Typophile

Double Elephant Sextos and other whacky vintage typobabble

Double Elephant

Hi all,

I've just read about James Joyce's Copenhagen Cats apparently being 'illegally published' in the UK. It's format is DOUBLE ELEPHANT SEXTOS. Amazing!

Can anyone think of other whacky vintage (or otherwise) typotalk?

Nut, mutton, etc don't seem to live up to DOUBLE ELEPHANT SEXTOS!

Hrant H Papazian

There's a thread for that.™
http://typophile.com/node/40356

hhp

kentlew

Sexto here is short for Decimo-sexto, also abbreviated 16º or 16mo (and sometimes called “sixteenmo”).

So this “illegal” publication of Copenhagen Cats was printed on double elephant–size paper (about 26.75 × 40 inches) and folded in sixteenths (which makes 32 pages per signature).

So the trim size on this edition was around 6.6875 × 10 inches.

Captured from web.archive.org on 18 Oct 2013. view this capture