A Specimen of Printing Types Cast in the Letter Foundery of Alexander Wilson and Sons, Glasgow
A 1786 type specimen from the Glasgow letter foundry of Alexander Wilson and Sons, with no preface, price list or sales copy: the showings, printed on rectos only, are the whole book.
What it is
A 1786 type specimen from the Glasgow letter foundry of Alexander Wilson and Sons, with no preface, price list or sales copy: the showings, printed on rectos only, are the whole book. It opens with display sizes from Twelve Lines Pica down, then two-line capitals, then text sizes from French Canon through Great Primer, Paragon, English, Pica, Small Pica, Long Primer, Bourgeois and Brevier to Minion and Nonpareil. Every text showing sets the same opening of Cicero's first speech against Catiline and closes with the capital alphabet. Cuts of one size are numbered, No 1 to No 3, and some are cast on a larger body, such as Pica on an English body. The last pages show Saxon set with the Lord's Prayer in Old English, Greek including a 'Glasgow Homer Greek', Hebrew, black-letter set with statute wording, four numbered borders and rows of flowers.
Why read it now
This is the controlled comparison in its plainest form. With one Latin text in every size and cut and nothing else on the page, the buyer judges only the letters: their colour on the page, their fit, and how many words fall to a line. Numbering the cuts within one size turns the book into side-by-side tests rather than a display. The principle holds for anyone choosing between near variants: keep the content fixed, change one thing, label it. A/B tests of ad creative rest on the same logic. What has dated: the book sells nothing in words, so it assumes a buyer who already knows the trade names and what to look for. There are no prices, no terms and no claims, and a general buyer today would need a guide beside it. The long s and the Latin text also belong to their time. Use: when a client must pick between versions of a logo, a pack or an ad, show every version with the same copy and image, one variable changed and labelled, each on its own page.
Passages worth keeping
SPECIMEN OF Printing Types CAST IN THE Letter Foundery
العنوان يقدم الكتاب على أنه عينات حروف مصبوبة في المسبك، أي منتج جاهز للشراء لا كتاب للقراءة.
Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quamdiu nos etiam furor iste tuus eludet?
هذا مطلع خطبة شيشرون ضد كاتلين: إلى متى تسيء استغلال صبرنا؟ والمسبك يستعمله نصًا ثابتًا في كل عينة حتى تكون المقارنة بين الحروف وحدها.
Pica No 1. on an English Body.
عنوان العينة يحدد الحجم ورقم القطع والقالب الذي صُب عليه، فيعرف المشتري بدقة المتغير الذي يقارنه.
Bourgeois Roman. No 3. Small Face.
قطع ثالث من الحجم نفسه بوجه أصغر، يُعرض بالنص نفسه ليرى المشتري الفرق في الكثافة وعدد الكلمات في السطر.
Glasgow Homer Greek.
اسم الحرف اليوناني يربطه بطبعة هوميروس في غلاسكو، فيستعمل الاسم نفسه دليلًا على جودة الحرف في عمل معروف.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
If this library is useful, leave an email
We send new patterns, ads, and notes when we add them. Name and phone are optional.
You are on the list
We will write when we add more library material.