Eleventh Book of Specimens of Printing Types and Every Requisite for Typographical Uses and Adornment
The eleventh specimen book of the Philadelphia foundry MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, dated June 1878 and headed The Oldest Type Foundry in America.
What it is
The eleventh specimen book of the Philadelphia foundry MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, dated June 1878 and headed The Oldest Type Foundry in America. A preface signed by Thomas MacKellar, John F. Smith, Richard Smith and Peter A. Jordan claims the most complete assortment of plain and ornamented types, argues that quality at a fair profit beats cheapness, and asks printers to order by name and number instead of cutting out pages. About 870 scanned pages follow: brass rules, borders, scripts, book faces such as the Scotch-Face and Bradford series, titles, Gothics, Antiques, Tuscans, shaded and ornamented display faces, blackletter, German, Hebrew, Greek and music types, then stock cuts for newspapers and trades, ready-made advertising catchwords such as FAMILY COAL and UMBRELLAS, check blanks and Centennial cuts. Display lines are comic mock notices, such as Young Spendthrifts, Old Mendshifts.
Why read it now
Read it as a catalogue that sells by showing the product at work. Every face is set in a line of copy written to amuse, so a printer judges the type in use rather than as a bare alphabet, the same logic as a product demo or a template gallery today. The ordering system, a name or number above every item, is a small lesson in making repeat purchase easy. The preface's case for quality over price, and its polite refusal to attack rivals, still read as sound positioning for a premium supplier. On type choice the book records what later designers rejected: dozens of shaded, outlined and ornamented display faces, the Victorian excess that the private press revival of the 1890s turned against. Readability research favours plain faces for body text; the novelty faces here suit short headlines at most. Use: when you build a catalogue or rate card, show each product in a realistic sample with a short order code, and write the sample copy with some wit.
Passages worth keeping
A good article sold at a fair profit is cheaper to the buyer than an inferior one at a low price.
الجودة بسعر عادل توفر على المشتري أكثر من الرخيص الرديء، وهي حجة المورد الذي لا ينافس بالسعر.
We have no controversy with competitors, unless in the friendly game of excelling, but rather rejoice in the general prosperity of the Craft.
المسبك ينافس بالتفوق في العمل لا بمهاجمة المنافسين، ويقدم نفسه جزءًا من صناعة مزدهرة.
Every type, border, or cut shown in our Book has a name or number printed over it, by which it may be ordered, and therefore the pages need not be mutilated by cutting out specimens to show what is wanted.
لكل عنصر اسم أو رقم يُطلب به، فيبقى الكتالوج سليمًا ويسهل على الزبون أن يطلب مرة بعد مرة.
DICTIONARY OF DIFFICULTIES A Standard Work Showing how Persons may avoid Unnecessary Trouble By Minding their own Business
سطر العرض نكتة مكتوبة لتجعل صفحة الحروف ممتعة، فيتذكر الطابع شكل الحرف مع الطرفة.
WHEN ORDERING, BE CAREFUL TO ADD THE WORDS "NEWSPAPER CUT" TO THE NUMBER ORDERED
حتى الرسوم الجاهزة لها تعليمات طلب دقيقة، فالكتاب أداة عرض وأداة طلب في الوقت نفسه.
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
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