, cattle, trophies of arms and music, and pastoral scenes. There is no sales copy at all. The last page is a price list of founts by body size, from English and larger down to Pearl, with rates for quotations, two-line letters, script, music and oriental types, an allowance for old metal traded in, a discount for cash, and a promise that every size is ready cast.

Why read it now

This is the specimen in its barest form: the product demonstrates itself and the page carries two facts, a number and a price. That still works wherever the buyer is a specifier who needs to choose and order without a meeting, as with stock photo libraries, icon sets, tile and fabric books, and B2B parts lists. A price on each item removes the enquiry step, and the spread of prices lets buyers sort themselves by budget. B2B buying research from Gartner finds buyers spend only a small share of their buying time with suppliers' sales staff, which favours catalogues a buyer can use alone. What has dated is the authority device. A royal warrant still carries weight in Britain, but for most firms the working equivalent today is client names, certifications and reviews. The old-metal trade-in and the cash discount are early payment and loyalty terms that still read as normal. To use it: if designers, engineers or procurement staff read your catalogue, cut the adjectives, number every item and print the price or price band beside it.

Passages worth keeping

The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.

What it teaches best

• Specimen as proof
• Mail-order catalog
• Image carries the claim

Read the original archive.org