Hi everyone
I came across this forum whilst looking for some information about Louis John Poucheé’s Ornamented types but got distracted by the content of some of the posts - it’s great to see such informed information and eclectic tastes!
One particular post I thought I’d make a comment on was one about Trajan and the origin of the serif; I believe it was Catisch who suggested that the roman lettercutters painted their letters on the masonry first and then carved them and that the serif may have developed from this practice. Well, I’ve considered this, having done some lettercutting myself over the past ten years (only in an amateur fashion I hasten to add, but under some fairly qualified guidance) and what I’ve found is that its actually much easier to carve a letter with serifs than without – the purely mechanical action of the chisel and the angles at which you use it at, particularly at the terminals of letters seems to suggest that serifs were developed as a practical response to the question of ’how can I finish this letter off neatly and uniformly’. Square-ended ’sans serifs’ are much harder…
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