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Richard Austin (punchcutter)
Richard Austin (1756–1832) was an English punchcutter. He was the original cutter of the typefaces now known as ''Bell'', ''Scotch Roman'', and ''Porson.'' Born in London 4 August 1756 and christened at St Luke's Old Street, he studied seal, die and copper-plate engraving as an apprentice to John Phillips near Finsbury Square. He married Phillips' daughter Sarah and set up on his own about 1786. He was hired by John Bell's British Letter Foundry in 1788 as a punch-cutter, to imitate Didot's 1782 types "de la troisième manière," cut by Pierre Vafflard to F-A Didot's designs. Bell sold his interest in the foundry to S & C Stephenson. When the foundry closed in 1797, Austin brought in his own punches and sold strikes to Fry & Steele, Figgins, and Caslon. Strikes were even sold in North America. Austin cut Greek types for Cambridge University Press in 1806–8, following designs provided by the famous master Richard Porson. He probably also cut the Sarcophagus Greek that prece ...
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England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Eng ...
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Punchcutting
Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould shape to cast type. Cutting punches and casting type was the first step of traditional typesetting. The cutting of letter punches was a highly skilled craft requiring much patience and practice. Often the designer of the type would not be personally involved in the cutting. The initial design for type would be two-dimensional, but a punch has depth, and the three-dimensional shape of the punch, as well as factors such as the angle and depth to which it was driven into the matrix, would affect the appearance of the type on the page. The angle of the side of the punch was particularly significant. Process The punchcutter begins by transferring the outline of a letter design to one end of a steel bar. The outer shape of the punch coul ...
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John Bell (publisher)
John Bell (1745–1831) was an English publisher. Originally a bookseller and printer, he also innovated in typography, commissioning an influential font that omitted the long s. He drew the reading public to better literature by ordering attractive art to accompany the printed work. Life From 1769, Bell owned a bookshop in the Strand, London, the "British Library". His 109-volume, literature-for-the-masses ''The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill'', which rivalled Samuel Johnson's '' Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets'' (1781), was published from 1777 to 1783. Each volume cost just six shillings, much less than what was commonly charged. Bell's joint-stock organisation of his publishing company defied "the trade" — forty dominant publishing companies — to establish a monopoly on top publications. In addition to the extensive ''Poets of Great Britain'', he published book sets on ''Shakespeare'' and ''The British Theatre''. The drawings and illu ...
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Vincent Figgins
Vincent Figgins (1766 – 29 February 1844) was a British typefounder based in London, who cast and sold metal type for printing. After an apprenticeship with typefounder Joseph Jackson, he established his own type foundry in 1792. His company was extremely successful and, with its range of modern serif faces and display typefaces, had a strong influence on the styles of British printing in the nineteenth century. Figgins introduced or popularised both slab-serif and sans-serif typefaces, which have since become two of the main genres of typeface. He was also involved in local politics as a Councilman of the City of London. Family and early life Figgins was born in 1766 and started his career as an apprentice to the typefounder Joseph Jackson. He worked for Jackson from 1782 until Jackson's death in 1792. According to Reed, Figgins was largely the manager of Jackson's foundry from about 1790 onwards due to Jackson's poor health. His wife was Elizabeth and he had sons ...
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Richard Porson
Richard Porson (25 December 1759 – 25 September 1808) was an English classical scholar. He was the discoverer of Porson's Law. The Greek typeface '' Porson'' was based on his handwriting. Early life Richard Porson was born at East Ruston, near North Walsham, Norfolk, the eldest son of Huggin Porson, parish clerk. His mother was the daughter of a shoemaker from the neighbouring village of Bacton. He was sent first to the Bacton village school, kept by John Woodrow, and then to that of Happisburgh, kept by Mr Summers, where his extraordinary powers of memory and aptitude for arithmetic were discovered. His literary skill was partly due to the efforts of Summers, who long afterwards stated that in fifty years of scholastic life he had never come across boys so clever as Porson and his two brothers. He was well grounded in Latin by Summers, remaining with him for three years. His father also took pains with his education, making him repeat at night the lessons he had learnt in ...
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Austin's Pica No
Austins was a department store in the Diamond area of Derry in Northern Ireland. The store was established in 1830 and, until 2016, remained standing as the world's oldest independent department store. The building measures and is five stories high, with an Edwardian The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...-style baroque exterior built in 1906 by MA Robinson after the original building was destroyed by fire. The Austins Department store building in the Diamond was owned by the City Hotel Group, but the actual retail operation was leased to Hassonzender, which went into liquidation. The department store closed its doors to staff and the public without warning on 8 March 2016. The liquidators state that the unforeseen costs of dealing with asbestos, and the disruption ...
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Bell (Monotype)
Bell is the name given to a serif typeface designed and cut in 1788 by the punchcutter Richard Austin for the British Letter Foundry, operated by publisher John Bell, and revived several times since. The Bell typeface has a precise appearance that features stylish contrasts between thick and thin strokes and ball terminals on many letters; it was influenced by the radical Didone styles of type becoming popular on the continent, in particular the work of the Didot family. However, it is less severe in design, somewhat similar to the earlier Baskerville and slightly later Bulmer typefaces. The figures are distinctive for being at fixed height, or lining, at approximately three-quarter the height of the capitals, in contrast to earlier numerals of variable height. The figures have a number of elaborate details reminiscent of the steely calligraphy of the period, and the slight inclination of some of them led Walter Tracy to suggest that Austin was following a written example. ...
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Monotype Corporation
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with consumer electronics devices. Incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts, the company has been responsible for many developments in printing technology—in particular the Monotype machine, which was a fully mechanical hotmetal typesetter, that produced texts automatically, all single type. Monotype was involved in the design and production of many typefaces in the 20th century. Monotype developed many of the most widely used typeface designs, including Times New Roman, Gill Sans, Arial, Bembo and Albertus. Via acquisitions including Linotype GmbH, International Typeface Corporation, Bitstream, FontShop, URW and Hoefler & Co., the company has gained the rights to major font families including Helvetica, ITC ...
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Scotch Roman
Scotch Roman is a class of typefaces popular in the early nineteenth century, particularly in the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom. These typefaces were modeled on a design known as Pica No. 2 from the Edinburgh foundry of William Miller. Some accounts suggest that Miller's type, the oldest surviving specimen of which dates to 1813, was cut by Richard Austin, who had previously produced the Bell types for the British Letter Foundry. The name "Scotch Roman", which entered use in the United States late in the same century, was applied to a slightly modified recasting of Miller's type by the A.D. Farmer foundry of New York. It is believed to derive from "Scotch-face", a term which was originally used by a different type designed in 1839 by typefounder Samuel Nelson Dickinson of Boston, and cast for him by Alexander Wilson and Son in Glasgow. Versions of Scotch Roman were subsequently released by a number of other typefoundries, including both Linotype and ...
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Georgian (typeface)
Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group **Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scripts used to write the language **Georgian (Unicode block), a Unicode block containing the Mkhedruli and Asomtavruli scripts **Georgian cuisine, cooking styles and dishes with origins in the nation of Georgia and prepared by Georgian people around the world * Someone from Georgia (U.S. state) * Georgian era, a period of British history (1714–1837) ** Georgian architecture, the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1837 Places *Georgian Bay, a bay of Lake Huron * Georgian Cliff, a cliff on Alexander Island, Antarctica Airlines * Georgian Airways, an airline based in Tbilisi, Georgia * Georgian International Airlines, an airline based in Tbilisi, Georgia * Air Georgian, an airline based in Ontario, Canada * Sky Georgia, an ...
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Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in Britain after the British Library. Under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, it is one of six legal deposit libraries for works published in the United Kingdom, and under Irish law it is entitled to request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland. Known to Oxford scholars as "Bodley" or "the Bod", it operates principally as a reference library and, in general, documents may not be removed from the reading rooms. In 2000, a number of libraries within the University of Oxford were brought together for administrative purposes under the aegis of what was initially known as Oxford University Library Services (OULS), and since 2010 as the Bodleian Libraries, of which the Bodleian Library is the large ...
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James Mosley
James Mosley (born 1935) is a retired librarian and historian whose work has specialised in the history of printing and letter design. The main part of Mosley's career has been 42 years as Librarian of the St Bride Printing Library in London, where he curated and worked to expand the museum's large collection of printing and lettering materials, books and examples. This collection greatly expanded with the close of the metal type era, which saw many companies and printing shops selling off their equipment and archives. Mosley also expanded the library's collection of lettering and signs. He has also been a lecturer and professor at the University of Reading since 1964, and founded the British Printing Historical Society in that year. Particular areas of focus of his career have been, in Britain, William Caslon, Vincent Figgins and Talbot Baines Reed, Eric Gill (with whose brother Evan he worked in the 1950s), and, in Europe, the Romain du Roi. Education Mosley grew up in Tw ...
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