Fifteenth Century and Jenson

John Savard

I have long wondered if the distressed typeface known as Caslon Antique, and originally called Fifteenth Century, was derived from a conventional typeface. I've come across something which looks like it could be the source; Jenson, as designed by Joseph W. Phinney in 1893 at the Dickinson Type Foundry.

However, I came to this conclusion from an illustration of that typeface which did not look like his Jenson Old Style, which certainly had nothing to do with Caslon Antique.

Thomas Phinney

I have never seen something by that name, by Joseph W. Phinney, that was NOT Jenson Old Style. What exactly is your source?

As you might guess, I have a particular interest in his work.

John Savard

Well, there are also two typefaces named Jenson on MyFonts that credit Phinney. The one I'm thinking of is dated 1893, just one year before Fifteenth Century was designed, and the image I saw was in the book "Classic Typefaces" by David Consegua, and the faces on MyFonts were Phinney Jenson by HiH and LTC Jenson.

It's possible these are just examples of Jenson Old Style, though, but it seemed like the lower-case was narrower relative to the upper-case, which is the distinguishing characteristic of Fifteenth Century, compared to ordinary Jenson Old Style as I see it in later ATF specimen books. I did notice a reference to "Jenson Old Style No. 2" in an ATF specimen book, so maybe I am thinking of Jenson Old Style, just not the recut form.

And I'm a very poor guesser. I hadn't even considered, until this moment, that you might be a descendant of Joseph W. Phinney.

John Savard

I now see I'm mistaken. The lowercase "e" in Jenson Old Style has a slanted line, while that in Caslon Antique is horizontal.

George Thomas

McGrew wrote this about Caslon Antique:

Caslons in name only.
Caslon Antique and Italic were designed by Berne Nadall and brought out by BB&S in 1896-98 as Fifteenth Century (XV Century in one early announcement) and Italic. Although they aren't really representative of types of that time, being a poor copy of a crude early typeface cut about 1475 in Venice, they have become popular for the simulation of supposedly quaint American types of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.