Miller & Richard was a

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 ...

based in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

that designed and manufactured

metal type In physical typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, used—when 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 wit ...

. It operated from 1809 to 1952. The foundry was established by William Miller. He had been works manager of the foundry established by Alexander Wilson. Richard, his son-in-law was admitted as a partner in 1832. It was based in Reikie's Court off Nicolson Street. One of the most notable sets of designs of the foundry was a "modernised old face" known as

Old Style Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, they refer to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries betwe ...

- an adaptation of the

old-style 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 ( ...

fonts of the 1500-1800 period such as

Caslon Caslon is the name given to serif typefaces designed by William Caslon, William Caslon I in London, or inspired by his work. Caslon worked as an Engraving, engraver of Punchcutting, punches, the masters used to stamp the moulds or Matrix (printi ...

, but regularised to match the greater evenness and grace expected in fonts by the mid-nineteenth century. (

Bookman Old Style Bookman is a serif typeface. A wide, legible design that is slightly bolder than most body text faces, Bookman has been used for both Display typeface, display typography, for trade printing such as advertising, and less commonly for body text. In ...

is an extremely distant descendant of this style.) Its "Modern Face", a more geometric and 'classical' style of serif letter, was also popular and often copied. One of its punchcutters of the period was Alexander Phemister, who would later emigrate to the United States and cut "old style" designs there.

Talbot Baines Reed Talbot Baines Reed (3 April 1852 – 28 November 1893) was an English writer of boys' fiction who established a genre of school story, school stories that endured into the mid-20th century. Among his best-known work is ''The Fifth Form at S ...

wrote in 1887 in his ''History of the Old English Letter Foundries'' that the foundry had also won a reputation for extremely small-size type for uses such as a French dictionary. As a specimen of this it issued a printing of Gray's Elegy, a poem of around 130 lines, in two columns with each column reduced to 3.75 inches in height. The firm's work entered a decline with the arrival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of

hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mo ...

, by which type was not sold to printers but cast by machine new for each job, under the control of a keyboard. Some of its old style and modern typefaces were imitated by

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...

, one of the major hot metal companies. It was wound up in 1952. According to

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, whe ...

"matrices for a few types were acquired by Stephenson, Blake & Co. Ltd., Sheffield, but most of the materials appear to have been dispersed."

References

External links

Specimen Book
c. 1921
Photograph of Reikie's Court
{{DEFAULTSORT:Miller and Richard 1809 establishments in Scotland Letterpress font foundries of the United Kingdom Manufacturing companies based in Edinburgh 1952 disestablishments in Scotland