Subject: | |
From: | |
Reply To: | |
Date: | Fri, 29 Jan 1999 07:32:26 -0500 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
Mary Ellin D'Agostino wrote:
>Type faces *do* wear out. They also may have been acquired used rather
>than new. Finally, I suspect you may find that this ground has been
>explored by Bibliographers already....
Indeed, body type wears out. Bibliographers concentrate on body types,
which are sensitive to style. Job fonts, which constitute the vast majority
of type in a printer's inventory, seldom are discarded wholesale. My study
concentrates on the dozens of job fonts.
Printers buy used type. Printers also replenish old fonts by purchasing
sorts from foundries. When ATF stopped casting a few years ago, they could
still provide sorts for faces that were introduced 50, 70, or more years
ago.
These facts don't alter the peculiar nature of type faces, which
distinguishes them from other everyday artifacts. Type faces and
composition esthetics are drummed into a printer in his youth, and he tends
to prefer the faces on which he learned. I recall interviewing a
hundred-year-old printer who proudly spoke of her DeVinne and Satanick
types, current when she was a teenager.
Dan Weiskotten spoke of the people who tend to worship Stan South's mean
ceramic date "system" as if it were an absolute date barometer. I have used
this tool since it was introduced; nobody ever suggested that it could
provide an absolute date. Instead, it is one of many tools that allow us to
interpret large quantities of data by boiling it down.
A brain must be engaged, and more than one interpretive tool must be
brought into the picture.
_____ Baby will be celebrating it!
___(_____) Join us!
|Baby the\ Delaware Archaeology Month
|1969 Land\__===_
| ___Rover ___|o May 1999: Ask me for details
|_/ . \______/ . ||
________\_/________\_/_______________________________________
Ned Heite, Camden, DE http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html
|
|
|