So recreating the ‘original’ Egyptian type is not simple. A fount was cast from them for Ian Mortimer, wood engraver and hand press printer in London, who printed a booklet on the type, Caslon’s Egyptian, the first sanserif type, in 1988. The surviving matrices are among the materials of Stephenson, Blake, now with the Type Museum, London. Had the first matrices been lost or damaged? We do not know, but it seems clear that whoever supplied the new ones was not a skilled operative. You can see more detail of the original C in the image (which happens to be my own) that is used in the first post at the head of this thread. The new C was now a clumsy design, D was narrower than the original, and O had also been remade. Several sorts in the newly cast type had changed for the worse. The page above is from the specimen of Blake & Stephenson of about 1838. The original type appears as a single line in a specimen that was issued by one of the two Caslon typefoundries in London in about 1816. Johnston’s type, although he claimed in 1937 that it was ‘based on classical Roman capital proportions’, has two letters, G and M, that resemble 15th-century Italian designs and have nothing to do with Rome, nor with the first Caslon type.Īnyone trying to make a font based on the Caslon Egyptian has problems. It would be safer to say that in both cases the model – at quite some distance – was inscriptional lettering. I think the resemblances between the two sanserif types, striking though some of them are, were coincidental. At all events, it is unlikely that Johnston ever took any notice of the Caslon Egyptian. It’s a point of view, although it’s not one I agree with and perhaps Justin would not have pushed the idea very far. He suggested that the maker of the Egyptian and Edward Johnston might both have been independently using the capitals of the first William Caslon’s roman type as a model. Just for the record, it may be worth pointing out that this isn’t quite what Justin claimed. In his book on the Underground typeface, Justin Howes notes that Edward Johnston referred to this sample before he began drawing his face.
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