A Specimen of Printing Types, with a Specimen of Metal Cast Ornaments
A London foundry's trade catalogue, two works bound as one. The first is the 1795 type specimen of Edmund Fry and Isaac Steele of Type Street, letter-founders to the Prince of Wales.
What it is
A London foundry's trade catalogue, two works bound as one. The first is the 1795 type specimen of Edmund Fry and Isaac Steele of Type Street, letter-founders to the Prince of Wales. After a two-page Advertisement it shows display sizes from Ten Lines Pica down, then every body size from Double Pica down to Pearl, roman beside italic, with numbered variants (No. 1 to No. 4) on different bodies, each set in the same passage from Cicero's first speech against Catiline and closed with the alphabet. Then come two-line and ornamented capitals, script, zodiac, planetary, apothecary and mathematical signs, black-letter set with statute wording, and learned founts: Hebrew, Greek, Ethiopic, Samaritan, Saxon, and Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Tartaric and Malay in Arabic script. The second work, dated 1794, shows metal cast ornaments: ships, borders, flowers and numbered cuts, each priced from sixpence to ten shillings.
Why read it now
The method is a controlled test. By setting the same Cicero text in every size and cut, the foundry lets a printer lay this book beside a rival's, such as Caslon's, and compare the letters with the copy held constant. The Advertisement says so plainly: it asks to be judged by comparison, not believed. That still holds. Buyers trust a comparison they run themselves more than a claim, and a fixed sample across variants is how paint swatches, font sites and good product pages still work. Printing the price over each ornament cut also joins browsing and buying on one page, so the buyer never has to look up a separate list. What has dated: the claim that no foundry in Europe can match the range is a boast the reader cannot check from this book, and the long s, the trade size names and the Latin sample text belong to their century. Use: when you sell a range, show every variant with the same sample content and the price on the sample, and invite the buyer to compare you with the rival already in their head.
Passages worth keeping
they do not wish to hazard an unqualified Assertion, but rather desire he may be convinced by comparison
لا يريد أصحاب المسبك أن يطلقوا ادعاءً مطلقًا، بل يطلبون من الطابع أن يقتنع بنفسه عن طريق المقارنة.
that this Specimen is enriched with such Improvements, and Additions of variety of useful Types, including GREEKS, HEBREWS, and the other ORIENTALS, as no Letter-Foundery in Europe besides can produce.
يقول المسبك إن كتابه يضم تحسينات وإضافات من الحروف، منها اليونانية والعبرية والشرقية، لا يقدر مسبك آخر في أوروبا على مثلها.
Unwilling to tire their Friends by a repetition of promises, FRY and STEELE have only to add, that, in the execution of Orders, they are determined to adhere to the same line of conduct
بدل تكرار الوعود، يكتفي فراي وستيل بالقول إنهما سيحافظان في تنفيذ الطلبات على الأسلوب نفسه الذي عرفه العملاء منهما.
N. B. All the above Sorts may be had with any Fount of Letter, from English to Brevier, inclusive.
ملاحظة للمشتري: هذه الرموز كلها متاحة مع أي مجموعة حروف من الحجم الكبير إلى الصغير، فيعرف ما يطلبه دون سؤال.
Metal Cast Ornaments, CURIOUSLY ADJUSTED TO PAPER, BY Edmund Fry and Isaac Steele
عنوان الجزء الثاني يَعِد بزخارف معدنية مصبوبة ومضبوطة بدقة على ارتفاع الحروف، أي جاهزة للطباعة مع النص مباشرة.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
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