“The death of Daniel Berkeley Updike removed the last and the most widely influential of the notable group of Victorian writers, learned in both the practice and the history of the printing and allied trades, who, together, contributed a body of archeological research and industrial application whose richness and quality must arouse the admiration of [...]

Edmund Fry, M. D., and typefounder, died on this day in 1835, honored as the most learned member of his craft. A son of another medical man, Joseph Fry, who had left his profession to establish the Fry and Pine foundry in Bristol in 1764, Edmund Fry had been educated in medicine, but his vast [...]

Appearing far down in the obituary page of The Boston Sunday Herald for December 21, 1958 was a short notice stating that George Trenholm, type designer, had died the previous day in his home in Weston. An eight-line paragraph covered his career, which is probably just the way he would have wished it. One feature [...]

On this day in 1816 the third Earl Stanhope died. Friend of the younger William Pitt and an outspoken critic of the war with the American colonies as a member of Parliament, Stanhope was also an indefatigable experimenter in the sciences, producing among other things a fire-proof stucco, a calculating machine, and optical lenses. His [...]

In his eighty-sixth year, John Boydell—engraver, publisher, and former Lord Mayor of London—died on December 12, 1804, having spent a good deal of his life in the service of the arts and leaving as a lasting memorial a magnificent edition of the works of William Shakespeare. As a youth Boydell had learned surveying, but when [...]

Timothy Alden, of the sixth generation in direct descent from John Alden of Plymouth Colony and Courtship of Miles Standish fame, died on this day in 1858 in his thirty-ninth year, worn out from his endeavors in the creation of a typesetting machine. Born in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, he was apprenticed at the age of sixteen [...]

The tragic death of the young 35th President of the United States on this day in Dallas in 1963 reminded printers of the statement written by Mr. Kennedy in January of that year. In it he paid tribute to the printer’s craft: “Thomas Carlyle once said that the man who invented the art of printing [...]

A Harvard man who for thirty years was notably connected with Yale University died upon this day in 1960 at the age of 80. Carl Purington Rollins, one of the very fine printers of our time, served as Printer to Yale from 1920 to his retirement in 1948, when he was named Printer Emeritus. A [...]

Mr. William Bowyer, printer of London, died upon this day in 1777in his 78th year. An extract from his will follows: “And now I hope I may be allowed to leave somewhat for the benefit of printing. To this end I give to the master and keepers, or wardens and commonalty, of the mystery or [...]

On this day in 1964 is recorded the death of Thomas Maitland Cleland in his eighty-fourth year. One of the great graphic artists of our time, he was not at all widely known during the last twenty years of his life, at least to the younger group of typographers. His insistence upon fundamental training in [...]

Although the great Italian printer, Giambattista Bodoni, died in 1813, his native city of Suluzzo waited fifty-nine years before honoring him with a statue, unveiled upon this day in 1872. The inscription upon this statue, unfortunately, was most carefully composed in old style letters! To a craftsman of the stature of Bodoni this was indeed [...]

Alexander Wilson, who combined the craft of typefounding with the discipline of astronomy—a unique admixture of talents—died upon this day in 1786. Prior to the establishment of Wilson’s typefoundry, there had been no typefounding in Scotland. Through his efforts the craft attained notable success in supplying types for both Scottish and English printers and also [...]

On the tombstone of one Adam Williamson, a pressman printer who died in Edinburgh, Scotland on this date in 1832, is inscribed: All my stays are loosed; my cap is thrown off; my head is worn out my box is broken; my spindle and bar have lost their power; my till is laid aside; both [...]

“This cannot be an easy life. We shall have a rugged time of it to keep our minds open and to keep them deep, to keep our sense of beauty and our ability to make it, and our occasional ability to see it, in places remote and strange and unfamiliar; . . .” This quotation, [...]

William Bulmer, English printer, died upon this day in 1830 in his seventy-fourth year. His name would appear prominently upon any list compiled of the great English printers of all periods, and he fully deserves this recognition. After serving a Newcastle apprenticeship, Bulmer journeyed to London, where he was employed by John Bell, one of [...]

Of Christopher Sower, Jr. of Germantown, Pennsylvania, who died upon this day in 1784, the historian Isaiah Thomas said, “No medicines could be esteemed effectual, unless procured at Sower’s apothecary shop; no almanac, unless published by him, could be correct in time and weather; no newspaper promulgated truth but Christopher Sower’s German Gazette.” Thomas might [...]

On this day in 1520 Henri Estienne, the elder, died. It is not known when he was first established as a printer, but about 1496, just twenty-six years after the first press came to France, his name begins to appear on scholarly books. During his lifetime, he published over one hundred of these, all of [...]

Here lyes the Daye that darkness could no blind When Papish fogges had overcaste the sunne, This Daye the cruelle nighte did leave behind To view, and show what blodi actes were donne He set a Fox to wright how martyrs runne By Death to lyfe. Fox ventured paynes and health To give them light: [...]

‘Towne was not deficient in intellect and was a decent workman. He was a bon vivant, but he did not possess the art of accumulating and retaining wealth.” So wrote Isaiah Thomas, the American printing historian of Benjamin Towne, who died on July 8, 1793. That statement is practically the only decent remark concerning printer [...]

George Bruce, one of the best of the American typefounders, died on July 5, 1886, just four years after the printing of what, is considered to be one of the finest type specimen books produced in the United States—the 1882 catalog of the Bruce Type Foundry. Coming to these shores from his native Scotland in [...]

On this day in 1589 in Antwerp a man died of whom Thomas Frognall Dibdin wrote in his Bibliographical Decameron: “Of all the printers whose works have ever adorned the literary republic, none, I think, stand upon so broad and lofty a pedestal as Christopher Plantin Jenson and Robert Stephen had equal elegance, and Aldus [...]

On this day in 1948 occurred the death of the most prolific of all American type designers, Morris Fuller Benton. We have grown accustomed to considering Frederic W. Goudy as the type designer who contributed the widest variety of types to America’s composing rooms. But when comparing the output of the almost forgotten Morris Benton [...]

To Crochallan came The old cock’d hat, the grey surtout, the same; His bristling beard just rising in its might, ‘Twas four long nights and days to shaving night; His uncurl’d grizzly locks, wild staring, thatch’d A head, for thought profound and clear, unmatch’d; Yet though his caustic wit was biting, rude, His heart was [...]

James Conner, one of the important typefounders of the 19th century, died this day in 1861. Born near Hyde Park in New York’s Dutchess County, Conner became apprenticed to a printer at the age of thirteen. His indentures were interrupted the following year when he ran off to fight in the War of 1812. He [...]

In the year 1752 upon this day a printer died in his ninetieth year, honored as the man who had introduced the art of printing into the middle colonies of British America. William Bradford thus occupies a distinctive place in the history of the craft in the United States. Bradford was apprenticed to his trade [...]

“Dear Sol,” wrote Frederic W. Goudy on May 8, 1947 in what was to be the last of countless letters which had come from the hand of the great type designer, “I would have written you long ago except for an acute attack of neuritis which has kept me in the house since early in [...]

At ten minutes after two o’clock on the afternoon of this day in 1915, the Cunard liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat. It sank in the Irish Sea with a loss of life of 1,257. Among these were Elbert Hubbard of East Aurora, New York and his wife Alice. Hubbard, the self-styled Fra [...]

Henry Lewis Bullen, one of the most prolific writers on the subject of typography, died on April 27, 1938 in his eightieth year, honored for a unique and outstanding career devoted to the advancement of the printing craft. Indefatigable in his efforts to raise the standards of the ordinary printer, this Australian-born typographic historian and [...]

“In the choice of books to print I have been influenced partly by my own personal taste in literature and partly by the suitability of a book from the purely typographical standpoint—or perhaps it would be more true to say by a combination of these two factors.” C.H. St. John Hornby, proprietor of the great [...]

April 23, 1924, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, American architect, died. While Goodhue achieved notable success in his profession, the printer’s fraternity is most interested in his contributions to the book arts. Beginning his career at the same time and in the same spirit as the William Morris revival, he produced innumerable decorative designs in the medieval [...]

“I think I am dying,” wrote Sir Sidney Carlyle Cockerell upon a set of postcards of the spring flowers in Kew Gardens, and sent them to his family and friends, postmarked this day in 1962. The fact that he was then in his ninety-fifth year and had been confined to his bed for a number [...]

John Mansir Wing, compositor, editor, and bibliophile, died on this day in 1917 in the city of Chicago, leaving all of his earthly possessions to the Newberry Library of that city. Born in New York’s Oswego County in 1845, Wing served an apprenticeship at the type case at an early age and worked as a [...]

Johann Fust, a money-lender of Mainz who had been a partner of Johann Gutenberg in the establishment of the world’s finest printing office, died in Paris on this day in 1466, whence he had gone to sell printed bibles. He was probably the victim of a plague which swept that city during that year. Fust [...]

“John Howard Benson died on February 23, 1956, in Newport, Rhode Island, where he had spent all the fifty-four and a half years of his life. Artist, calligrapher, sculptor, scholar, and humanist, he was unquestionably America’s leading designer of incised letters.” Thus begins the short biography of Benson, written by his friend Philip Hofer, and [...]

On February 16, 1914, died the most honored printer in the United States—Theodore Low De Vinne. With no formal education, De Vinne was the recipient of the degree of Master of Arts from both Yale and Columbia Universities. The citation at the Columbia convocation was read by President Low: “As you are thus the master [...]

Henry Barth died on January 30, 1907. A printer, engineer, and typefounder, he invented the typecasting machine which bears his name and upon which all the present-day typecasting machines used by the world’s typefounders are modelled. Barth was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1823. He first worked for the typefounder Schelter & Giesecke as a [...]

On January 27, 1878, George Phineas Gordon died, leaving a will which was so well hidden that it was not found for twelve years, and about one million dollars for his heirs to squabble over—all of which had been acquired in the manufacture of printing presses. Gordon, born in Salem, New Hampshire in 1810, had [...]

“Mr. Caslon is an Artist, to whom the Republic of Learning has great obligations; his ingenuity has left a fairer copy for my emulation, than any other master.” So wrote John Baskerville about the most famous of all English typefounders, William Caslon, who died January 23, 1766. It is curious various accounts of how Caslon [...]

The life of one of America’s fine printers came to a premature end on this day in 1962. Peter Beilenson introduced countless bookbuyers to good printing at extremely reasonable prices through the medium of his Peter Pauper Press. He was a man who had early in life decided what he wanted to do and who [...]

Giovanni Mardersteig always had a keen interest in the design of printing types, but his association with Stanley Morison and with Frederic Warde increased his desire to make further investigations into the development of classic typefaces. During his stay in Scotland in 1933 with the Collins Cleartype Press, Mardersteig also supervised the production of a [...]

“The Charles Whittinghams, Uncle and Nephew, were creditors of our age, or at least, of those among us who confess a liking for comely books. There is a real debt of thankfulness still owing them, and a considerable balance of it will be carried forward to the account of generations which are yet to come [...]

The chronological account of the life of Jan van Krimpen states that he was born upon this day in 1892, that he died on October 20, 1958, and that between these dates he was a typographer specializing in the design of books and was, in addition, a type designer. When typographers discuss among themselves the [...]

On this day in 1775, John Baskerville died. Born at Walverley, in Worchestershire, England, in 1706, Baskerville at an early age acquired such skill in penmanship that he was prompted to maintain a school in the subject in Birmingham. In 1735 he began a career in the japanning process which was then most popular for [...]

For some months now I have been meaning to comment upon the death in Verona, Italy of the notable printer, Giovanni Mardersteig, on December 27, 1977, at the age of 85. While the craft of the printer in itself contributes to the scholarly aptitudes of most of its practitioners, the fact remains that in the [...]