I'd like to kindly ask for your help with a question. Surely some learned member of this forum has the answer.
I'm a huge fan of caslonic type. Huge. I collect them compulsively--can never get enough of them.
I've learned that there are two versions of Caslon that I've never come across. One is a beautiful small-text cut of Williams Caslon. It works excellently at size 10 pts and below. A good sample is on Luc Devroye's site (scroll all the way down; under the red heading that says "Now Playing: The Butler"):
http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-46262.htmlI really love it. Does anyone know if it's for sale anywhere?
Second, it looks like the late, prematurely-departed Justin Howes used to have a website where he sold, years ago, versions of his revived Founder's Caslon that ITC never acquired/sold. There were about four of them, very beautiful, as everything he did. The website used to be here:
http://www.hwcaslon.com:80/catp2.asp?c1=0&c2=0&c3=0&delivery=0&DCode=NONE&redirecting=1But, it's gone now. I was wondering if any copies of his defunct Caslons survive elsewhere on the internet. I saw a scan of them, some time ago, and they were wonderful.
Thanks much in advance!
Comments
The other page is archived at the Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20030206031514/http://www.hwcaslon.com:80/catp2.asp?c1=0&c2=0&c3=0&delivery=0&DCode=NONE&redirecting=1 Not sure what happened to the fonts.
I'm never happy about great art going out of existence. Maybe it's just me.
But, Justin Howes had make some additional cuts (at least four, as I remember -- I saw some scans of them, a while back) of the 18th-century Caslon, which he sold though his website, but didn't make it onto the ITC package they sell. They were quite beautiful. I found them better than the ITC ones.
Mr Nolan, that's wonderful news. I appreciate it. I would love to be able to see his size 8 and 10 cuts. Those are the ones I'm crazy about.
BTW, for anyone else who might care: the fine folks at the Type Network got back to me, and indeed the small-text version of William Berkson's font can be had here:
https://store.typenetwork.com/foundry/fontbureau/fonts/william-caslon-text-small
I'm surprised to hear about the way Justin Howes went about it. His FC 12, which I use often, looks too thin and washed out on the page, and now I know why. Maybe it was his youth? I know other young designers who set out to revive a face, and went straight for the outlines of the metal type, instead of reverse-engineering it from printed samples. I think that's what Charles Maze might have done with his Berthe, and it looks nothing like a chunk of text set in Serie 16eme on uncoated paper, which is where that old font really excels.
In contrast, Mr Blokland knew to avoid that. I like that he made DTL Fell in Regular and Book; the latter comes quite close to the real look of late 17th-century Fell type on a book page.
Finally, I know Ms Doreuli's Caslon, and I like it quite a bit. It used to be my go-to text font, for a while. It has a sturdiness that's missing from a lot of other predecessors. (Also, as my eyesight was getting weaker, I needed something darker to look at.) But, after a while, I began to feel ambivalently about its short ascenders. Sometimes, they don't do it for me.
I come from history and philosophy of science. My graduate advisor had been a postdoc to L. Pearce Williams, but I don't work on Faraday, just on the century that lead up to him. It's a small world, I guess.