Paul Shaw Letter Design » Type Specimens

19 July 2025

Letterforms Study Group: Corsivo Inglese in Caratteri—0. Milano

June 8, 2025 | Day 0—Castello Sforzesco
Orientation Day
Normally Orientation Day for Legacy of Letters or for the Letterforms Study Group abroad begins in the evening with a group meeting, followed by a convivial dinner. However, this year began in the afternoon with an optional visit to the Castello Sforzesco to see a small but rich exhibition titled Cataloghissimo: La comunicazione dei grandi magazzini. The exhibition had nothing to do with the theme of the study group, but the posters, …
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25 November 2024

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 …
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12 November 2024

Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 1: Script

The Letterforms Study Group workshop at the Tipoteca 2025 will take place from June 8 to June 15, 2025. It will focus on a rare example of wood type derived from script.
Script is a complex word. Like its German counterpart schrift, it has many meanings. To paleographers and calligraphers it denotes the writing styles found in hand written documents (logically called manuscripts from the Latin words manu “by hand” and scriptus “written” [past participle of the verb scribere “to …
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1 September 2024

Handsome Typos: An Improved (but Still Incomplete) History of Baltimore Type Foundries 1795–1895

Detail of front binding of Mengel’s Type-Foundry Specimens of Printing Types, Rules, Cuts, and Printing Material (Baltimore: John G. Mengel and Company, n.d. [1891]). Note that this is entirely lettered. Image courtesy of Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
The standard account of the history of type foundries in Baltimore is Maurice Annenberg’s Type Foundries of America and Their Catalogs (1974). Annenberg lists four inter-related foundries (Baltimore Type Foundry, Chas. J. Cary & Co., John Ryan & Co. and John …
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28 August 2024

Liberty Is Desirable: Nationalism, Patriotism, and Jingoism in 19th Century Type Specimens

On August 8, 2024, I gave a talk at the Letterform Archive on Liberty Is Desirable: Nationalism, Patriotism, and Jingoism in 19th Century American Type Specimens. The video is now available at Vimeo.
Eight Line Pica Condensed from Specimens of Printing Types and Ornaments Cast by Johnson & Smith (Philadelphia 1834). Image courtesy of Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
A Note on the Title
The original title of this talk was Reading Type Specimens: From Cicero to Spoonie Diddel, Ladies …
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8 August 2023

Type Specimens, Type Specimen and More Type Specimens—Letterforms Study Group in San Francisco August 21–23, 2023

There are still places available for these inexpensive special study sessions about type specimens led by Paul Shaw. Registration ends August 18. Scroll to the bottom for prices and payment options.
Page from a specimen of Grobe Kabel Kursiv by Rudolf Koch (Gebr. Klingspor 1930) reproduced in Type. A Visual History of Typefaces & Graphic Styles vol. 2 edited by Cees W. de Jong, Alston W. Purvis and Jan Tholenaar (Köln: Taschen, 2010).
About Type Specimens
At first glance type specimens are innocuous …
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10 June 2023

Letterforms Study Group in San Francisco—A Type and Type Specimen Trifecta August 21–23, 2023

The Letterforms Study Group is coming to San Francisco this summer. From August 21 to August 23, 2023 I will host three study sessions focused on type specimens. These are not lectures. They are participatory, collaborative investigations of physical items (books, periodicals, broadsides, etc.) which are linked thematically. My role in these events is to act as a facilitator and an informed guide rather than as an all-knowing authority.
Participants do not need to have prior familiarity with type design or …
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25 May 2023

Grolier Club talk—The Greatest Type Specimen Ever Made: The 1882 Bruce Foundry specimen

p. 39 from Specimens of Printing Types Made at Bruce’s New-York Type-Foundry (New York: George Bruce’s Son & Co., Type-Founders, 1882).
…probably the largest, most complete and finest typographical specimen book ever produced.—La Cygne Journal (La Cygne, Kansas) April 29, 1882
Specimens of Printing Types Made at Bruce’s New-York Type-Foundry (New York: George Bruce’s Son & Co., Type-Founders, 1882)
Although it is neither the most colorful nor the most visually sumptuous type specimen, the 1882 Bruce type foundry specimen is arguably the …
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10 April 2023

Blue Pencil no. 72—The Proof-Sheet: type specimens of Collins & M’Leester

The first page of The Proof-Sheet vol. I, no. 1 (July 1867). Note the introduction.
The Proof-Sheet was the house organ of the Collins & M’Leester type foundry in Philadelphia. [1] Edited by Eugene Munday (1831–1893), a historian of Philadelphia newspapers and a stickler for correct grammar, it was published from 1867 until 1880. Every issue of The Proof-Sheet contained several pages showing the foundry’s latest typefaces and other offerings along with information on literature, publishing, printing, and the type trade. …
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17 March 2023

Demonology & | witchcraft!!! | Printing: An online research session into the history of Philadelphia type foundries 1823–1844

Six Lines Gothic Condensed and Six Lines Gothic from Specimen of Printing Types and Ornaments by Rob & Ecklin, Letter Founders (Philadelphia: 1836). Image courtesy of RIT Libraries Digital Collections.
Letterforms Study Group via Zoom / Friday April 7 at 2 pm Eastern Daylight Time
fee $15

In this online type history research session I will retrace my recent research into the history of the Robb & Ecklin type foundry of Philadelphia, its partners Samuel Ecklin and Alexander Robb, and their relationship to …
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1 March 2023

Blue Pencil no. 68—Specimens of Wood Type 1900–2000

This is part of a series of posts listing type specimens that have been digitized and placed online. Many of them are downloadable in whole or as individual pages. This is the second part of a list that focuses on specimens of wood type. It includes not only specimens from wood type manufacturers, but also specimens from type foundries that offer either wood type or large sizes of some of their metal types in wood. [1] The first part of …
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1 March 2023

Blue Pencil no. 67—Specimens of Wood Type 1803–1899

This is part of a series of posts listing type specimens that have been digitized and placed online. Many of them are downloadable in whole or as individual pages. This is the first part of a list that focuses on specimens of wood type. It includes not only specimens from wood type manufacturers, but also specimens from type foundries that offer either wood type or large sizes of some of their metal types in wood. [1] The second part of …
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9 February 2023

Mad, Bad (but Good to Know): A survey of type specimens offline and online

Sonoma Plaza (Bear Flag Republic) from Historia: A Type Specimen (Berkeley, California: Emigre Fonts, 2010), pp. 20–21. Design by Rudy VanderLans.
Mad, Bad (but Good to Know): A survey of type specimens offline and online
Type@Cooper
13 February 2023
This is a list of the type specimens included in my Type@Cooper talk. Those that have been digitized and available online are marked in red. Where multiple digitized versions of specimens exist I have chosen either the one with the best visual quality or …
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22 January 2023

Blue Pencil no. 66—James Mosley on the dating of several Imprimerie Royale type specimens

The authenticity of the date given for Épreuve d’un Nouveau Caractere pour l’Imprimerie Royale (Paris: Gravé par Alexandre, [1712]) in my list of type specimens from 1700 to 1769 (Blue Pencil no. 62) is considered spurious by type historian James Mosley. He wrote about it (and several other specimens of the romain du roi with questionable dates) in an article published by a French bibliophile society in 2002. Excerpts from a 2008 PDF version of Mosley’s article, which he …
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17 January 2023

Addendum to Blue Pencil no. 61—a missing type specimen

Blue Pencil no. 61 Type Specimens 1486 to 1704 is a list of type specimens that have been digitized and made available online. It is not an attempt to list all known surviving type specimens. However, there is one undigitized specimen from this time frame that deserves to be mentioned: the 1525 Johannes Petri specimen that was in the library of the Börsenvereins in Leipzig prior to World War II and whose whereabouts today is unknown. Here is what …
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11 December 2022

Letterforms Study Group—Inaugural session 29 November 2022: Wood Type

Second page of chromatic borders from Specimens of Printing Types, Etc. Cast and Made by George Bruce, New York (New York: Bruce’s New-York Type-Foundry, 1853). Copy in the Grolier Club Library.
In early October I was at the Grolier Club in New York looking at a miscellany of type-related items in their collection: a birthday greeting to Margherita Bodoni in 1813; an 1827 book published by William Pickering “printed with the types of John Baskerville”; several publications issued by …
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