Baskerville

Baskerville type

Recently discovered at Whittington: the diecase for 24-point Baskerville,which went missing a while ago. It’s probable that only a handful of these were made (only 11 were made for 24-point Caslon), and this one is barely used, and comes with the nicely lettered label from the Monotype department of Oxford University Press, whose diecases have been at Whittington since 1986. When time allows we shall be fonting Baskerville in 24-, 22-, 18-, 16-, 14- and 12-point roman and italic (roman only in 24- and 22-point), with all the ligatures and special sorts that Oxford always included with each face they installed – the 24-point roman includes the attractive ct ligature. We shall only do a small number of founts of each size, so please let us know if you’re interested.


Matrix 5: The Curwen Press Collection in Cambridge University Library, by John Dreyfus

Edward Bawden

The Curwen Press can be regarded as the high point of mid-twentieth century creative, commercial letterpress, and no one was better qualified to describe it than John Dreyfus – successor to Stanley Morison as typographic advisor to the Monotype Corporation, Assistant Printer to Cambridge University Press, a director of the Curwen Press from 1970 to 1982, and­ unofficial advisor to Matrix on all matters typographic from its second issue in 1982 until his death in 2002. The wealth of illustration that accompanied his article came from the unique Curwen archive at Cambridge University Library. David McKitterick’s fine tribute to John appeared in Matrix 23.         John Randle


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