British Letterpress

Tag: Caslon

  • Spitalfields Life: At the Caslon Letter Foundry

    Spitalfields Life: At the Caslon Letter Foundry

    Anoth­er series of pic­tures of the Caslon Let­ter Foundry at 22/23 Chiswell St., Lon­don.  Caslon were tak­en over by Stephen­son, Blake around 1937.  Pic­tures from the St Bride Library via. the Gen­tle Author.

  • Spitalfields Life: Caslon Letter Foundry (Part 2)

    The Gen­tle Author again looks at type­founders, and unearths his­tor­i­cal images of the Caslon Let­ter Foundry

  • Spitalfields Life: The Caslon Letter Foundry

    The ever-excel­lent Gen­tle Author looks at the Caslon Let­ter Foundry, Chiswell Street, Lon­don

  • Stephenson, Blake

    Stephenson, Blake

    This arti­cle is about the tra­di­tion­al type-found­ing activ­i­ties of Stephen­son, Blake. In late 2005 Thomas Blake sold the orig­i­nal site and a new firm, Stephen­son and Blake Lim­it­ed, con­tin­ue the brass rule and oth­er brass prod­ucts from Eff­in­g­ham Road, Sheffield

    Stephenson, Blake Card Fount Catalogue
    Stephen­son, Blake Card Fount Cat­a­logue

    The now defunct, but still famous name of Stephen­son, Blake (SB) was cre­at­ed when James Blake and John Stephen­son signed a part­ner­ship agree­ment on 25 Sep­tem­ber 1830 to last until 1840. The agree­ment was renewed, and the name per­sist­ed, absorb­ing many oth­er type foundries in the inter­ven­ing years. The foundry had always been based around Upper Allen Street in Sheffield

    The foundry had been in Sheffield in one form or anoth­er since around 1797 when a local book­seller (John Slater) and a book­seller-print­er (William Bow­er) joined forces with a print­er (Clay Bacon) to cast type, issu­ing their first spec­i­men in 1809. That found­ing work had per­sist­ed under many names until tak­en on by Gar­nett and Blake, and then becom­ing Stephen­son, Blake.

    Since the ear­li­est times SB had worked to 1/5000th of an inch as a mat­ter of course: the type they found­ed was con­sid­ered the most pre­cise in the UK.

    A Lon­don ware­house was opened in 1865 to sup­ply the demands of Fleet Street news­pa­pers. Busi­ness was so good that they removed to larg­er Lon­don premis­es on Alder­s­gate Street in 1871.

    The next major change was the move to the Amer­i­can Point sys­tem which had been adopt­ed by Amer­i­ca in 1886. Some firms in the UK were quick to adopt this change-like Cax­ton in 1895-it was a fur­ther four years before SB renewed their moulds and matri­ces to work on the point sys­tem. A key advan­tage for cus­tomers was that type and spac­ing was now inter­change­able between sup­pli­ers: print­ers hav­ing a uni­form sys­tem to mea­sure size.

    A rival founder, Lon­don-based Charles Reed and Sons hit finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and was sold in 1905 to Stephen­son, Blake who offered £5,000 for the foundry, matri­ces and the 82 tons of stock. The pur­chase was effec­tive from 1 Jan­u­ary 1906 and the firm was known for a time as ​‘Stephen­son, Blake and Com­pa­ny and Sir Charles Reed and Sons’. The work of the Reed foundry and some equip­ment was shipped to Sheffield where an almost self-con­tained foundry exist­ed along­side the SB equip­ment.

    In Jan­u­ary 1907 a Wood­work­ing Depart­ment was estab­lished over the road from the foundry to make fur­ni­ture for com­pos­ing rooms and type cas­es. A year lat­er the pro­duc­tion of wood let­ter was brought in-house and exam­ples first appeared in the spec­i­men books of 1910.

    All type founders were affect­ed by the Great War of 1914–1918 and this led to fur­ther ratio­nal­i­sa­tion in the indus­try. Dis­cus­sions began with H W Caslon about an amal­ga­ma­tion, but this did not reach a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion at this time. Caslon’s fac­to­ry had been used to man­u­fac­ture items need­ed for war, and this pro­vid­ed finan­cial help to take them out of the finan­cial prob­lems. Build­ing on this, Caslon issued a book­let called Two Cen­turies of Type Found­ing which the wider indus­try admired.

    Stephen­son, Blake react­ed by engag­ing Robert Fishen­den to pro­duce the most ambi­tious spec­i­men book ever devised. Sev­en hun­dred pages were hand-set in Lon­don, shipped to Stephen­son Blake and then to West Street where the printer‑J W Northend Ltd-had the task of tak­ing proofs. These were inspect­ed by H K Stephen­son and R G Blake before being com­mit­ted to print on two hand fed quad-demy Miehle machines. The qual­i­ty of the result was high­light­ed when the book was reviewed by the Times Edu­ca­tion­al Sup­ple­ment. J W Northend was told that SB would take their busi­ness else­where if they moved to mechan­i­cal com­po­si­tion, and Northend resist­ed this until the 1970s.

    In 1936 SBs main competitor‑H W Caslon-had again met finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and went in to vol­un­tary liq­ui­da­tion. Stephen­son, Blake bought the good­will, assets and punch­es of Caslon, and retained the name by call­ing their Sheffield premis­es The Caslon Let­ter Foundry.

    World War II had a great effect on the foundry: not only because many men were called up, but air raids dis­rupt­ed the busi­ness. In Decem­ber 1940 air raids meant that gas, elec­tric­i­ty and water were lost to the foundry in Sheffield. R G Blake had ensured that cast­ing machines were ready for work at his home, and these were used for cast­ing until mains ser­vices returned in Jan­u­ary 1942.

    Post 1950 the Wood­work­ing Depart­ment had expand­ed to pro­vide a full ser­vice to com­pos­ing rooms and many pres­ti­gious orders were exe­cut­ed includ­ing the Sun­day Times’ com­pos­ing room in 1973.

    Fol­low­ing the trends of the indus­try Stephen­son, Blake found it dif­fi­cult to remain a let­ter­press busi­ness in face of com­pe­ti­tion from litho machines. They diver­si­fied by offer­ing the ​‘Let­ter­phot’ sys­tem of pho­to type­set­ting; and turn­ing the wood oper­a­tions to the man­u­fac­ture of pre­ci­sion instru­ment cas­es. The fir­m’s pre­ci­sion engi­neer­ing team was used by Rolls-Royce Olym­pus to pro­duce moulds for parts for Con­corde.

    The firm found it dif­fi­cult to pay busi­ness rates on the sprawl­ing col­lec­tion of build­ings around Upper Allen street and began to divest them­selves of them, includ­ing knock­ing some down. Re-loca­tion was con­sid­ered to Der­byshire to avoid this over­head.

    Just before 2000 the firm sold its non-print­ing busi­ness­es and Thomas James Blake looked to re-launch the firm. For a time the firm remained pro­duc­ing relat­ed items for the non-print­ing mar­ket: brass rule for plas­tics firms; Mazak type for hot-foil­ing and cab­i­net mak­ing for muse­ums. The col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal matri­ces and punch­es went to the Type Muse­um in Lon­don with assis­tance from the Sci­ence Muse­um.

    By Decem­ber 2004 this final ele­ment of the busi­ness had ceased, although the fir­m’s web­site ran until March 2005. The site is cur­rent­ly being re-devel­oped with the his­tor­i­cal build­ing being turned to flats. The scheme will be called Impact after SBs 1965 face designed by Geof­frey Lee.

    Further Information

  • Type and Typography

    Type and Typography

    Let­ter­press print­ing depends on a raised image, it’s known as a relief pro­cess. Mov­able type was the break­through that allowed print­ers to use and re-use indi­vidual char­ac­ters. When you prac­tice let­ter­press print­ing it’s easy to for­get just how dif­fi­cult it must be for type founders to cre­ate tiny pieces of cast met­al hard enough to with­stand a tre­mend­ous force that are made to tol­er­ances of less than one thou­sandth of an inch.

    Guten­berg of Ger­many is cred­ited with the inven­tion of move­able type around 1450; but records show that both Chi­nese and Kore­an invent­ors had used the idea before the time. Gutenberg’s inven­tion was the first to be exploit­ed and the idea spread rap­idly. There are three key stages in found­ing type –

    • Punch­cut­ting: cre­at­ing a three-dimen­sion­al rep­res­ent­a­tion of the let­ter in the end of a bar of met­al. This skilled work requires a num­ber of oth­er punch­es and tools to be used to cre­ate the punch, and then it be sub­ject to harden­ing. Mod­ern-day equi­val­ents of punch­es can be seen in DIY stores to mark met­al equip­ment with ini­tials.
    • Cre­at­ing the Mat­rix: this step takes the punch, and strikes it in a soft­er met­al to make a neg­at­ive mould. The met­al is usu­ally brass
    • Cast­ing: this is fill­ing the mould with mol­ten type met­al and remov­ing the cast type

    Type Found­ing in the Print­ing Eco­nomy in the UK

    Type found­ing is a spe­cial­ist indus­try need­ing artis­tic and design skills in equal meas­ure with engin­eer­ing prowess and abil­ity to work in some of the very heavy aspects of indus­try. The indus­try was cen­tred around the demand in Fleet Street, Lon­don; but oth­er sig­ni­fic­ant type founders worked where tech­nical expert­ise was great­est-for exam­ple Steph­en­son, Blake of Shef­field.

    The key con­straint for print­ers was that type from a foundry had to be assem­bled by hand before print­ing could begin. This com­pos­i­tion activ­ity took a great deal of time and tied up cap­ital in the type need­ed. As the 19th cen­tury grew to a close peo­ple we very keen to auto­mate this part of the process-work began to look at pro­du­cing type in the order it was need­ed. That’s to say go dir­ectly from the copy to the met­al type with no sort­ing or com­pos­ing pro­cess in between.

    There became two fam­il­ies of type: foundry type (gen­er­ally hard­er qual­ity) that was pro­duced in the great foundries; and com­pos­i­tion type (slight­ly soft­er qual­ity) that was pro­duced from copy either by a spe­cial­ist firm, or even by the print­er him­self.

    UK Type Foundries

    The UK had a num­ber of very influ­en­tial foundries. While ear­ly met­al type from the con­tin­ent (in par­tic­u­lar Dutch type) was con­sidered super­ior, the UK caught up and great names like Caslon, Fig­gins and Steph­en­son, Blake were estab­lished. The large num­ber of small foundries gave way to a smal­ler num­ber of large foundries. The last of the Eng­lish Foundries, Steph­en­son, Blake of Shef­field stopped trad­ing in Decem­ber 2004. That foundry alone had acquired Charles Reed and Sons in 1905, and H. W. Caslon and Co in 1937.

    Com­pos­i­tion Type

    Allow­ing print­ers to cast their own type was a key dri­ver behind devel­op­ments in com­pos­i­tion type. There were two broad approach­es: build a com­plete line of type from a machine; or build indi­vidual char­ac­ters in the cor­rect order from the machine.

    Lino­type and Inter­type took a sim­ilar approach: the oper­ator sat at a key­board and typed the copy. While copy was being typed the matri­ces (type moulds) were assem­bled with­in the machine. Once a line was com­pleted the moulds were filled with hot type met­al and the res­ult­ing ​‘slug’ was forced from the machine, being trimmed and shaped in the pro­cess. The Lud­low Typo­graph was sim­ilar, but the matri­ces were assem­bled by hand.

    Mono­type adop­ted a dif­fer­ent tack. They split the oper­a­tion between key­ing the copy and cast­ing the type. Copy was typed on a Mono­type Key­board pow­ered by com­pressed air which punched holes in a paper tape. The tape was then tak­en to a cast­ing machine  which used the paper tape to pos­i­tion a case of matri­ces and cast a sin­gle piece of type for each key­stroke on the paper tape. The advant­age of this approach was to allow for cor­rec­tion after com­pos­i­tion had been pro­duced by the machine.

    In mod­ern times, Mono­type machines can be con­trolled by com­puter–allow­ing the dir­ect pro­duc­tion of met­al type from a com­puter key­board.

    In this section

    Fur­ther Information