The Printers' Handy Book of Specimens
The portable specimen book of the Johnson Type Foundry in Philadelphia, prefaced in March 1876 by its partners Thomas MacKellar, John F. Smith, Richard Smith and Peter A. Jordan.
What it is
The portable specimen book of the Johnson Type Foundry in Philadelphia, prefaced in March 1876 by its partners Thomas MacKellar, John F. Smith, Richard Smith and Peter A. Jordan. Over more than 400 numbered pages it shows brass rules and borders, eleven uniform series of roman and italic book faces, scripts, antiques, gothics, blackletters and hundreds of ornamented display faces with names like Minaret, Morisco and Greenback, then signs, initials and several hundred numbered and priced stock cuts for trades from druggist to hatter. Body faces are shown with running text on training apprentices, Benjamin Franklin's arrival in Philadelphia, and the foundry's own ads and press notices. Display faces carry comic mock advertisements: a washerwoman who tenders her good offices, and a shoemaker's signboard whose wording shrinks line by line as the type grows.
Why read it now
Read it as a case of the catalogue becoming the advertisement. A newspaper notice reprinted inside calls it merely an advertisement, and that was the plan: the filler text sells the foundry's presses, ink and rules and quotes its press praise. The comic lines still teach. Mock ads for invented traders show each face doing a real job, and the shoemaker's signboard, cut from Artistically Accomplished Boot and Shoemaker down to Shoes as the size rises, is the clearest old lesson that copy must shrink as type grows, the same problem every mobile headline and roadside billboard faces. The stock cuts are the stock-image library of their day: a picture per trade, numbered, priced, ready to drop into a local ad. What has dated: many jokes lean on class, ethnic and gender stereotypes, pages mix a dozen display styles, and the preface's claim that no other foundry in the world can match it is puffery with no test behind it. Use: before design starts, write each headline at three lengths for three sizes.
Passages worth keeping
Not only in the large cities, but in numerous smaller places throughout the country, typographical artists may be found whose work is marked by evidences of fine taste and highly cultivated skill.
يمدح المسبك زبائنه من الطابعين في المدن الصغيرة والكبيرة ويسميهم فنانين، فيبدأ البيع بتقدير مهارة المشتري.
But such a costly and beautiful advertisement can only be the issue of an establishment of great enterprise and resources.
تقول الصحيفة إن الكتاب إعلان في حقيقته، لكن إعلانًا بهذه الكلفة والجمال دليل على قوة الشركة التي أصدرته.
Experience proves that the apprentice foreshadows the workman, just as surely as the bend of the twig foretells the inclination of the tree.
الصبي المتدرب يكشف عن الصانع الذي سيصيره، كما يكشف ميل الغصن الصغير عن ميل الشجرة بعد أن تكبر.
Mr. Petroleus Brad, Artistically Accomplished Boot and Shoemaker
أول سطر في لافتة ساخرة تتقلص عبارتها مع كل حجم أكبر حتى تصير اسمًا مختصرًا وكلمة واحدة عن الأحذية.
Who stands on Slippery Rocks needs be Shod with Spikes
حكمة ساخرة تُستعمل نصًا لعرض الخط: من يقف على صخور زلقة يحتاج إلى حذاء بمسامير، أي أن الموقف الصعب يحتاج أداة مناسبة.
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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