More about Sarah and Enoch

David Shields, Assistant Professor in the Design Division at the University of Texas at Austin and curator of the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection, has pointed out that no. 21 in Nicolete Gray’s Chart of Ornamented Typefaces 1800–1900 (in her Nineteenth Century Ornamented Typefaces, rev. ed. 1976) may be the model for the Sarah and Enoch gravestone lettering. No. 21 is from New Specimen of Printing Types from the Fann Street Letter Foundry (London: William Thorowgood, Letter-Founder to …
Continue reading →

Gravestone typography part 3

This gravestone for Harriet D. Cross (d. 1840) in the Grove Cemetery is an example of the typographic epitaph I was speaking of earlier. It is not what I had hoped to show since it does not have a Fat Face or an Egyptian but the mix of elements (bold grotesque in relief, light grotesque incised, outlined grotesque in relief, and Tuscan in relief; and the cartouche backgrounds) certainly shows the influence of 19th c. display typography.

In the Captain David …
Continue reading →

More from Maine

The gravestones in Midcoast Maine reveal some other oddities.

That of Mary Butman (d. 1848), wife of Samuel Butman, has an odd form of underscore in the abbreviation for Samuel: a short line under the l and below it three dots in increasing size.

That of Peter Hilt (d. 1845) has a similar underscore for the abbreviation of September: a thin short line under the t and below it two dots.

I have never seen these forms of abbreviations before. Presumably, the same …
Continue reading →

Gravestone typography continued

Here are a few more examples of the lone decorative DIED from Maine cemeteries. The decorative capitals for John Cochran (which would have been carved in 1850 when his wife died, not in 1839 when he did) and Deacon Job Pendleton have been found on other gravestones. I suspect they are from a typefounder’s or wood type manufacturer’s specimen book, but I have not yet located it.

Dea. Job Pendleton (d. 1847) / unidentified cemetery on Rt. 235

John Cochran (d. 1839) …
Continue reading →

Gravestone typography

During my vacation in Maine a few weeks I visited as many cemeteries as I could find in the mid-coast region with the aim of finding gravestones from the 18th century that showed evidence of vernacular carving. I failed miserably. The earliest stone I was able to locate was from 1798 and it was in poor condition. But what caught my eye were stones that were laid out and carved typographically. That is, they looked very much like the broadsides …
Continue reading →

Questo blog non è morto

When I began this blog I called it a slow blog. But I had no intention of making it this slow, to the point of appearing dead. My PowerMac hard drive died on Friday, March 13th and by the time I got my new iMac up and running (with all the right programs) I was too deep into classes and other projects to keep up with the blog. I had also begun the next Blue Pencil post which has proven …
Continue reading →

The Revival of Roman Capitals in the Quattrocento 1

Constructed Capitals vs. Written Capitals

One of the central arguments of my writings and talks on the revival of the Roman Capital in the Quattrocento is that the emphasis on the constructed letter that has dominated much writing on the subject since the mid-1950s is a red herring. Close examination of the letters created by Felice Feliciano (1461), Damiano da Moylle (1480), Luca Pacioli (1509) and others reveal letters that are very inexact copies of Roman Imperial Capitals. Furthermore, such letters …
Continue reading →

Writings / Andrea Bregno

Andrea Bregno: Il Senso della Forma nella Cultura Artistica del Rinascimento
Claudio Crescentini and Claudio Strinati, eds.
Rome: M & M Maschietto Editore, 2008

The long-awaited book on Andrea Bregno (1418–1506), the Quattrocento Roman sculptor, celebrating the 500th anniversary of his death has finally been published. It contains the essay I wrote in collaboration with Starleen K. Meyer, a Milanese art historian, on Bregno’s role in the revival of the Roman capital letter in the Quattrocento. The essay is “Towards a New Understanding …
Continue reading →