Egyptian is a
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
created by the Caslon foundry of
Salisbury Square
Salisbury Square is a square in London EC4.
History
The square is named after Salisbury Court, by and on part of the land, today the name of the narrow street which leads the square from the north. Salisbury Court was the medieval London house ...
, London around or probably slightly before 1816, that is the first general-purpose
sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
typeface in the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
known to have been created.
Historical background
Sans-serif lettering in block capitals had been developing in popularity over the past decades, initially due to interest in classical antiquity in which inscriptions often had minimal or no
serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...
s, and come to be used by architect
John Soane
Sir John Soane (; né Soan; 10 September 1753 – 20 January 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. The son of a bricklayer, he rose to the top of his profession, becoming professor of architecture at the R ...
and copied by others, particularly in
signpainting
Sign painting is the craft of painting lettered signs on buildings, billboards or signboards, for promoting, announcing, or identifying products, services and events. Sign painting artisans are signwriters.
History
Signwriters often learned t ...
.
Historian
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, wher ...
, the leading expert on early sans-serifs, has suggested in his book ''The Nymph and The Grot'' that Soane's influence was crucial in spreading the idea of sans-serif letterforms around the end of the eighteenth century.
However, it was some decades before a printing typeface would be released in this style, now commonly used. The name "Egyptian" had become commonly used in England by 1816 to describe this style of lettering; for example on September 13, 1805 the painter
Joseph Farington
Joseph Farington (21 November 1747 – 30 December 1821) was an 18th-century English landscape painter and diarist.
Life and work
Born in Leigh, Lancashire, Farington was the second of seven sons of William Farington and Esther Gilbody. His ...
wrote in his diary of seeing a memorial engraved "in what is called ''Egyptian Characters''".
The name "Egyptian" may originate from the image of sans-serifs being historical in style, the
Egyptomania
Egyptomania refers to a period of renewed interest in the culture of ancient Egypt sparked by Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign in the 19th century. Napoleon was accompanied by many scientists and scholars during this Campaign, which led to a large ...
of the period and the "blocky" nature of ancient Egyptian architecture.
(The term "Egyptian" has since become associated with
slab-serif
In typography, a slab serif (also called ''mechanistic'', ''square serif'', ''antique'' or ''Egyptian'') typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular ( Rockwell ...
typefaces.)
Release
The "Egyptian" typeface was released by the Caslon
type foundry
A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monot ...
of
Salisbury Square
Salisbury Square is a square in London EC4.
History
The square is named after Salisbury Court, by and on part of the land, today the name of the narrow street which leads the square from the north. Salisbury Court was the medieval London house ...
, London, run by
William Caslon IV
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of En ...
. (This was not the
Caslon foundry
The Caslon type foundry was a type foundry in London which cast and sold metal type. It was founded by the punchcutter and typefounder William Caslon I, probably in 1720. For most of its history it was based at Chiswell Street, Islington, was t ...
of the eighteenth century, set up by
William Caslon I: William Caslon III had left his family's business, buying up the type foundry set up by
Joseph Jackson, a former apprentice of William Caslon II, and his son William Caslon IV had then succeeded to running this foundry.
) It is somewhat "classical" in style, being capitals-only, formal in design and not particularly bold (although still bolder than conventional body text fonts), appearing similar to Soane's lettering. The
matrices
Matrix most commonly refers to:
* ''The Matrix'' (franchise), an American media franchise
** ''The Matrix'', a 1999 science-fiction action film
** "The Matrix", a fictional setting, a virtual reality environment, within ''The Matrix'' (franchis ...
survive in the collection of the
Type Museum
The Type Archive (formerly the Type Museum) is a collection of artefacts representing the legacy of type founding in England, whose famous type foundries and composing systems supplied the world with type in over 300 languages. The Archive was ...
, London, with some replacement letters.
"Egyptian" is the only part of its name referring to its design: the first part of its name in specimen books, Two Lines English, is simply the
standard name used at the time for its size, around 28 modern points.
Typeface names at this point had not emerged: types at the time generally were just listed by their size, or numbered.
Caslon's Egyptian typeface was shown in the foundry's specimen books, the earliest edition with a date dated 1816 although some possibly earlier. It appears sandwiched by larger and much more ornate typefaces, apparently not marketed with any prominence. Aside from its documented existence and survival, the reasons behind its creation are not clear, especially since no contemporary uses of it have been found. Mosley suggests that it may have been created on commission by a specific client.
The matrices of the Caslon sans-serif were acquired by the
Stephenson Blake
Stephenson Blake is an engineering company based in Sheffield, England. The company was active from the early 19th century as a type founder, remaining until the 1990s as the last active type foundry in Britain, since when it has diversified ...
company when it took over the Salisbury Square Caslon company. Sans-serifs returned to printing when
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 ...
' foundry started to issue a new series of sans-serifs starting around 1828, so the company revived the matrices.
(These should not be confused with Stephenson Blake's unrelated
"Grotesque" typefaces of the late nineteenth century.)
Digitisations
Several digital revivals of Caslon's Egyptian have been made, for commercial use by Miko McGinty,
Cyrus Highsmith Cyrus Highsmith (born 1973) is an American typeface designer, illustrator, and author.
After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997, he worked at Font Bureau in Boston as Senior Type Designer until founding his own type foundry, ...
and
Christian Schwartz of
Font Bureau
The Font Bureau, Inc. or Font Bureau is a digital type foundry based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The foundry is one of the leading designers of typefaces, specializing in type designs for magazine and newspaper publishers.
History
...
(adding a lower case invented by Schwartz)
and for private use by
Justin Howes
Justin Howes (1963–2005) was a British historian of printing and lettering.
Howes was a curator of the Type Museum of London and wrote on the work of Edward Johnston and William Caslon; his book ''Johnston's Underground Type'' on the Johnston ...
and by
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, wher ...
, both with a modified G.
Howes' revival is used for signage at
Dulwich Picture Gallery
Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London, which opened to the public in 1817. It was designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination. Dulwich is the oldest publi ...
, designed by Soane.
In 1987
metal type
In typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, which is lined up with others to print text. In movable-type printing, the sort or type is cast from a matrix mold and assembled by hand with other sorts be ...
was cast by
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
from the original matrices to print a special edition of reprinted type from the early nineteenth century crafted by Ian Mortimer.
To mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first dated printing of a sans-serif typeface, a conference was held at
Birmingham City University
, mottoeng = "Do what you are doing; attend to your business"
, established = 1992—gained university status1971—City of Birmingham Polytechnic1843— Birmingham College of Art
, type = Public
, affiliation = ...
in September 2016.
Notes
References
{{reflist, 30em
External links
Fonts in Use
Sans-serif typefaces
Stephenson Blake typefaces
1810s in London
Display typefaces