Old Style (Miller & Richard)

Miller & Richard's original specimen for their Old Style fonts, in a mock-traditional style with the long s and archaic ligatures.[1]

Old Style, later referred to as modernised old style, was the name given to a series of serif typefaces cut from the mid-nineteenth century and sold by the type foundry Miller & Richard, of Edinburgh in Scotland. It was a standard typeface in Britain for literary and prestigious printing in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, with many derivatives and copies released.

The Old Style faces of Miller & Richard, reportedly cut by punchcutter Alexander Phemister, were made in imitation of earlier styles of typeface, particularly the Caslon typeface cut by William Caslon from the 1720s, but with a modernised design.[2][1] It was immediately very successful: the 1880s Bibliography of Printing describes its popularity as "unsurpassed in the annals of type-founding".[3]

The exact date of Old Style's release is apparently uncertain as Miller & Richard published specimens erratically, but according to James Mosley and Morris it first appears in an 1860 specimen.[4][1][2]

Design

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Like Caslon, Old Style has slanting top serifs and an avoidance of abrupt transitions of weight, but compared to Caslon it is much lighter in colour and the stress is vertical (the top of the round letters uniformly the thinnest part of the letter, rather than at a position of roughly eleven o'clock), reflecting changes in taste since the eighteenth century.[5][6][7] The letters are rather wide and the italic is evenly, and rather strongly slanted.[6][8] The two-way Q recalls the Baskerville type of the mid-eighteenth century.[9] Hugh Williamson describes it as "large on the body, light and open, and rather wide".[6]

The name "old style" is confusing, as it and "old face" have been used differently by different authors to refer to "true old-style" printing types from around 1480–1750 (and relatively authentic copies of them) and the new "Old Style" face of Miller & Richard and its imitations, which appear rather different.[10] Walter Tracy and others have used the term "modernised old style" to describe the Miller & Richard designs to reduce ambiguity,[citation needed] although "Old Style" was the name under which Miller and Richard sold it. It is sometimes classified as a "transitional" serif typeface (in the vein of typefaces of the eighteenth century such as Baskerville) due to these modernisations.[11][12]

The typeface Bookman Old Style is a descendant of a bolder version of the Old Style face, known in the nineteenth century as Old Style Antique.[2] ("Antique" in this case means a slab serif-style design, with thicker build, emphatic serifs and possibly reduced stroke contrast, rather than an old-fashioned design.[2][13])

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  • Old Style in a Miller & Richard specimen, showing its quite wide, light structure.
    Old Style in a Miller & Richard specimen, showing its quite wide, light structure.
  • Old Style Italic in a Miller & Richard specimen. The italic has a strong slant.
    Old Style Italic in a Miller & Richard specimen. The italic has a strong slant.

History

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Released at a time when Caslon type was coming back into fashion, Old Style became a standard typeface sold by many foundries. It was also copied by the new hot metal typesetting companies Monotype and Linotype.[14][4][15] Monotype's copy was their second best-selling typeface of all time in hot metal.[16][17] Besides simple copies, it helped to create a genre of a wide range of loose revivals and adaptations of the Caslon design, visible in the wide-spreading arms of the T and the sharp half-arrow serifs on many letters. (Ronaldson Old Style by Alexander Kay was another,[18] as was Phemister's own later Franklin, created after he had emigrated to the United States.[19][20]) Legros and Grant parodied the large number of copies of Old Style in their 1916 textbook on printing technology, Typographical Printing Surfaces, by printing a poem with different lines in different copies.[21][22]

Reviews of the aesthetic quality of Old Style in the mid-twentieth century were often low, despite its precise and careful design, and it declined in popularity.[23][24] While recognising its practicality in his book A Tally of Types, it was described by Stanley Morison in 1935 as "a sort of diluted version of Caslon", by Williamson as "rather thin and colourless",[6] by William Morris's biographer William S. Peterson as "a pallid imitation of Caslon" and by Mosley as "bland".[25][26][1] It generally went out of fashion in body text in favour of new designs such as Times New Roman or more authentic revivals such as Baskerville and Bembo by the mid-twentieth century in Britain, although Hugh Williamson in 1956 noted that it was still popular for niche uses due to an extensive character support accumulated over the years of its popularity.[23][25][27] More positive reviews come from Nesbitt, who describes it as "a light face, but well-designed throughout" and Macmillan, who describes Phemister's engraving technique as "of the highest quality".[9][a]

Several digitisations are available, often of later hot metal adaptations.[33][34][35][b]

Notes

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  1. ^ William Morris found it and other typefaces of the period excessively light on the paper, although some have felt that his custom Golden Type, intended as a corrective, overshot in the opposite direction.[28][29][26][30][31] Some printers intending to copy his style used the "Old Style Antique" bolder version of Old Style for body text in order to imitate his work.[32]
  2. ^ Monotype's "Series 46" "Old Style", with a quite different design is also based on a Miller & Richard typeface, but a "modern" serif font in a different genre, known in the USA as the "Scotch" style. It has a 't' where the horizontal and vertical strokes make a right angle at top left. Monotype's Series 20 OId Style Special is a loose Caslon adaptation.[36][6]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Mosley, James. "Recasting Caslon Old Face". Type Foundry. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d Ovink, G.W. (1971). "Nineteenth-century reactions against the didone type model - I". Quaerendo. 1 (2): 18–31. doi:10.1163/157006971x00301. Retrieved 20 February 2016.
  3. ^ E. C. Bigmore; C. W. H. Wyman (28 August 2014). A Bibliography of Printing. Cambridge University Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-108-07433-9.
  4. ^ a b Bill Bell (23 November 2007). Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 3: Ambition and Industry 1800-1880. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 27–30. ISBN 978-0-7486-2881-0.
  5. ^ Johnson, Alfred F. (1931). "Old-Face Types in the Victorian Age" (PDF). Monotype Recorder. 30 (242): 5–14. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  6. ^ a b c d e Williamson, Hugh (1956). Methods of Book Design. Oxford University Press. pp. 97–8. [Reviewing Monotype's Old Style, Series 2]: In 1852 [sic?], Miller and Richard, who had been in the forefront of modern face production, led the way to a new development by issuing specimens of a regularized old face which they named Old Style. The new class of old style types, of which this was the first, reverted to gradual shading and to oblique top-serifs, but retained vertical stress, and was a good deal thinner in stroke and larger on the body than the best of the old faces. Types of this kind became popular in the second half of the 19th century, without ousting modern faces. The Monotype machine was introduced to British printers in 1901; the first two type-faces cut for it in England were, first of all, a modern, cut in 1900, and, later in the same year, this old style, adapted from a popular design more recent than that of Miller and Richard….the design is rather thin and colourless; its use is now confined almost entirely to textbooks which make use of its considerable range of special sorts for foreign language composition…the letters are large on the body, light and open, and rather wide.
  7. ^ John Carter (1967). An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets. Ardent Media. pp. 57–8. GGKEY:0Z3HKKTXT9E.
  8. ^ Johnson, Alfred F. (1959). Type Designs: Their History and Development. Grafton. pp. 85–7.
  9. ^ a b Alexander Nesbitt (1998). The History and Technique of Lettering. Courier Corporation. pp. 13–15. ISBN 978-0-486-40281-9.
  10. ^ Ray Prytherch (15 April 2016). Harrod's Librarians' Glossary and Reference Book: A Directory of Over 10,200 Terms, Organizations, Projects and Acronyms in the Areas of Information Management, Library Science, Publishing and Archive Management. Routledge. pp. 504–5. ISBN 978-1-317-12361-3.
  11. ^ "Monotype Old Style". Fontshop. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  12. ^ "Bookman Old Style - Microsoft". Microsoft. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  13. ^ Alexander S. Lawson (January 1990). Anatomy of a Typeface. David R. Godine Publisher. pp. 262–280. ISBN 978-0-87923-333-4.
  14. ^ Loy, William (28 January 2011). "An excerpt from Nineteenth-Century American Designers & Engravers of Type". Oak Knoll. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  15. ^ Theodore Low De Vinne (1899). The Practice of Typography: A Treatise on the Processes of Type-making, the Point System, the Names, Sizes, Styles, and Prices of Plain Printing Types. Century Company. pp. 191–4.
  16. ^ Neil Macmillan (2006). An A-Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press. pp. 146–7. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
  17. ^ Whittington Press [@whittingtonpres] (14 April 2016). "Sales chart of Monotype die cases" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  18. ^ De Vinne, Theodore (1902). The Practice of Typography: a treatise on the processes of type-making, the point system, the names, sizes, styles and faces of Plain Printing Types. New York: The Century Co. p. 202. In this face the squared or angled shoulder of the m and n, and all other peculiarities of old-style, are strongly emphasized. Note the angled serifs of the lower-case, and the added angles given to many of the capitals...each character has a notable sharpness and clearness.
  19. ^ "Ronaldson Old Style". MyFonts. Canada Type. Retrieved 27 November 2015.
  20. ^ Quadrat (1906). "Discursions of a Retired Printer, No. 3". The Inland Printer. pp. 817–822. Retrieved 10 August 2017.
  21. ^ L.A. Legros; J.C. Grant (1916). Typographical Printing-Surfaces. Рипол Классик. pp. 117–8. ISBN 978-5-87232-330-3.
  22. ^ Barker, Nicolas; Collins, John (1983). A Sequel to An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets by John Carter and Graham Pollard.; The Forgeries of H. Buxton Forman & T.J. Wise Re-examined. London: Scolar Press. pp. 72, 76–78. ISBN 9780859676380.
  23. ^ a b Stanley Morison (7 June 1973). A Tally of Types. CUP Archive. pp. 16–18. ISBN 978-0-521-09786-4.
  24. ^ Dowling, Linda. "Letterpress and Picture in the Literary Periodicals of the 1890s" (PDF). Modern Humanities Research Association. Yearbook of English Studies. Retrieved 10 February 2017.
  25. ^ a b David Finkelstein (23 November 2007). Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 4: Professionalism and Diversity 1880-2000. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 122–149. ISBN 978-0-7486-2884-1.
  26. ^ a b William S. Peterson (1991). The Kelmscott Press: A History of William Morris's Typographical Adventure. University of California Press. pp. 25-6, 89, 106. ISBN 978-0-520-06138-5.
  27. ^ A Psychological Study of Typography. CUP Archive. 1959. pp. 11, 30. GGKEY:L0XRUJA9NW4.
  28. ^ Katherine Bergeron (10 August 1998). Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes. University of California Press. pp. 27–35. ISBN 978-0-520-91961-7.
  29. ^ Irene Tichenor (2005). No Art Without Craft: The Life of Theodore Low De Vinne, Printer. David R. Godine Publisher. pp. 116–140. ISBN 978-1-56792-286-8.
  30. ^ William Morris (14 July 2014). The Collected Letters of William Morris, Volume IV: 1893-1896. Princeton University Press. pp. 39–40. ISBN 978-1-4008-6424-9.
  31. ^ William Morris (13 June 2015). Delphi Complete Works of William Morris (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. pp. 6551–2. ISBN 978-1-910630-92-1.
  32. ^ William R. Johnston (22 September 1999). William and Henry Walters, the Reticent Collectors. JHU Press. pp. 105–7. ISBN 978-0-8018-6040-9.
  33. ^ "Old Style". MyFonts. Monotype. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  34. ^ "Bruce Old Style". MyFonts. Bitstream. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  35. ^ "Linotype Old Style 7". MyFonts. Linotype. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  36. ^ Mosley, James. "Scotch Roman". Typefoundry (blog). Retrieved 9 February 2017.
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