A Google search for Caslon Egyptian will give you lots to look at, including this:
http://www.orangeitalic.com/caslon.shtml
and this:
http://cavedoni.com/2007/11/introducing-micerino.pdf
... but neither seems to be available.
Yes it has, by Miko McGinty.
But not released.
http://www.amazon.com/Crumbs-Heroes-Blues-Jazz-Country/dp/0810930862
I've revived, and extended, an early sans by Vincent Figgins, from the 1830s.
http://www.shinntype.com/figgins.html
Covered in this thread: http://typophile.com/node/39432
Cyrus Highsmith and Christian Schwartz helped finish out Miko McGinty's work for Red Herring. Some info and a showing at Christian Schwartz's: http://www.orangeitalic.com/caslon.shtml
Font Bureau has the source data for these fonts, but I don't know whether they have any plans (or the rights) to ever release it.
-- Kent.
In his book on the Underground typeface, Justin+Howes notes that Edward Johnston referred to this sample before he began drawing his face. Although there are some obvious differences between the Underground type and Caslon's sanserif, I think that the underlying structure is much the same.
In his book on the Underground typeface, Justin Howes notes that Edward Johnston referred to this sample before he began drawing his face.
Just for the record, it may be worth pointing out that this isn’t quite what Justin claimed. He suggested that the maker of the Egyptian and Edward Johnston might both have been independently using the capitals of the first William Caslon’s roman type as a model. It’s a point of view, although it’s not one I agree with; and perhaps Justin would not have pushed the idea very far. At all events, it is unlikely that Johnston ever took any notice of the Caslon Egyptian. I think the resemblances between the two sanserif types, striking though some of them are, were coincidental. It would be safer to say that in both cases the model – at quite some distance – was inscriptional lettering. Johnston’s type, although he claimed in 1937 that it was ‘based on classical Roman capital proportions’, has two letters, G and M, that resemble 15th-century Italian designs and have nothing to do with Rome, nor with the first Caslon type.
Anyone trying to make a font based on the Caslon Egyptian has problems. The original type appears as a single line in a specimen that was issued by one of the two Caslon typefoundries in London in about 1816.
So recreating the ‘original’ Egyptian type is not simple. It is not difficult to make a more authentic C, D and O from the showing of 1816, although copies of this are pretty heavily inked. But the punctuation in the surviving matrices is square, like that of some early slab-serif types. Is it original? There is no sure way of telling, since there is no punctuation in the original showing, which is one reason, among several, for thinking that the type was perhaps experimental and incomplete. There are no figures. And there is a curious kink halfway along the middle stroke of S, a sort that was not replaced.
One might say that making a font of the original Caslon Egyptian is a bit like making Gutenberg’s press. Since there is no complete authentic original to refer to, it calls for a leap of imagination.
I’ll add to James Mosley’s post: my Micerino is nothing else than an excercise directly based on James’ own Tivoli type. Instead of using the source material – which I never had access too – it tries to wrap bezier outlines around the traced glyphs in James’ Type 1 font. It also includes the alternate glyphs from Blake & Stephenson, also in James’ own Tivoli and makes them available as OpenType stylistic alternates. For many reasons, chiefly my own incompetence at the time when I did it, it’s an unsatisfactory typeface. The issues raised by James, Justin Howes’ version – which I wasn’t aware of – and the Font Bureau type are enough for me to safely say I won’t keep on working on this project for now. In fact I haven’t been working on it since early 2007.
But as this thread attests, there is continued interest in the type: the Whitney museum has used one of the various versions – I think it’s the Font Bureau one – for its Biennial 2008 Web site, for example.
Sorry to hijack this Caslon thread with Figgins again, but there isn't much material on the Caslon font, so perhaps the Figgins Sans can throw some light on the early days of sans.
One thing to note is that the Figgins design varied significantly in different sizes, with, among other differences, square punctuation at one size, round at another. It's hard to know whether they were flummoxed as to how to execute this style, or were perhaps experimenting with the idea that more stroke contrast may be appropriate at larger sizes.
I recently came across the Brevier size of the Figgins face in Bentley's Miscellany, November 1, 1837; so this is how sans faces were used in job work.
I agree with Nick that the Figgins ‘Sans-serif’ types (so called) are well worth looking at. In fact it might be said to be that with these types the Figgins typefoundry brought the design into typography, since the original Caslon Egyptian appeared only briefly in a specimen and has never been seen in commercial use. One size of the Figgins Sans-serif appears in a specimen dated 1828 (the unique known copy is in the University Library, Amsterdam). Here is an image from a specimen dated 1832.
Note that there is no lower-case. That would come, after 1830, with the innovative condensed ‘Grotesque’ of the Thorowgood foundry, which provided a model for type that would get large sizes into the lines of posters. It gave an alternative name to the design, and both the new features – the condensed proportions and the addition of lower-case – broke the link with Roman inscriptional capitals.
Captured from commoncrawl.org on 28 Apr 2015. original URL
