Printing : a practical treatise on the art of typography as applied more particularly to the printing of books

Front matter

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FRANKLIN INSTITUTE LIBRARY

PHILADELPHIA and

Preface

IN offering the following pages as a contribution to the advancement of technical education, I have endeavoured to lay down the principles of good and sound workmanship in the practice of typography. Without proper care and attention, together with the employment of good materials, it is impossible that satisfactory results can be obtained. Nor can anyone acquire perfection in this or any art without the necessary practical experience, combined with a natural aptitude for the particular craft he may adopt.

Printing has been described as the " art preservative of all other arts," and doubtless it is so, for without the ready means of placing on record the methods and other details belonging to the arts and crafts generally, much would have been lost to the present generation. For the Art of Printing itself a great deal has been done in this respect during the last few years, and this circumstance is evidence of the craving for increased technical instruction, and is a healthy impulse which should be fostered to the utmost.

The use of mechanical processes, and the consequent subdivision of labour which it has entailed, has much to answer for in reducing the interest of the journeyman printer in his daily labour, and it is mostly by the instituvi

PREFACE.

tion of classes and the issue of works bearing on the technical details of the subject that he can be qualified for higher posts, and perhaps fit himself for the position of a masterprinter and employer of labour.

I do not presume to say that the methods I have here laid down are universally adopted, but I am confident that good and thorough workmanship will be produced if the text of this book is studied and acted upon. Experience is still the best teacher, and much depends upon the conditions and circumstances under which the workman may labour.

Book printing is the criterion of Printing in general ; what are called jobbing and news-work are branches of minor importance. The first is here treated of as fully as space would allow, the others I could but briefly touch on. One word I must say against the tendency noticeable nowadays to over- elaborate jobbing work. The excessive rule-work, twisted and twirled in all manner of fantastic shapes, the adoption of grotesque types, together with the employment of diversified colours (not always harmonious) is work really overstepping the bounds of proper typography, and it appears to me but an emulation of lithography or chromolithography. This style of work may be produced better and with less expense by these two processes, and the cultivation of such effects by letterpress printing is therefore, in my opinion, to be deprecated. Its execution in type may be clever and ingenious, but that is all.

We still suffer for want of a uniform scale of measurements as regards the bodies of type, and it is hoped by the formation of a sub-committee in connection with the

PREFACE.

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Institute of British Printers that these bodies may be universally assimilated at no distant period, and that some scale, decimal or otherwise, of relation of one type to another will be adopted. At present the measurements of the several type-founders are very diverse.

Mechanical contrivances for type-setting have been introduced from time to time during the present century, the latest being the Linotype." To my mind it is the nearest to perfection, and is a marvel of ingenuity, casting its own type, and justifying it as it goes along. Something near a panic was caused in that part of the trade which would have been affected by it if introduced to any great extent, but apparently it has not yet realized the expectations of its introducers. Notwithstanding this, it is only reasonable to assume that sooner or later hand-setting will be largely superseded by mechanical aids, but at the same time, doubtless, the demand for printing will be largely increased, as it was upon the introduction of machineprinting. However clever the machine may be, its resources will probably not be such that it will be able to compose difficult work of an irregular nature — as, for instance, works with italic or clarendon types, cross-lines, head-lines, &c., or to accomplish the make-up ; there will always be work left for the skilled compositor.

News- work has made greater progress during the past twenty years than any other branch of printing, and machinery of wonderful and imposing character has been brought into use. But for the care of one experienced artisan the working of these is automatic, from the feeding to the delivering of the printed papers, sometimes folded and even wrappered — the intermediate stages viii

PREFACE.

of damping, printing, and cutting being performed by the same operation. The output, as compared with that of the hand-presses or single-cylinder machines, is enormous, and one can only pause and wonder where invention will stop.

For motive-power steam has largely given way to gas, and there are many motors of this character in the market adapted especially for the smaller or medium-sized offices. Propulsion by electricity is probably only a matter of time.

In conclusion I have to express my indebtedness to several firms for many of the illustrations given in this work. I thank Messrs. Caslon and Co., Cropper and Co., Crossley Brothers, Furnival and Co., Harrild and Sons, Hopkinson and Cope, Hughes and Kimber, the Institution of Civil Engineers (for diagrams of printing machines taken from a paper read by Mr. E. A. Clowes, in their minutes of proceedings), Messrs. Miller and Richard, M. P. McCoy, Sir Charles Reed and Sons, Shanks and Co., P. Ullmer, and others.

C. T. J.

Contents

TYPES.

PAGE

Chapter I. Letterpress Printing defined — The Production of Type : the Punch, Matrice, and Moulds for Hand and Machine Casting — Component Parts of Metal — Selection of Founts of Type for Wearing Properties and Good Appearance— List of Letters which constitute a Fount — Fractions, Accents, and Signs — Varieties of Old Face, Old Style, and Modern Faces — Italic — Black-letter Founts — Some Jobbing Founts — Distinctive Parts of a Letter — Classification of Letters — The Bodies of Types as to Depth — Sizes of Types — Relation of Types to each other in Body — Spaces and Quadrats — Table of Measurements of Type Bodies 1-23