On behalf of a historian: typefaces related to Lincoln assassination

Nadine Chahine

Hello all,
A well-respected author and historian has requested support in finding out more info about the following. Can anyone please help? I'm sending him a link to this thread. Here is the request:

The most famous theater playbill in American history is for “Our American Cousin,” to be performed at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865.  We know that Lincoln was assassinated during the third act of the play. 

The playbill (link attached to a fine copy at the Huntington Library in California) shows a variety of fonts. 

Although there has been considerable writing about the different versions of the playbill, no one has said anything about the different fonts used in the bill.

Is anyone able to provide any information about them? 

Thanks

https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p16003coll6/id/5034/

Florian Hardwig

I’ll make a start.

“BENEFIT!” is an Antique Tuscan Condensed Shade.

“LAURA KEENE” is an Antique Condensed.

“ONE THOUSAND NIGHTS” is a style related to an Ornamented face shown by Marr in 1853. See also Tuscan Italian.

“COUSIN” is Tuscan No. 4.

“THE OCTOROOM” is Two-Line Great Primer Ornamented.

Note that these IDs are for typeface designs (most of which were produced by various manufacturers, in slightly (and not-so-slightly) different versions, sometimes under different names), not for specific fonts. To track down the IDs of specific fonts, a lot more work would be required. The general answer will likely be: versions by manufacturers who were active in the mid-1800s on the East Coast.

If a more detailed analysis is wanted, feel free to get in touch via Fonts In Use.

Florian Hardwig

I just remembered that typeface identification is discouraged on TypeDrawers.
Dear moderators, since Nadine’s request is about a historical example, I hope it can be treated as an exception. If not, then maybe Nadine can move it to FontID.co.

John Hudson

I can’t speak for the moderators, but I certainly wouldn’t class this request in the same category as ‘What’s this cool font I saw?’

Nadine Chahine

Exactly and thank you both for bringing it up. The author would be interested in historical info not just font ID.

Paul Hanslow

*moderator point of view* I'm treating this as an exception due to the discussion being focused more on historical information.

Florian Hardwig

Thanks, everyone! Alright, then some more thoughts on this. 

The playbill combines wood and metal typefaces, as it was commonly done at the time. The larger sizes are printed from wood type – one can nicely see the grain in the letters from Tuscan No. 4, which has a cap height of about 10 Pica –, the smaller ones from foundry type (cast metal). I mention this because manufacturers typically engaged either in one format or the other, rarely in both. The industries were not completely separate, though: type designs that originated in wood were adopted for metal (when suitable) and vice versa.

Size is also relevant for identifying specific fonts: before the introduction of pantographic engraving (in the U.S. in the mid-1880s), the sizes of a given typeface design were cut manually and therefor exhibited differences. In some cases, these were drastic, to the point where one would speak of different designs from today’s perspective. As an example, compare the letter S in the four largest sizes of this Gothic in a 1865 specimen. This means that font identification is trickier: ideally, one would need to see all relevant glyphs in all sizes, not just in one. To illustrate the challenge, here’s a Gothic shown by White in 1858 in two sizes. Its G in the Eight Line Pica size (about 96pt) looks similar to the one seen in “LAST NIGHT”. But the G on the poster is much smaller, and it’s not clear a) whether White carried such a Gothic in the right size, too, and b) whether that size also had this bar-less form.

I’ll add two more IDs.

• “Friday Evening, April 14th, 1865” is an Antique that originated at Bruce around 1844. Stephen compiled an overview of some of its sizes. Design details like the a suggest the font on the playbill might be the Great Primer cut (about 18pt).
• “MISS” is an Antique Extended.

It’s possible to find out more and probably also to track down some of the specific fonts – or at least to narrow down the range. But for additional insights, the necessary effort unfortunately increases exponentially. As I don’t know if more information is wanted, and what kind of information, I’ll leave it at this.

John Savard

It seemed to me, though, that the playbill... used very ordinary and common typefaces for its time period, and so, while it might be possible, through looking at specimen books available on the Internet Archive, to pin down the typefoundry the type came from to print that playbill... it doesn't seem to me as though anything of interest will come out of it.

Of course, though, it's possible that as one piece of a puzzle, it could still help to lead to something of interest even if the type itself isn't unusual of itself.