Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 3: Wood Type
First National Volunteers recruitment broadside (c.1863). Image courtesy of the New-York Historical Society.
For most people wood type conjures up images of the Wild West, especially “Wanted” posters for outlaws. But such posters were a small part of the many broadsides printed with wood type in the 19th century. Broadsides for railroads, steamships, ferry services, theater and circus performances, Civil War recruitment, and political campaigns all utilized wood type because it was big, bold, and often decorative. Fat faces, Egyptians (slab serifs), gothics, Tuscans, Grecians, and even Italians dominated these typographic posters. The one category of type that was conspicuously missing was scripts.*
Wood type styles offered by The Cincinnati Type-Foundry and Printing-Machine Works in their 1864 specimen book. The wood type was manufactured by William H. Page and distributed by the Cincinnati foundry. Image courtesy of Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
A condensed Tuscan wood type at the Tipoteca. Photograph by Paul Shaw 2011.
Scripts were popular in metal type in the 19th century. Typefoundries intended them to be used in social printing (e.g. announcements, invitations, and stationery) or in documents mimicking handwriting. They were not meant to be used at large scale. Thus, the few script styles that made it into wood—most of them after 1890—tend to be informal or casual styles, as shown in the Hamilton catalogue page below or the fount from Il Buon Tempo.
Page showing script wood types from Specimens of Wood Type, Wood Ornaments, Indexes, Dashes, Silhouettes, Corners, Catchwords, Perpetual Calendars, Borders, Star Rule and Wood Rule (Two Rivers, Wisconsin: Hamilton Manufacturing Co., c.1906). Image courtesy of David Shields.
An unidentified script wood type at Il Buon Tempo in Milano. Photograph by Paul Shaw 2011.
It is the rarity of formal script types in wood that is the impetus for the Letterforms Study Group workshop at the Tipoteca 2025. The typeface that the group will study and document (shown at bottom) is apparently unique in its style, size, quality, and technical aspects. Unfortunately, the typeface is the wrong height for printing on the Vandercook-style cylinder presses at the Tipoteca. That probably explains why it has lain “undiscovered” until now. In order to proof this script we will use the Tipoteca’s two hand presses. Master printer Lucio Passerini of Il Buon Tempo, who has extensive experience with such presses, will lead the printing part of the workshop. All in all, this workshop will be a special opportunity unmatched by other letterpress workshops.
Detail of capitals from the unidentified script (corsivo inglese) wood type at the Tipoteca. Photograph by Paul Shaw 2023.
*In American Wood Type 1828–1900 Rob Roy Kelly discusses scripts in a single paragraph (p. 128). Later he shows a selection of scripts (pp. 159–160), but only two of them can be classified as formal. Both are clumsy and fail to match the elegance of the unnamed script at the Tipoteca. Also note how graceless the formal scripts shown above from the 1906 Hamilton catalogue are.
Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025
The workshop will take place from June 8 to June 15, 2025. Participation in the workshop is limited to eight people. To secure a place a non-refundable deposit of $300 is required. Please make payment to paulshaw@nyc.rr.com via PayPal. If this is not possible, please contact Paul Shaw at paulshaw@nyc.rr.com for alternative methods of payment. A downloadable registration form is available below.
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