This is a survey of all of the literature concerning the typefounder's hand mold of which I am presently aware, together with reprints of that literature when I can legally do so.
The most comprehensive survey of the history specifically of the hand mold is Friedrich Bauer's Das Giessinstrument ( {Bauer 1922}, and reprinted below). Much of the information here is extracted from it, with the assistance of the partial, as-yet unpublished translation done by Paul Hayden Duensing.
The authoritative reference for the early development of typecasting technology remains Harry Carter's 1969 A View of Early Typography {Carter 1969}. Aside from the careful words of a very few very good scholars such as Harry Carter and Stan Nelson, one must be quite cautious about other sources for early developments. In particular, there are many accounts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries where the same speculative energies were attached to Gutenberg which now inform the accounts of alien spacecraft at Roswell.
The preeminant living authority on the hand mold is, of course, Stan Nelson. His book on the subject is in process. He's also written the best article on making an 18th century French style hand mold, which he has kindly allowed to be reprinted here.
What follows is a chronologically organized list, with reprints where possible, of the literature on the hand mold (insofar as I know it). The arrangement is by original date (or sometimes by claimed original date), not necessarily by date of publication. Thus, the discussion of Simonneau's 1694 engravings of type founding, which were not published until 1991, is filed in 1694 here.
(Sometimes a mold shown in a modern source cannot be dated. There were only a few styles of molds, and they remained unchanged for centuries. These are collected in a section of Images of Hand Molds, Not Dated.)
If it is legally possible for me to reprint a source or image here, then in most cases I have. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. Copyright law is intricate and increasingly senseless. If all I can publish is a bibliographic reference, you're going to have to track down the original source the hard way.
"[The Lever Hand Mold was] ... an improvement in the art of casting ... which was the greatest advance made after the invention of printing until the type-casting machine was invented." (Ringwalt, 1871)
I have a particular interest in the Lever Hand Mold, as opposed to what I shall call the "plain" or "ordinary" hand mold, because I believe it to be a direct technological source for the pivotal type casting machine.
In the absence of (a) external information about a particular mold or image, or (b) greater knowledge on my part, it is almost impossible to date a lever hand mold with precision. But this may not matter that much, because they were made for only a brief period.
None can have existed before their dual invention by Peek in England (compression-spring style, 1809) and Binny in America (bow-spring style, 1811).
Because the purpose of the lever hand mold was to speed production, it is unlikely that any were made after the introduction of the Bruce/Pivotal Type Caster. The patent for the first version of this caster dates to 1838, but its successful commercial introduction dates to the middle 1840s. By the end of the 1850s it had supplanted hand casting almost entirely.
The hand mold did continue in use to the end of the 20th century as a tool of the matrix justifier, but they were casting single types for examination, and had no need for the additional speed of the lever mold.
So "1809/1811 to 1850s" emerges as the period for the lever hand mold. The midpoint of that period is 1830, so I'll often write "fl. 1830" as an approximate date ("fl." for "flourished, in the pleasant notation used by art historians when the know the general period in which a work must have been made but do not know either the date of the work or the dates of its maker).
In the survey of literature in this Notebook, items concerning the lever hand mold are intermixed with those for plain hand molds. So that they might be easier to find, here is a list of them:
We know nothing certain about the hand mold as it existed in the first fifty years of typefounding. In particular, we do not know what Gutenberg's mold looked like, even though it was arguably one of the most important inventions in history. It is likely that it resembled later hand molds, but we have no real evidence.
There may be one exception to the remarks above. In the Plantin-Moretus museum in Antwerp is a very old hand mold identified in their inventory as Giet Instrument 48 (that is, casting instrument No. 48). It may be from the late 15th century.
In a thread on the "Typophile" forum in 2013/2014, two photographs of this mold were put online by David Berlow of Font Bureau (user "dberlow" on the forum). Later in this same thread Stan Nelson (probably the foremost authority on the hand mold today) said of them: "The photographs ... are of Giet Instrument 48, from the collection of the Museum Platin-Moretus. It is probably the oldest surviving typemould, based upon its structure and a tentative association with matrices dating from the late 15th century."
Unfortunately, this Internet forum has shut itself down and is no longer online. See the bibliographic reference for {Typophile 2013-03-08} for further information and links to two archived versions: (1) on the "Wayback Machine" (but this version is partial and missing Stan Nelson's comments) and (2) on another archive (in a version which does have Stan's comments but which is slightly scrambled and doesn't attribute the G.I. 48 photographs correctly).
Fortunately, David Berlow has graciously allowed the publication of these two photographs here. They are by Mike Parker. They are the property of Font Bureau; please do not reproduce them further without their permission.
They show Giet Instrument 48 closed, and then open:
My thanks to David Berlow for his permission to include these photographs of this important hand mold here.
None of the sources which survive from the 16th century can be termed satisfactory. None of them would be worth mentioning if they came from a later date. But they're all we've got, so they assume a disproportionate importance.
The earliest known illustration of a hand mold wouldn't terribly useful as a guide to building one. It is significant, however, because as it is shown in use it does not conflict with the styles of hand molds used later.
Harry Carter tracked it down to a book of religious instruction, the Corte Instruccye of Cornelius van der Heyden in Ghent (then under the rule of the Hapsburg monarchy of Spain), published in 1545. {Van der Heyden 1545} He calls the image "indistinct but recognizable." ( {Carter 1969}, p. 8) Here it is from the Google digitization, where it is even less distinct and less recognizable:
{Bauer 1922}, p. 16, found this same illustration in a different source. Only a few years later, the English printer Anthony Scoloker used it as a printers' mark. It appears in a book printed by him in 1548, in London: the Ordinarye of Christians.
Here is the version of this image reprinted, from Scoloker's book, by Bauer:
(This had already been reprinted elsewhere, with emphasis on its representation of a printing press; e.g., {Plomer 1900}, p. 130.)
In Biringuccio's Pirotechnia of 1540 there is a description of the operation of a hand mold which makes perfect sense if you already know how one operates, but would be baffling if you did not. In the translation by Smith & Gnudi:
"The letters for printing books are made of a composition of three parts of fine tin, an eighth part of black lead, and another eighth part of fused marcasite of antimony. The desired quantities of these metals are melted and cast into bars so arranged that they can be easily cut. Then a mould is made of brass or bronze, as true as possible and flat so that it may fit into its companion. The parts of this mould are adjusted to make the thickness and length of the stems of the letters, and likewise are adapted underneath so that the matrix can be put in exactly. The matrix is the impression of the letter that you wish to make, or rather to cast, made by the steel punch on a little piece of copper. When the matrix has been put into its place and the thickness likewise fixed by means of certain little screws which secure and close all the pieces of the mold in their places, some of that composition is melted in an iron pot and the letters cast one at a time with a ladle."
(From {Biringuccio 1540}, pp. 374-375 (Book IX, Chapter VII.))
The only part of this description which is mysterious in terms of later molds is the function of the "certain little screws which secure and close all the pieces of the mold in their places."
What Carter calls the "earliest trustworthy account of the making of type" appears in a children's book: an encyclopedia in dialogues intended to help Flemish children learn English: La premiere et la seconde partie des Dialogues françois pour les iuennes enfans , published anonymously in 1567 by Christopher Plantin, in Antwerp. {Plantin 1567},
Bauer assumes that Plantin, nominally "only" the printer of the book, also assisted in composing the section in it on printing; Carter is certain of this. ( {Bauer 1922}, pp. 15-20 and {Carter 1969}, pp. 5-10.) As such, and as far as it goes, it is (mostly) reliable. But Carter notes, in particular, that "Plantin's exposition of the mould leaves out the most important thing that distinguishes the typefounder's from any other mould, the fact that it is adjustable for width of opening." (p. 7)
[TO DO: reprint transcription by {Bauer 1922}.]
The second reliably dated image of a type founder's hand mold appears in 1568 (over a century after Gutenberg) in a volume illustrated by Jost Amman, {Amman 1568}:
(From {Bauer 1922})
The problem with this illustration is that while it is firmly dated, and while it claims directly to show a type founder's hand mold, the mold it shows is unlike any ever seen. {Bauer 1922} discusses a presentation, "Gutenberg, Künstler und Techniker," given in 1905 by Heinrich Wallau attempting to explain Amman's mold, but concludes that it cannot really account for what Amman drew. He then goes on to point out other instances in which Amman was inaccurate. In partial defense of Sachs and Amman, it might be noted that their purpose was not to illustrate technology (as compared to Diderot and d'Alambert, for example), but instead to do just what their title says: show an "exact depiction of all ranks on earth" (italics mine) so as to allow everyone to see his or her place in creation and be content with it. This is theology, not technical writing.
Here is the illustration by Wallau, as reproduced by Bauer.
Unless you're trying specifically to investigate type casting technology in the first century or so of movable type, it is probably best to skip over Amman's illustration.
I have yet to find examples of illustrations of hand molds in the century between Plantin or Amman (1560s) and Moxon (1680s). This is curious.
The first account of a type founder's hand mold which would be of any use to you if you wished to construct one is that of Joseph Moxon, in the printing volume of his Mechanick Exercises (1683). That is well over two centuries since the invention of this device.
All technical writing in English begins with Moxon. He will always have a special place in the history of technology, and is an author to read and re-read deeply. In the introduction to their edition of his work on printing, Davis and Carter say:
"He was the first writer on printing, and though he had a dignified following, he was probably the best of all." ( {Moxon (Davis/Carter) 2nd Ed.}, p. iv)
The work for which he is now best know is generally thought of today as consisting of two independent volumes, both entitled " Mechanick Exercises, Or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works."
The first of these was published serially from 1678 to 1680, and concerned the arts of blacksmithing, joinery, carpentry, turning (including ornamental turning), and bricklaying. It was reprinted in 1703 along with a section on sundial construction, and is generally encountered now in that form. (See the CircuitousRoot Notebook on Moxon in the Machine Shop for more information on editions and online digital editions.)
The second volume was published serially from 1683 to 1684 (it is usually cited with the earlier publication date of 1683) and was " Mechanick Exercises, Or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing. " Digital facsimiles aside, it is best obtained in the 1962 reprint, edited by Herbert Davis and Harry Carter under the modern, but apt, title " Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing." {Moxon (Davis/Carter) 2nd Ed.}
You really do need the physical, printed Davis & Carter edition of Moxon. Failing that, here's a link to reprints of the 1896 facsimile edition. More briefly, below is an extract of just the section containing hand molds.
Moxon. "... Casting ..." (1683)
An extract of the chapter in Moxon on "Mechanick Exercises, Or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Mold-Making, Sinking the Matrices, Casting and Dressing of Printing-Letters." Extracted from the Google digitization of the University of Virginia copy.
Notwithstanding, however, this honest praise, the illustrations of a hand mold in Moxon must stand as the worst technical drawings ever made.
In fairness, here's a direct comparison of the first three published images of hand molds: Van der Hayden (1545), Amman (1568), and Moxon (1683). Moxon is in a whole different world - one that he had a large part in creating.
Here's his drawing of a typecaster at work.
(All three Moxon drawings from the Google digitization of the University of Virginia copy.)
The Davis/Carter edition of Moxon's Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing contains various illustrations of hand molds, including one "probably of Moxon's time." It lacks its Woods and Bow. ( {Moxon (Davis/Carter) 2nd Ed.}, Fig. 11.)
The Davis/Carter edition of Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (those on Printing) contains a view of "The 17th-century typefoundry of the Plantin-Moretus office At Antwerp." ( {Moxon (Davis/Carter) 2nd Ed.}, Fig. 12.)
Not surprisingly, several people have posted photographs of the Plantin-Moretus online. These can be extremely useful as they give modern color views (often with much more detail) of what was only a smudge in an older published photograph.
The flickr photostream of "josepatau" at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pepel/ shows cabinets of molds, and some views of the type foundry and its workbenches. Things like cabinets of molds seem really dull until you start to try to build a type foundry - then they become quite interesting.
The flickr photostream of Michael Hochleitner ("wasianed") has several photographs of hand molds as used in presentations at the Plantin-Moretus. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/wasianed/
The flickr photostream of Daniel Rhatigan ("ultrasparky"), now of Monotype Imaging, has a photograph of Guy Hutsebaut demonstrating hand molds at the Plantin-Moretus. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/ultrasparky/483711910/
The treatise and plates on type and printing prepared as a part of the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers, sponsored by the Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris), is one of the most important documents of pre-industrial type-making. Yet while it dates from the 1690s through 1704, it was never published in its own time. The plates on punchcutting and typefounding were not published until the very late 20th century and no translation into English of any part appeared until James Mosley's 2015 publication of the section on the hand mold. For a more complete discussion of its history and bibliography, see the section on it in the Notebook on the literature of literature of Typographical Punchcutting in Steel by Hand. The section here will just identify the publication of those portions of it concerning hand molds.
The part concerning printing ("Arts du livre") apparently dates to 1694 - 1719 and contains plates by the engraver Charles Louis Simonneau. But it was not published with the rest of the Descriptions... Its plates were not published until 1991, in an article in the journal Matrix by James Mosley. {Mosley 1991}. He describes this publication, along with his source for the Plates in a 2012 posting to his outstanding blog at http://www.typefoundry.blogspot.com. {Mosley 2012-01-06}.
Matrix 11 is not easily available; fortunately, some (but not all) of these plates have been reprinted elsewhere.
Mosley, in his 2012 blog post, says that they were reprinted in Fred Smeijers' 1996 book Counterpunch. {Smeijers 1996}. This is true, but they're hiding. They're printed on the insides of the covers (in the paperback edition), and the covers fold out. Smeijers reprints the upper third or so of five of Simonneau's plates, each showing an overall view of one aspect of type making. He omits the lower two-thirds of each plate, where the instruments are shown in detail. He also reprints a detail view of a French style hand mold from another plate (but not the plate itself).
In the 2011 second edition of Smeijers, they have been removed from the covers and integrated into the text, as Figs. 7.1 through 7.7 pp. 56-59. {Smeijers 1996}.
Two of the plates are reprinted (each completely) in {Mosley et. al. 2002} , pp 68-69. The same volume also has a reproduction of a watercolor of a type foundry by Simonneau.
The view of the hand mold (only) has been put online on Van der Waarde's website, at: http://users.telenet.be/waarde/Handmoulds/illustrations.html {Van der Waarde 2004}.
The same view (in a larger image if you click through) is in Mosley's blog posting {Mosley 2012-01-06}.
Christoph Weigel's Abbildung Der Gemein-Nützlichen Haupt-Stände Von denen Regenten Und ihren So in Friedens- als Kriegs-Zeiten zugeordneten Bedienten an, biß auf alle Künstler Und Handwercker falls within the same general category of "ständebuch" as Amman, but it shows considerably more technical detail for all of the trades represented.
It illustrates Der Schriftgiesser, showing not only casting but breaking the jet and rubbing the type. Curiously, though, the typecaster is shown holding the mold backwards.
It's interesting to compare this illustration with those of Simonneau done four years earlier. Although Weigel's is from 1698, it is a medieval tradition and appears in a ständebuch like Amman's - showing the trades to describe your place in the social hierarchy. By way of contrast, Simonneau's engravings are modern, and were to have appeared in a technical book sponsored by a scientific academy - showing anyone who cared to view them how to actually make type. You could hand Simonneau's drawings to a machinist today and expect to get a working hand mold back. There was something to the Enlightenment, after all.
(From the digitization by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France / Gallica. Please note that this digitization is licensed by the BNF/Gallica for noncommercial use only. This licensing differs from the CC-By-SA license used for much of the rest of this Notebook.)
This illustration was reprinted in {Howe 1955} and {Howe 1957}.
The typefounding section ("Bericht von dem Schriftgiesen" / report on typefounding) of Christian Friedrich Geßner's general work on printing, Die so nöthig als nützliche Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgiesserey [DMM: "The Arts of Printing and Typefounding, as Useful as they are Necessary."] (1740) contains a plate depicting the materials of the typefounder, including a conventional mold in the Flemish/German style. {Geßner 1740}
For a more thorough entry on Geßner, see the entry on this work in the General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types .
We are fortunate that the late Paul Hayden Duensing made a high-quality photographic copy of this plate. Here it is, scanned from Duensing's archives:
(Duensing's original version is a very large format photographic negative. This scan is of a print that he made from this negative. The image above links to a 2048x pixel wide JPEG version, which is adequate for most purposes. Here is the original scan as a PNG image (52 Megabytes): gessner-1740-phd-8-crop-4184x4144.png Here is the 2048x pixel JPEG wrapped inside a PDF, in case that works better for you: gessner-1740-phd-8-crop-4184x4144-2048x-jpg.pdf )
Geßner has been digitized several times, but unfortunately at present (2015) the good-quality digitizations by independent European libraries and universities do not yet include the volume with this plate. The digitizations which do are those done by Google, which are of poor quality. Here is the plate from the Google digitization of the University of Virginia copy (available via The Hathi Trust), reassembled. Although it is of lower resolution and distorted, because this is a lighter image than Duensing's photographic print, it is in some cases possible to make out details more clearly in it.
The image of the hand mold in Geßner's plate was reprinted in {Bauer 1922}, p. 27. Here it is, extracted (see the section below on Bauer's Das Giessinstrument des Schriftgiessers for a complete reprint).
Universal Magazine. (1750)
Moxon, Joseph, [communicated by "A.B."] "The Art of Cutting, Casting, and Preparing of Letter for Printing, with a neat Representation of a Letter-founder's Work-house." The Universal Magazine. Vol. 6, No. 6 (June 1750): 274-278.
This is a condensed extract of material from Moxon's Mechanick Exercises on subjects including punchcutting and hand casting. It is illustrated with a plate of the Caslon foundry.
This extract was reprinted in 1939 by Fred Anthoensen .
This 1750 number of The Universal Magazine has been scanned by Google from the University of Michigan copy. Unfortunately, as always, they did not fold out the plate and so it is nearly useless. Fortunately, I have a copy of this plate from a 1920 history of the Caslon foundry, [McRae, John Findlay.] Two Centuries of Typefounding. (London: George W. Jones, 1920.) The image at left links to a PDF of an extract of the article, from the Google scan, supplemented with a scan from the 1920 reprint of this plate (reduced in scale to fit the low-resolution Google scan). For a high-resolution (600dpi) version of the plate, see the image below.
(Scanned by DMM from the 1920 McRae reprint. Here it is as a PDF: ../../typemaking/literature/general/caslon-two-centuries-of-typefounding-1920-1200rgb-004-hand-casting-rot90ccw-scale-50pct-jpg.pdf )
The images and links above are all "up and over" to the main CircuitousRoot presentation of this work in the General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types Notebook. The two illustrations below, excerpting the hand mold shown on the floor (which is obviously shown over-size) are local. This hand mold illustration was clearly copied from Moxon.
Both editions of Howe's "The Typecasters" include an engraving of a type foundry, attributed to "J. Wagner (c. 1760)" but "source unknown, possibly Swiss." In {Howe 1955} it is reproduced as a photographic image. In {Howe 1957} it has been rendered back into a simulated engraving.
This engraving by Wagner shows considerably less detail than {Weigel 1698} or {Täubel (1805)}.
As important as they are, the bits on printing and type in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alambert can be hard to find. For more on this see the CircuitousRoot Notebooks on Diderot & d'Alambert on Typefounding and, more generally, "Findingthe Encyclopédie" .
"Caracteres d'Imprimerie" & "Fonderie..."
This is an extract, in PDF format, of one article and one set of plates (with captions) from the Encyclopédie. Together, these contain the bulk of the material on typefounding. The article is "Caracteres d'Imprimerie," from Vol. 2, pp. 650-666. (1752). The set of plates is "Fonderie en caracteres d'imprimerie, précédée de la gravure des poinçons, Les deux Arts contenant huit Planches" from the second volume (first part) of plates (1763). This volume of plates has no overall pagination; there are three pages of captions followed by eight plates.
The source for the page images gathered here is the scan presented by the ARTFL Encyclopédie Project of the University of Chicago. These page images are in the public domain.
Here are the two plates showing hand molds.
The entry on punchcutting and typefounding in volume 2 of the Werkstäte der Heutigen Kunste, oder die Neue Kunsthistorie ("Workshops of the contemporary arts, or the new art history") of Johann Samuel Hallens (or Halle) of 1762 contains a drawing of one half of a hand mold. Although the furnace shown in Hallens' plate is clearly derived from Geßner's Die so nöthig als nützliche Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgiessereÿ of 1740, the hand mold appears to be from a different source.
For a more complete entry on Hallens, see the entry on him in the entry on his work in the Notebook of General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types .
Here is the plate from Hallens showing one half of a hand mold:
(This image is from the Getty Research Institute's digitization of this work, as presented at The Internet Archive. See: https://archive.org/details/johannsamuelhall02hall)
The first volume of the Manuel Typographique by Pierre-Simon Fournier (known as Fournier le jeune), from 1764, is probably the most important work in the history of typefounding in the hand-casting era. Where Moxon was self-taught, Fournier was professionally trained. His book presents sufficient information, with illustrations, to allow anyone to reproduce this technology.
For a discussion of the various editions of Fournier, see the section on Fournier in the Notebook on General Literature for making Printing Matrices and Types .
In 1922, Bauer published re-drawn plates derived closely from Fournier's plates 5 and 7 {Bauer 1922}; I'll reprint these below. Fournier's images, which were always well-known to professional typefounders, have also served as the basis for other drawings ( Täubel in 1805, for example).
Here are the three plates from Fournier which deal with conventional hand molds (two more plates, not shown here, deal with larger molds for leads and for furniture). The greyscale images which appear warped at their centers have been reassembled from the images in the Google scan of the Bodleian edition. The two plates with captions are from {Bauer 1922}. I've added the callouts from Fournier's original text, augmented by Carter's translations.
Due to the complex nature of the history of digital editions of Fournier, I'll present these three plates in multiple versions. For each, the larger image is from the Bibliothèque nationale de France / Gallica version. Please note that this Gallica version is licensed by the BnF for noncommercial use only (and is so used here). Although the original image they scanned is public domain, this digital version is not. The first smaller image for each is a reconstruction from the Google digitization of the Oxford University copy. It is public domain. The second smaller image, present for the first (Plate V) and third (Plate VII) plates only, is my scan of the version of this image as reprinted in {Bauer 1922}. It is public domain.
Plate V: " Moule à fondres les Lettres" ("The Letter-Mould," in Carter's translation).
(From {Fournier 1764 Gallica}. Licensed by the BnF/Gallica for noncommercial use only. Here is the same image as a PDF: fournier-v1-1764-manuel-typographique-bnf-gallica-bpt6k1070584h-pdf381-plate-v.pdf )
(From {Fournier 1764 Oxford} (left) and {Bauer 1922}, p. 34 (right). Both public domain.)
Here are the captions for the figures in this plate, first in Fournier's French / then in English as translated by Harry Carter.
Planche V / Plate V: "Moule à fondres les Lettres" / "The Letter-Mould"
Planche VI / Plate VI: " Détail du Moule" / "Details of the Letter-Mould"
(From {Fournier 1764 Gallica}. Licensed by the BnF/Gallica for noncommercial use only. Here is the same image as a PDF: fournier-v1-1764-manuel-typographique-bnf-gallica-bpt6k1070584h-pdf383-plate-vi.pdf )
(From {Fournier 1764 Oxford} [not present in Bauer]. Public domain.)
The captions (again with Harry Carter's translations):
Planche VI / Plate VI: "Détail du Moule." / "Details of the Letter-Mould."
Planche VII / Plate VII: " Moule d'usage en Allemagne, en Hollande, &c." / "Mould Used in Germany, Holland, and Elsewhere."
(From {Fournier 1764 Gallica}. Licensed by the BnF/Gallica for noncommercial use only. Here is the same image as a PDF: fournier-v1-1764-manuel-typographique-bnf-gallica-bpt6k1070584h-pdf385-plate-vii.pdf)
(From {Fournier 1764 Oxford} (left) and {Bauer 1922}, p. 35 (right). Both public domain.)
The captions (with Harry Carter's translations):
Planche VII / Plate VII: " Moule d'usage en Allemagne, en Hollande, &c." / "Mould Used in Germany, Holland, and Elsewhere."
The 1768 J. Enschedé type foundry Proef van Letteren (type specimen book) contains a portrait of J. M. Fleischman together with the tools of the typefounder and punchcutter. {Enschedé 1768}
Here is that portrait in two digitizations of the same copy of this work, at the University of Ghent library. The first is from a Google France digitization (ID: o709AAAAcAAJ) and the second from a Google [US, presumably] digitization (ID: qQ4_AAAAcAAJ).
The Davis/Carter edition of Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (those on Printing) also reproduces this illustration ( {Moxon (Davis/Carter) 2nd Ed.}, Fig. 14.)
The entry on typefounding in volume 6 of the Dizionario delle Arti de' Mestieri (1769) edited by Marco Fassadoni (the original series editor was Francesco Griselini, under whose name this work generally will be cataloged) is the first such description in Italian. It contains illustrations of punchcutting and the hand mold.
Griselini, Francesco (original editor) and Marco Fassadoni (editor of this volume). Dizionario delle Arti de' Mestieri. Vol. 6 ("E-F") Venice, Republic of Venice: Modesto Fenzo, 1769.
For a more complete entry, see entry on this work in the General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types .
Here is Fassadoni's Plate VIII, shwing the hand mold:
Here is the original JP2 version of this image: dizionariodellea06gris_orig_0273-tav-08.jp2.
[TO DO. Find. Also reprint drawing from {Bauer 1922}.]
Much of the material used by Giambattista Bodoni survives. I am assuming that all of these tools were contemporary with him - I'm really not sure if this is true. Bodoni set up la Stamperia Reale in Parma in 1768, and died in 1813.
In his "Typefoundry" blog, James Mosley has published a lovely photograph of an original Bodoni hand mold and accompanying matrix, along with a type newly cast in it and a new ladle made by Stan Nelson. This mold is interesting from a constructional point of view because it illustrates a Potence / Male Gauge which is held on with a screw from above. This seems a much simpler method of construction. {Mosley 2007-08-27}
[TO DO. Biblio from La fucina dei caratteri di Giambattista Bodoni.]
This is a three-volume technical dictionary on printing and typefounding, Allgemeines theoretisch-practisches Wörterbuch der Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgiesserey ("General Theoretical and Practical Dictionary of Printing and Typefounding"), published in 1805 by C. G. Täubel in Vienna. {Täubel 1805, v. 1} {Täubel 1805, v. 2} {Täubel 1805, v. 3}
Volume 2 contains a frontispiece showing a hand type foundry. It is notable not so much for its illustrations of the hand mold as for showing the furnace (foreground left) and the dressing bench (background center). This plate was reprinted in {Hoger 1892}
Volume 3 contains a plate illustrating a Flemish/German style hand mold. The detail drawings of its parts are particularly useful as they show clearly how the Carriage served as the base to which the other parts were attached. These detail drawings were later omitted in some drawings derived from this one.
(From {Täubel 1805, v. 3}.)
The Lever Hand Mold was invented twice, nearly simultaneously: by John Peek in England in 1809 (in a version using a compression spring) and by Archibald Binny in the United States in 1811 (in a version using a conventional Bow). There has also been a suggestion, by David Bruce, Jr., that Binny "took a hint from a German mold," but the meaning of this is not yet clear. See the section below on Archibald Binny, Lever Hand Mold (1811-1814).
Peek patented his version in 1809, but details of it have only ever been published in abridged form. (Several images do exist, both of the patent drawings and of actual molds, but I do not have permission at this point to reprint them.)
Peek (1809). Abridgment (1859).
[An abridgment of GB patent No. 3,194 of 1809, issued 1808-01-23 to John Peek, as printed in] Patents for Inventions: Abridgments of Specifications Relating to Printing . (London: George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1859): pp. 117-118.
This has been digitized by Google from the Harvard University copy. The icon here links to an extract from this digitization of these two pages, in PDF form. Although Peek's actual patent contained illustrations, this abridgment does not. (Aside: I have seen copies of these illustrations, though I cannot reprint them here; they clearly show a lever hand mold.)
At least one hand mold in the style of Peek's survives, in the collection of the (former) Type Museum (now the Type Archive, I believe). Fortunately, one photograph of this mold (of the bottom half only) has now been published and can be viewed online. It was used for the poster for the presentation "Exploring the Type Founder's Mould: Structure and Skill," given by Stan Nelson to the Oxford Bibliographical Society on April 27, 2015. This poster is online at: http://www.oxbibsoc.org.uk/lectures/exploring-the-type-founders-hand-mould-structure-and-skill
Peek's patent was not widely referenced in the literature. The only other source I've been able to discover so far is the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809 {Edinburgh 1809}. In its "List of Patents for New Inventions &c. Taken Out in the Year 1809," it says:
"Jan. 23. Machine for casting printing types, by which three motions out of five, made in the ordinary method, are saved. To John Peek, of Charlotte Row, Fort Place, Bermondsey, Surrey, mill-wright." (p. 456)
Beyond that I can discover nothing more. In particular, I know nothing of the transmission of this invention to Germany and France (which may be important for the consideration of Binny's work, below).
Peek's mold differs in its implementation from the simpler mechanism adopted later. We will, again, have to wait for the publication of the solution of this puzzle by Stan Nelson in his forthcoming book.
The information on hand molds in Rees' Cyclopædia is hard to track down. The article itself appears in Volume 15 (issued 1810) under the heading "Foundery, Letter, or the method of casting printing Letters" (not under "Printing," and there is no entry for "Type"). {Rees Vol. 15} The plates, however, appear in Volume 3 of the six separate volumes of Plates, under the general heading "Miscellany," where it appers in Plate XV (which actually is several successive Plates XV), as Figs. 2 and 3. on that plate. {Rees, Plates Vol. 3}
Rees. "Foundery, Letter..." (1810)
Rees, Abraham, ed. The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature. Vol. 15 [issued 1810]. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1819.
Digitized by Google. The icon at left links to an extract in PDF format of just this article.
Here is the Plate XV which features the moulds, from the Missouri Botanical Gardens / Biodiversity Heritage Project scan of Rees. (Available via The Internet Archive; see the bibliographic entry here: {Rees, Plates Vol. 3})
Here are the callouts on this drawing, from the Volume 15 text:
Rees' illustration of a hand mold was reprinted in Rollo Silver's Typefounding in America: 1787 - 1825 from the American edition (in which, according to the signature on it, the plate was re-engraved). {Silver 1965}
In 1811 and in 1814 Archibald Binny (principal of Binny & Ronaldson, the first durably successful type foundry in the US) was granted patents for a "Type Mould." These patents have been lost, and we know with certainty nothing about them.
Patents before 1836 were not originally assigned numbers. In 1836, the US Patent Office was destroyed by fire, and the specifications for most patents issued before that date have been lost. We know of them only from surviving references and, when we are fortunate, from surviving copies preserved outside of the Patent Office. In more recent scholarship, these lost patents have been assigned "X-patent" numbers to help distinguish them. Binny's two patents for type moulds have been assigned X-patent numbers 1,424X (1811-01-29, "Type Mould") and 2,131X (1814-05-17, "Moulds for Casting Printing Types").
However, David Bruce, Jr., inventor of the machine which supplanted the lever hand mold wrote several times about Binny's invention. His reports are the closest thing we have to a primary account of it.
Writing in 1850 for the Commissioner of Patents, Bruce says:
"Archibald Binny and James Ronaldson ... made an important improvement in the type mould, by which a caster could cast 6,000 letters in a day with as much ease as he before could cast 4,000." {Bruce 1850}, p. 399.
Writing in a memoir completed by 1874, but not published in a reliable modern edition until 1981, Bruce says of the situation at the time Binny and Ronaldson started their type foundry:
"The plan of the then commonly used type mold now technically known as the "ring tailed" or long spring mold wherein the matrix & spring were required to be removed every time a type was cast - we have every reason to believe by reference to drawings, to be essentially the same as that used by the earliest type founders. To us now accustomed to witness such bold innovations it appears to be a very uncouth & stupid intolerance. Mr. Binny viewed it somewhat in the same light and ever on the alert for improvement took a hint from a German mold which had come into his possession & made a beneficial change. By an ingenious change in some of the parts he accomplished his aim which enabled the workman to cast as least a quarter more work & with much greater ease. A patent was granted him in the year 1811."
"We think we will be pardoned for dwelling upon & noting as we proceed these early attempts at improvement as the slow & laborious process of casting type as then practiced at the average speed of thirteen pr. minute contrasts with the present average speed of one hundered [by mechanical type-casting], cannot fail of being very interesting.
"This improvement from the 'ring tailed' mold to the 'lever' mold was a very great advance & added much to the facility of manufacture. ... {Bruce 1874/1981}, pp. 25-26.
In this same memoir, Bruce also confirms for us the dates of Binny's patent. His inquiry to the Patent Office for this information was made in April of 1836, just prior to the fire which destroyed it.
It is interesting that Bruce indicates that Binny's lever mold was not a new invention, but a modification of the mechanism of a "German" mold. Binny & Ronaldson had acquired at least some of the materials of the failed type foundry of emigree Dutch type founder Adam Gerard Mappa. (See {Silver 1965}, pp. 11-18 for more on Mappa and the acquisition by B&R of his equipment.) This is suggestive, as "Dutch" and "German" were easily conflated in this period. On the other hand, this acquisition was in about 1794, fifteen years before Binny's first patent.
Peek's patent for a lever hand mold was 1809, so it is just barely conceivable that a German copy of Peek's design could have made it to America by 1811. However, the mechanism of Peek's mold differs substantially from that of Binny's.
Rollo Silver, on the other hand, attributes Binny's inspiration to the typefounding tools imported from France by Benjamin Franklin in March 1786. This type foundry was purchased from the estate of Benjamin Franklin Bache by Binny & Ronaldson in 1806 {Silver 1965}, pp. 33, 37, 106-107. This would, however, assign quite an early date (prior to 1786) to the supposed French proto-lever-mold.
A US patent for "Type Moulds" was issued to George Lothian on 1816-12-18. Patents issued before the US Patent Office fire of 1836 were not numbered, and all official copies perished in that fire. Those that are known have been retroactively assigned "x-patent" numbers to help organize them, even though copies of very few exist. The "Directory of American Tool and Machinery Patents" ( http://datamp.org/) indicates that this is US X-patent No. 2,709X. No copy is known to survive. Nothing more is known about it.
Cited in {Silver 1965}, p. 107, and {Ringwalt 1871}, p. 249.
The Davis/Carter edition of Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (those on Printing) contain various illustrations of hand molds, including two dated as "probably of the early 19th century." The two actually differ a bit; the one shown open has the Bow exiting to the side, reinforced by the bottom Wood. It is in the French style. ( {Moxon (Davis/Carter) 2nd Ed.}, Fig. 10.)
In 2014 I had the opportunity to examine, measure, and photograph an early surviving hand mold. It is undated, but if it does not date to a period from, say, 1820 to 1850 it must certainly be identical to molds of that period.
Here's one photograph that I took of it, showing the lever mechanism:
For a more extensive set of photographs, see the photographs section of the CircuitousRoot project "HMA: A 19th Century Lever Hand Mold" .
My thanks to Paul Aken, proprietor of The Platen Press, a private museum in Zion, Illinois, for the opportunity to examine this mold.
An illustration of a closed hand mold appeared in an article on typefounding in The Penny Magazine in 1833. { Penny Magazine 1833} , p. 423.
This illustration was used later in the Penny Cyclopædia ( { Penny Cyclopædia 1843} , p. 455) and Knight's English Cyclopædia {Knight 1867}.
The same number of The Penny Magazine contained a general view of a type foundry. It has been reprinted a number of times.
In the late 1830s and early 1840s, David Bruce Jr. invented the pivotal type caster, the first successful type casting machine. The mechanism of this type casting machine depended upon several earlier developments, including the lever hand mold. But although it contained a mechanism for tilting the matrix out of the way (as the lever hand mold does), it did not need the actual lever pressed by the operator.
In his 1838 patent (US patent No. 632), Bruce describes the lever hand mold as the ordinary mold used at that time for hand casting, and distinguishes the mold of his machine from it:
"I shall now give a description of the mold and how it is attached to the arm H. There is but little difference in the construction of the mold used on this machine from that used in the hand process of casting, and this consists more in the disuse of some of its pars than any deviation from its principles of construction. In these molds the brass mouth, cap, hooks, woods, and levers for tilting the matrix is [sic] dispensed with. [italic mine] ( {Bruce 1838}, p. 2)
The matrix in a pivotal type caster still tilts, but not under the control of a series of levers actuated by hand. This original patent is, however, proof that Bruce saw the mold of his pivotal type caster as a derivative specifically of the lever hand mold.
The Dolphin was a short-lived magazine, somewhat erratic in its publication schedule, which was put out by The Limited Editions Club (a part of Macy's department store) in the 1930s. It published a number of good popular "semi-technical" articles on type - though inevitably they distorted the field significantly. Their influence has been enduring, as they created much of the current popular understanding of type.
In the third issue, which also bore the title " A History of the Printed Book," Carl Purington Rollins (printer to Yale University) wrote "A Brief and General Discourse on Type." This in turn was illustrated by a photograph of a hand mold. ( {Rollins 1938}, Fig. 110.)
Rollins' text gives no hint that he saw anything unusual about this hand mold; it is shown as a representative mold of the period from Gutenberg to Mergenthaler. But in fact it is a photograph of a Lever Hand Mold, and as such is quite rare. There is no information as to the source of the photograph or the provenance of this lever hand mold.
If you have an interest in lever hand molds, it's worth looking this up. While I can't reprint the image here, it is online at the Carnegie-Mellon University's Posner library (search for the entire set of The Dolphin. http://posner.library.cmu.edu/Posner/
In 1955, Ellic Howe wrote a historical essay, "The Typecasters," which was published by The Monotype Corporation Limited (UK) "for presentation to The Monotype Casters' and Typefounders' Society." {Howe 1955}. Two years later the text of this booklet was reprinted, with different illustrations, as the entire contents of Vol. 41, No. 1 (Summer 1957) of The Monotype Recorder. {Howe 1957}.
The 1955 version of Howe's essay (but not the 1957) contained a photograph showing "Two hand moulds for casting type." The second of these two hand molds is in fact a lever hand mold of the Binny style.
What is significant here is that Howe's essay in general is a very good, very well informed study of the history of typecasting. It was published by one of the major type machinery firms in the world (the English Monotype firm). Yet nowhere in it does Howe betray any sign that he recognizes a lever hand mold or even knows of its existence. For Howe in 1955, as for Rollins (one of America's finest printers) in 1938, the lever hand mold had been erased from the historical record, and was invisible even when it was right before their eyes.
The discussion and illustration of a lever hand mold in Charles Laboulaye's Dictionnaire des arts et manufactures (1845ff) is important for several reasons. First, it is proof that the Binny-style lever hand mold was known in France (and Belgium) in the 1840s. Second, it is a particularly clear illustration of the lever hand mold. Third, it is the earliest contemporary illustration of a lever hand mold that I have yet discovered. Fourth, it identifies this style of mold with Binny: Laboulaye calls it a "moule américain."
Here's the image, from a Belgian printing of the 1845 first edition. Note that the illustrator has drawn it in the conventional orientation of the matrix, with the bottom of the matrix at the top. But since the Binny lever hand mold inverts the orientation of the matrix, the mold itself is drawn upside-down (relative to its common orientation) with the bottom plate (to which the bow is attached) at the top. This means that the register which controls horizontal alignment is on the left in this illustration.
(From {Laboulaye 1845}. This edition of Laboulaye's work is divided into columns, not pages. This is from Col. 1717, in the article "Fonderie en caractères.)
Here's the same illustration, from an undated (circa 1845) Paris version of the first edition:
(From {Laboulaye 18xx Paris}. This edition of Laboulaye's work is unpaginated, but the gatherings are numbered for the convenience of the binder. The image is in gathering 139, which in the 21st century works out to PDF image 1216 in this digitization.)
Illustrations, contemporary or modern, of early Nineteenth century American lever hand molds are nonexistent. We can get an imperfect glimpse of these molds, however, from an 1848 patent by Hartley Day for a universally adjustable mold. The mold shown in Day's patent is much more complex than an ordinary fixed-body hand mold (and appears to have had no influence on typefounding practice), but it is based on a lever hand mold and does show the lever mechanism (the levers are marked 'B' in his drawings). Of this mechanism, he says (significantly):
"A is the spring which presses the letter-matrix bar up to its seat, as in other molds, and represented in dotted lines in Figs. 2, 4, 5, and 6. B B are the compound levers by which the letter-matrix bar is raised or moved off the type immediately after it is founded. They do not differ from those in use in other molds." [my italics] (p. 3)
Day. Universal Type-Mold. (1848)
US ptent 5,846, "Improvement in Type-Molds" / "Universal Hand Type Mould," issued 1848-10-10 to Hartley W. Day. Filing dated 1847-10-30.
The Smithsonian Institution has the patent model for this mold. It is their ID / Accession number 1996.0062.06 Their photograph of it (which is online) may indicate that the lever mechanism is missing from the model, however.
Carter's A View of Early Typography contains a photograph, credited to J. W. Thomas, of "An English typefounder's mould of about 1850 and pieces of type cast in it" from the University Press, Oxford. The image isn't entirely clear, but it appears to be in the Flemish/German style. ( {Carter 1969}, Fig. 2.)
Marius Audin's 1928 Histoire de L'Imprimerie par L'Image: Tome I - L'Histoire et La Technique shows a hand mold which it identifies as "Outillage de fonderie au XIXe siècle." (identifying the image itself as "d'après un dessin de Tellier, gravé par Lacost." {Audin 1928}
Volume 17 (1851) of the Technologische Encyklopædia oder alphabetisched Handbuch der Technologie, der Technischen Chemie und des Maschinenwesens , a work that had been underway since 1830, concerned "Stereotypie und Schriftgießerei" (stereotyping and typefounding). {Prechtl v. 17, 1851} It (or more particularly the section of the "Atlas" or volume of plates associated with it) contained illustrations of an unusual style of lever hand mold which employed a slider in place of the first lever.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate a (digital) copy of the "Atlas" of plates accompanying Prechtl, and so cannot illustrate it here from the original. Fortunately, presumably accurate re-drawn versions of two illustrations of this mold were reprinted in {Bauer 1922}, pp. 38-39. Here they are:
Three things about this illustration are noteworthy:
First, Prechtl describes this as an English mold, but it has the bow of the Binny/American lever hand mold rather than the compression spring of Peek's hand mold.
Second, the first illustration shows what is presumably the bottom plate (with the lever) on top. The position of the matrix is the same as a Binny-style lever hand mold (we know this because the hole for the Bow is shown on the matrix). This suggests that Prechtl did not fully understand the mold, and drew it inverted so that the matrix would be head-down (as in a conventional non-lever hand mold) rather than head-up (as in a lever hand mold).
Third, this mold employs a push/cam type lever actuator rather than the pure lever system of either Peek (one lever) or Binny (two levers).
1862 International Exhibition
Record of the International Exhibition, 1862. Glasgow, UK: William Mackenzie, [1862?] Digitized by Google. The icon here links to an extract of pp. 385-389, on "Type-Founding."
It has this to say about hand moulds:
"Until the commencement of the present century, the art of casting types in metal moulds made little or no progress from the period of its first discovery by Peter Schoeffer. The Americans appear to have been the first to apply any material improvements to the metal hand mould as used by Schoeffer. By the addition of a small lever to the side of the mould its manipulation was greatly facilitated, and its powers of production were increased from about 4000 types per diem to 6000. It is to America also that we are indebted for the application of the pump for filling, the mould, and for the combination of the pump and lever mould as a type of which Besley's is a good example. The Germans have also for a long period devoted a considerable amount of attention to the appliances for casting types. Indeed it is difficult to determine the real origin of some of the improvements, but it is admitted generallyl that America and Germany have done more for the type founders' art than any other nation up to the period of 1851.
The lever type-mould, known also as the American mould [italics in original], and which is now being rapidly superseded by mechanical type-founding machines driven by steam power, was introduced into this country about sixty years ago, and owes its origin to Messrs. Binney [sic] & Ronaldson, who first employed it in their foundry in Philadelphia. Although this ingenious little contrivance was a great improvement upon the old method of casting, both in point of economy and rapidity of production, yet it has long been found to be inadequaate to supply the increasing demands of the press. By means of the hand mould a good caster could not turn out more than from 3000 to 5000 types per diem, and these had then to pass through the several hand processes of breaking off, rubbing, setting up, cutting out, and dressing. Attention was consequently directed to the discovery of some more rapid means of production, which should at the same time combine accuracy of work with comparatively easy supervision, and the result was that several type-foudning machines, intended to be driven by power, were patented both in America and this country by different inventors, with more or less success. Attempts have been made at casting severa types at one operation, but these were not found to give entire satisfaction, and have been superseded by a return to single-letter casting, assisted by mechanical combinations and steam power." (p. 385)
I have good reason to believe that an illustration of a lever hand mould may have appeared in Henry Mayhew's The Shops and Companies of London and the Trades and Manufactories of Great Britain . (London: Strand Printing and Publishing Company (Limited), 1865), but I have not actually seen this. source {Mayhew 1865}
A newspaper story entitled "Type Manufactory at Redfern" appeared in the Sydney [Australia] Morning Herald on Tuesday, 13 July, 1869 (p. 2) which described the process of hand casting as then practiced at Davies Brothers Australian Letter Foundry. In describing this process, this article discusses the filling of the mold and the typefounders' "jerk", and then says The metal immediately becomes hard, and a small lever is present which releases the die from the face of the type. The mould is at the same time opened and the type is thrown out by the workman." This newspaper article is transcribed in Dennis Bryans' A Survey of Australian Type Founders' Specimens (Blackburn South, Victoria, Australia: Golden Point Press, 2014), pp. 63-66, referenced and identified on pp. 11-12.
References in the literature from later periods cannot be considered firsthand accounts, as outside of particularly traditional institutions such as Oxford the hand mold had passed entirely out of use by the middle of the Nineteenth century. Insofar as the hand mold survived, it was used by the matrix justifier for trial castings. This did not require the extra speed provided by the lever hand mold; a mold in the older style would suffice.
Rollo Silver cites three later accounts (by DeVinne, by MacKellar, and by Ringwalt) {Silver 1965}, p. 106. Of these three, MacKellar's is the one which carries the most weight; he was a practical typefounder and a principal in the firm which descended from Binny & Ronaldson. But what Silver does not note is that this section of MacKellar was "mostly furnished by the late Mr. George Bruce". {MacKellar 1882}
Silver doesn't mention the later reference in MacKellar, in his "A Walk Over Our Foundry": "One of our earliest predecessors, Mr. Archibald Binny (our foundry dates from 1796), added such valuable improvements to the ordinary mould, that no other foundry in the world could rival the expedition and accuracy with which types were cast in the establishment of which he was a co-proprietor." {MacKellar 1882}, p. 44.
By 1891, MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan had donated two hand molds to the Smithsonian Institution:
These were cataloged in a number of the Bulletin of the US National Museum devoted to geology and metallurgy. {USNM 1891}, p. 199.
The hand mold fell out of use by 1850, so by the 20th century we have an uncomfortable split between those few people actually working in historical ways (e.g., Sidney Squires or Stan Nelson) and those who are just repeating examples from history.
In general, if the source is describing the re-enactment of historical practices (Squires, Koch, Nelson, etc.) the I'll include it here. If it is just giving an example of a hand mold as a survey of the history of type, and it does not date this example specifically, I'll put it in the Images of Hand Molds, Not Date section later.
There will be exceptions, however, such as the comprehensive technical summaries of Friedrich Bauer and some views of curiously modern and certainly 20th century hand molds used in Germany. In many cases, the categorization will simply be a matter of opinion.
In 1908, Lucien Alphonse Legros presented a very long, illustrated, paper to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (London). The publication details of this paper can be confusing to a reader who only has the Google-digitized versions, because they don't make the bibliographic data clear and the digitizations erase the physical evidence in the printing which lets you distinguish its source. Briefly, the paper appeared first in the "Minutes of the Proceedings" of the IME. {Legros 1908 A}) This was then published in book form by the IME as Typecasting and Composing Machinery ["Excerpt Minutes of Proceedings [sic] of the Meeting of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, 18th December 1908"] {Legros 1908 B}) The numbering of the pages and plates in this book version can be confusing, as it is identical to that in the Proceedings (that is, it runs from pp. 1027-1221 and the Plates run from 32 to 46).
Below is Legros' illustration of a hand mold (scanned from my copy, not via Google). It's a curious illustration - not incorrect, but certainly confusing. It shows, more particularly, a matrix justifier's hand mold equipped with a screw to hold the matrix in place. (One might compare this with the "bolt action" matrix holding device shown by Konrad Bauer in 1953.) This mold was never intended for production typecasting.
In 1916, with his business partner John Cameron Grant, Legros expanded this into the book Typographical Printing Surfaces (a title to which the term "monumental" is usually, and rightfully, applied). They recycled the same illustration of a justifier's hand mold for this book. {Legros & Grant 1916}
Bauer, "Schrift und Schriftguß" (1910)
Bauer, Friedrich. "Schrift und Schriftguß" [Type and Typefounding], an article in Das Moderne Buch, which is in turn the third volume of a series Die Graphischen Künste der Gegenwart [The Graphic Art of Today]. Stuttgart, German Empire: [publisher?], 1910. {Bauer 1910}
This volume seems not yet to have been digitized. I have not yet found a copy of it (well, at least not one I could afford!) The illustration of a hand mold from it, has been reprinted at least twice.
Second, it is reproduced with its original caption ("Typische Form des (auseinander genommenen) Handgießinstrumentes und Gießlöffel" (typical form of a (disassembled, meaning shown with the two halves apart) hand mold and ladle)), in Mosley's "Typefoundry" blog (entry for 2007-04-09).
See also the blog entry by James Mosley on "Drawing the Typefounder's Mould" for a discussion of the origins and uses of this particular drawing.
Bauer. Das Giessinstrument. (1922)
Bauer, Friedrich. Das Giessinstrument des Schriftgiessers. Hamburg und München: Scriftgiesserei Aktiengesellschaft Genzsch & Heyse, 1922.
This is the single most comprehensive reference for the history of the hand mold.
The icon above left links to a presentation of this work at The Internet Archive, where it can be read online. Here is a local copy of the PDF (608 Megabytes): bauer-1922-das-giessinstrument-0600rgbjpg.pdf
The circa 1919 catalog of Type Founders' Equipment by Williams Engineering (at the Nodis Works) is a rare example of type founders' equipment manufactured commercially and offered for regular sale. {Williams 1919} See the CircuitiousRoot Notebook on this Williams Engineering Co. Catalog (ca. 1919) for a full reprint. Here are images of the four pages illustrating this equipment:
The Davis/Carter edition of Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (those on Printing) contains a photograph of "Sidney Squires, foreman typefounder at the University Press, Oxford, casting type in a hand-mould about 1926." ( {Moxon (Davis/Carter) 2nd Ed.}, Fig. 13.) It isn't apparent from the photograph, but I believe from the evidence in the film (see below) that he is using a lever hand mold.
More recently, the Oxford University Press has released online a digital copy of a circa 1925 British Film Industries film, The Oxford University Press and The Making of a Book {Oxford 1925} It is well worth viewing.
The image in Carter's Moxon might well be a still from this film. The film shows clearly the use of the Lever Hand Mold (by someone who knows how to use it very efficiently).
The article by Paul Koch (son of Rudolph Koch) in the first number of The Dolphin in 1933 is an important and unusually detailed account of his methods of hand punchcutting and typecasting. At the same time, however, it must be read as a part of the romantic revival of hand methods against the percieved evils of machine engraving and machine casting. As such it is also an important document in the erasure from history of the method of hand patrix engraving and matrix electroforming which actually dominated American type making from 1845 to the 1880s (and through 1900 with machine patrix engraving). Although Koch carefully speaks only of his own practices, the wide audience of this article has caused it to fundamentally distort the historical record. {Koch 1933}
The illustrations for this article, by Fritz Kreidel, are unusually clear and detailed. A hand mold is shown in Plate IV. It is curious, however, as each half of the mold contains a kind of rectangular projection which serves no obvious purpose. Fig. 20 shows the mold in hand, with one of these projections visible.
Bauer, Konrad. (1933)
Bauer, Konrad F. Wie eine Buchdruckschrift entsteht. Frankfurt am Main: Bauersche Giesserei, n.d. [1933?] 20pp.
This book was issued twice with the same title but a different number of pages. The content was generally similar between the two, but they are not the same. Neither bears a date. A biographical sketch of Konrad Friedrich Bauer at the Klingspor Museum ( http://www.klingspor-museum.de/KlingsporKuenstler/Schriftdesigner/BauerK_BaumW/BauerBaum.pdf) identifies the 20 page version, in a list of his publications, as "30er Jahre"; the other (30 pages) is identified as "50er Jahre." K.F.Bauer was born 1903-12-09, so I presume that "30er Jahre," if it refers to his age at the time, would be roughly 1933. If so, 50er Jahre would be roughly 1953.
The photograph of a hand mold in the earlier version shows a conventional (but beautifully made and photographed) German-style hand mold.
A scan of this book is online at: http://www.drukwerkindemarge.org/techniek/handleidingen/
Bauer, Konrad. (1953)
Bauer, Konrad F. Wie eine Buchdruckschrift entsteht. Frankfurt am Main: Bauersche Giesserei, n.d. [1953?] 20pp.
This 1953 editionshows a photograph of a mold equipped in a fashion that I have not seen illustrated elsewhere, with a sort of a "bolt-action" device mounted in place of the Bow.
Anthoensen (1939)
Moxon, Joseph and Fred Anthoensen. The Art of Cutting, Casting, and Preparing of Letter for Printing, with a Neat Representation of a Letter-founder's Work-house, Together with a Note on Typefounding by Fred Anthoensen. Portland, Maine: The Southworth-Anthoensen Press, 1939.
This is a reprint of the condensed extract from Moxon published in The Universal Magazine in 1750 with a the addition of a "Note on Typefounding" by Anthoensen.
The icon here links to the presentation of this work in the Notebook of General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types.
Two different photographs of the same person casting type appear in two important publications of the 1960s. In both he is at work at the same work station.
In terms of publication date, the first of these appears in Printing and the Mind of Man, a catalogue of an exhibition of the same title held at The British Museum and at Earl's Court, London, July 16 -27 1963. It shows Sidney Squires (identified by Stan Nelson in correspondence, 2013). He is casting using a traditional hand mold, but it is just barely possible to discern that the mold on his bench (lower right-hand corner of the photograph) is a lever hand mold. This plate is identified as item 63 from the Earls Court section of the Exhibition, "A Caster's Furnace." ( {PMM 1963}, [Earls Court section], Plate V and p. 23.)
The same volume also includes a photograph of a hand mold (Canon body size). ( {PMM 1963}, Plate I [Earls Court section])
(Unfortunately, both of these photographs are in copyright and I cannot reprint them.)
The Exhibition also included a lever hand mold, Item No. 81. The Catalogue calls it a "Trigger Mould" and has this to say about it:
"The addition to the hand mould of a contrivance for tilting the matrix so as to release the casting without undoing the spring is attributable to a Scotsman, Archibald Binney [sic], who patented it in America in 1811. This improvement almost doubled the speed of production to some 800 medium-sized castings an hour." ( {PMM 1963}, p. 24)
So by 1963 Peek's invention of the lever hand mold in England had been forgotten - though one may pardon the organizers' repatriation of Binny to the United Kingdom.
Carter's A View of Early Typography contains a photograph of this same person casting type at the same work station, in a slightly different view. Carter's photograph shows both molds, but it is so darkly reproduced that it is impossible to make out the lever on the mold on the bench. ( {Carter 1969}, Fig. 5.)
In the study of John Fell and the "Fell Types" at Oxford by Stanley Morison (assisted by Harry Carter), {Morison 1967}, there is a brief Appendix (Appendix II, pp. 226-228) describing and partially illustrating the typefounder's materials of Fell's time which survived at the Press. (Certainly one must attribute this Appendix to Carter rather than Morison.)
Of the few items remaining, only one - a typefounder's anvil or stake - is clearly present in the list of materials prepared by Fell's executors. The other objects are attributed to the time of Fell only because they are "too primitive" to be a part of the later Oxford foundry. The discussion of these objects by Carter is of particular use because illustrations of them have been reprinted several times. It's nice to have a detailed discussion of what they are and aren't.
In addition to the photograph of Sidney Squires noted above , Harry Carter's A View of Early Typography also contains a photograph of an English typefounder's mold "of about 1850" (Fig. 2).
Additionally, the dustjacket of the original hardcover edition had a photograph of a different mold, which appears to be German in style.
In his 1974 article "Early Typefounders' Moulds at the Plantin-Moretus Museum," Mike Parker presents a complete inventory of this collection and provides commentary upon some of its most important examples. {Parker 1974} It is in copyright and cannot be reprinted here.
(See also the Stan Nelson (His Early 21st Century Work) section, below.)
Stan Nelson (1985)
Nelson, Stan. "Mould Making, Matrix Fitting, and Hand Casting." Visible Language, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1985): 106-120. The subtitle for this issue of Visible Language was: "The Computer and the Hand in Type Design; Proceedings of the Fifth ATypI Working Seminar, Part 1." This article remains the best source in English for detailed information on the construction of the type founder's hand mold. It describes the construction of a French style hand mold of the 18th century.
This article is copyright 1985 by Stan Nelson and is reprinted here with his kind permission. Please do not republish it further without his permission.
The icon here links to a local presentation of this article in PDF format. It is 85 Megabytes. Unless your net connection is very fast (by 2014 standards), it would be best to download it to your own computing environment and to read it offline.
My thanks to Stan Nelson for allowing this reprint of his very important article.
In this same year (1985), Stan Nelson also made a film on the entire process of creating type by hand methods: From Punch to Printing Type: The Art and Craft of Hand Punchcutting and Typecasting. This film is still available. {Nelson 1985 B}
In 1991, Stan Nelson and Dan Carr demonstrated punchcutting for two days at a conference either organized by or held under the name of (I'm not clear which) "DIDOT" ("DIgitization and Design of Typefaces") at the University of Reading (UK). Alan May published a brief account of this, illustrated with photographs by Elli Hadjiloizi and Nick Nowells, in the Printing Historical Society Bulletin, No. 22 (Summer 1992). These illustrations include casting type in one of Stan's molds. See {May 1992}
In the Winter 1995/1996 number of the Printing Historical Society Bulletin, Alan May describes and illustrates the construction of a hand mold following as closely as possible the methods described by Moxon. See {May 1995} (Note that this is the PHS Bulletin , a series which has now been discontinued. It is not the current newsletter of the PHS, Printing History News.)
May has built such Moxon-style molds several times, and has revised this article based on his later experience. See {May 2015}
I think that one of his earlier molds is shown shown online on the blog of Peter Chasseaud's "Tom Paine Printing Press" (posting dated 2008-05-17, "Alan May's Gutenberg Press at the British Library"). http://tompainepress.blogspot.com/2008/05/alan-mays-gutenberg-press-at-british.html {May 2008} (In his 2015 article, May says that in his first reconstruction he used brass for the carriages, while in his latest work he uses steel. The mold shown on Chasseaud's blog appears to have one carriage of brass and another of steel.)
Karel van der Waarde has a good, though brief, web site on hand molds at: http://users.telenet.be/waarde/Handmoulds/index.html {Van der Waarde 2004}.
In the Spring 2015 number of the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, Alan May published an account of making type molds following as closely as possible the methods described by Moxon. See {May 2015}. This is an updated version of his 1995 article in the PHS Bulletin on the same subject (see {May 1995}). Although this 2015 article is specific to Moxon's mold and its issues, it is also one of the more complete modern articles on building a hand mold.
(For a link to an online photograph of an earlier version of one of May's Moxon-style molds, see the entry above on his 1995 PHS Bulletin article .)
Mosley's "Typefoundry" Blog
James Mosley is one of the foremost authorities on type today, very much the intellectual heir of Harry Carter. His blog "Typefoundry" is always worth reading: http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/ Several posts in it deal directly with the hand mould; I'll give each of them an entry, below.
Mosley. "Drawing the Typefounder's Mould." (2007, 2015)
"Drawing the Typefounder's Mould." April 9, 2007 at: http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/04/drawing-typefounders-mould.html {Mosley 2007-04-09}.
A version of this posting revised for publication appeared in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, New Series, No. 23 (Autumn 2015): 59-63. {Mosley 2015 Drawing}
This discusses the illustration of a hand mould which appeared in Philip Gaskell's New Introduction to Bibliography ( {Gaskell 1972} and {Gaskell 1974}), which he discovers to be "a more complicated matter than [he] had thought." Considering his sources in reverse order:
(1) He traces Gaskell's version of a mold first to {Fuhrmann 1950} (the illustration from which he does not show).
(2) In turn, he finds that Fuhrmann's illustration was derived from an illustration in Bauer's "Schrift und Schriftguß" (Type and Typefounding) {Bauer 1910} (which illustration he does reproduce, with its caption "Typische Form des (auseinander genommenen) Handgießinstrumentes und Gießlöffel" (typical form of a (disassembled, meaning shown with the two halves apart) hand mold and ladle). Gaskell's illustration does seem a pretty direct copy of this.
He hypothesizes that Bauer's source might have been {Täubel 1805, v. 3}, and reprints an extract from Täubel's plate showing a hand mold. His point is that Täubel reversed the drawing so as to produce a mold more in line with German practices (that is, he re-drew the drawing and flipped components; this isn't simply an image reversal). I find it useful to look at the two drawings (Fournier and Täubel) side by side to see this, and have assembled an image, below, which does so:
(3) He then goes on to note that in making this a mold more in the German style, Täubel has introduced a problem, because he has left the wire for the Nick in the bottom half of the mold just as it is in Fournier. With the matrix in the conventional position (top-down) as it would be used in either mold, this results in a type with the Nick at the front of the type. This is conventional French practice, but German/English practice is to have the Nick at the back of the type.
(4) Finally, he notes that in the 1974 revision, Gaskell changed the drawing so as to show a matrix, but that he showed the wrong style of matrix: one with a hole in the back adapted for certain casting machines (DMM: pivotal, Foucher, Barth) rather than one with a notch in the back adapted for hand molds.
(5) He also refers to Geßner for a correct view of an 18th century German style hand mold (see Geßner (1740), above and {Geßner 1740}).
(See also the Stan Nelson (His Late 20th Century Work) section, above.)
Not only does Stan Nelson know more about hand molds than anyone else, he also makes new, authentically re-created hand molds of breathtaking beauty (as anyone who has seen them in person will agree).
From 2002 to 2009, he had a website on the now defunct "geocities" service. This is gone, but it has been archived by the "Wayback Machine" at The Internet Archive. Go to the IA at: https://www.archive.org/ and enter this URL into the Wayback Machine: http://www.geocities.com/rsn_website/recreations.html
Stan Nelson also appeared in the 2008 BBC4 documentary commonly known by the title "The Machine that Made Us," hosted by Stephen Fry. {Fry 2008},
According to a review by Stephen O. Saxe "... Fry is aided by Stan Nelson, who is probably more expert in early methods of typecasting than anyone else. With Stephen Fry looking over his shoulder, we see Stan filing the punch for a lower-case "e," making a smoke proof, striking a matrix, and finlly casting the letter. Stan had proposed that these typefounding scenes be shot at the Plantin-Moretus Museum, but for budgetary reasons they were finally recorded at an old blacksmith's shop in England near alan May's home. And while the lower-case 'e' shown being made is eventually inserted into the final form, the rest of the page was made up from Theo Rehak and Alan Waring's B-42 type, cast in New Jersey at Dale Guild. This font is the closes we have to Bible type that Gutenberg produced." (p. 6) {Saxe 2008},
It shows Nelson casting in what looks to be a hand mold of his making (lovely shiny brass). It shows the movement of the mold for various sets, very nicely. Note also the protective glove he wears. Interestingly, he does not shake the mold when casting. He also uses a pick separate from the mold. They omit finishing/dressing the type. The punchcutting segment shows Fry at a bench with a file, but is not very detailed. The matrix driving segment shows the punch being hammered into a matrix, but does not show the matrix being justified.
Finally, here are some photographs of Stan Nelson's molds. These were taken by me at the 2014 American Typecasting Fellowship Conference in Salem, NH. (Actually, they were taken during the field trip to the Museum of Printing in North Andover, MA, where the presentations were held.) For reasons I can no longer even remember, I had to be elsewhere during Stan's actual casting presentation - something I regret. I took these photographs later. I can't, therefore, explain the details of each mold (though they clearly represent a range of practices).
Each photograph below links to a PDF which in turn contains one or (usually) more images of the same mold.
Finally, here's what really impresses me about Stan's work. It isn't just that he makes impossibly beautiful molds. It isn't just that he makes spot-on-authentic 18th century molds (and now 17th century, it appears). It's that he makes perfect, authentic 18th century screwdrivers to use with them. Wow.
The list here is in approximate chronological order of the source.
{Bauer 1922}, p. 13, reports a claim made in 1840 by Eugène Duverger that he possessed a hand mold once used by the great Claude Garamond. Duverger's text is now online (twice; see {Duverger 1840}) and we can read his original words:
Moules en cuivre fabriqués par Garamond, actuellement en la possession de M. Eugène Duverger, imprimeur.
Duverger illustrated this with only a drawing, unfortunately, not a photograph (which would have been rather difficult only three years after Daguerre). But Garamond died in 1561, so if this statement is true and if Duverger's illustration is accurate, this is an important example. The mold shown by Duverger is basically a standard Flemish/German mold, but without the bow and casting a type which has no feet around the Jet. (The illustration shows the jet being cut off with a hacksaw not unlike those which can still be purchased today.) Here is Duverger's illustration (from the poor scan by Google, first, and then as redrawn by Bauer):
Note: The plates showing molds as reprinted on Van der Waarde's website, at: http://users.telenet.be/waarde/Handmoulds/illustrations.html {Van der Waarde 2004} are in color. This seems to have been lost in the Google digitizations shown above.
This mold is not mentioned by {Carter 1969}, even though Carter must have known of Bauer's work. This omission, like that of the Enschedé mold earlier, casts serious doubt upon the authenticity of this mold.
The mold shown here formerly was in the collection at the Enschedé type foundry in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Stan Nelson indicates that it has been missing since the First World War ( {Nelson 2016b}, p. 18). It was illustrated circa 1900-1902 by John Eliot Hodkgin in volume 2 of his Rariora ( {Hodgkin ca. 1902} Facsimile XI, Plate IV, Fig. 1; this is the illustration below). Hodgkin called it "very ancient." In 1925, Gustav Mori dated it to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century ( {Mori 1925}, caption to his Plate VIII) However, a technical analysis of this mold by Stan Nelson indicates that these dates are mistaken; it is probably a mold of 19th century construction ( {Nelson 2016b}, pp. 18-19).
(Clicking on the image above will show a 2048 pixel wide JPEG version of this images. Here is a 2400 dpi higher-resolution version: hodgkin-rariora-v2-facsimile-11-plate-4-facing-p054-2400rgb-crop-fig01.jpg)
This mold is unusual for two reasons.
First, it is extremely wide. We do not know what was cast with it, but it is clearly not a mold for ordinary type.
Second, the arrangement of the mouthpiece is such that the type-end of the "jet" would continue directly into the sides of the body of the type without a "break." It would not be possible to snap/break the jet off of a newly cast type as is conventionally done in hand typecasting.
An 1840 publication by Eugène Duverger proposed a theory that the earliest hand molds were constructed in this way and that the jet was not then broken off but rather was cut off with a saw {Duverger 1840}. It is this theory that caused Hodgkin and Mori to date this "breakless" mold to the earliest decades of typefounding.
Duverger's theory has persisted until the present time (although I cannot see how any practical typecaster would credit it, as a saw would never be sufficiently precise or accurate enough to produce types of uniform height). It has been most effectively refuted by Stan Nelson in his recent article "Reconsidering a Conclusion" in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society ( {Nelson 2016b}. So there is no reason to think that the lack of a "break" on this mold indicates any particular antiquity.
Here is a drawing of this mold which appears in Bauer's Das Giessinstrument in 1922:
(From {Bauer 1922}, p. 15.)
Here is a photograph of it as published in a 1925 article in Ars Typographica by Gustav Mori:
(From {Mori 1925}, DMM scan of Plate VIII on p. 136. The image above links to a 2048 pixel wide RGB JPEG, which should be sufficient for ordinary purposes. Here is the original 1200dpi RGB scan (75 Megabytes): mori-ars-typographica-v2-n2-1925-10-p136-plate08-enschede-mold.png )
In part III of a short series of articles under the general title "Typefounding," written by Alfred Pye for The Inland Printer in 1885, there is a good illustration of a German-style hand mold, shown with a newly cast type in place but the matrix removed. ( {Pye 1885}, p. 143)
(Scanned by DMM from the Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison copy.)
An illustration of a closed hand mold appears in the Sixth Edition (1911) of John Southward's Practical Printing (no doubt it appears in earlier editions as well). ( {Southward 1911}, p. 86)
A Flemish/German style mold, undated, in two publications of the same photograph.
(From {Mori 1921}.)
In this second version, the editor (Douglas McMurtrie) has erred in referring to the invention of the "rotary" type casting machine cira 1845. He meant "pivotal" type casting machine.
(From {Mori 1925}, DMM scan of Plate IX on p. 137. The image above links to a 2048 pixel wide RGB JPEG, which should be sufficient for ordinary purposes. Here is the original 1200dpi RGB scan (80 Megabytes): mori-ars-typographica-v2-n2-1925-10-p137-plate09-flemish-german-mold.png )
Jahn's Hand Composition contains images, from photographs, of a hand mold very much like the one shown from the Gutenberg Museum in {Ruppel 1961} and then in {Scholderer 1963} ( see above). {Jahn 1931}
Das Buchdruckerbuch a 1953 general survey of printing technology edited by J. Bass, contains a sub-chapter on "Herstellung der Schrift" (idiomatically: The Making of Type) by Paul Frier. It in turn contains a small image of a hand mold and a photograph of it in use ( {Frier, 1953}, p. 31.)
(This isn't actually a very useful source for hand mold information, but Frier's article in general is very interesting because of the views it contains of matrix making and type milling.)
Two works from the 1960s reproduce a photograph of a hand mold at the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz. It is a good photograph of a German/Flemish style mold insofar as it is taken from angle which shows its operation well. But it has been so heavily photo-retouched that important elements such as the nick wire have disappeared completely. It is also shown held in the hands, but without Woods - it would soon become too hot to hold. Shown first in {Ruppel 1961} and then in {Scholderer 1963}
It is very much like the mold shown in Hugo Jahn's Hand Composition (1931 .
Naturally there are a number of images of hand molds in Wilkes' comprehensive study. {Wilkes 1990}
In particular, I'd note that there is a photograph of a lever hand mold (called a "seitenhebelinstrument," or side lever hand mold) on p. 88 (Fig. 104). This image is credited to the St. Bride Library.
While I can't read German, I believe that Wilkes is using this photograph to illustrate "das amerikanische Handgießinstrument" (attributed in the text to Binny) in opposition to what he terms on the next page the "Englisches Gieß-instrument".
Interestingly, though, this "English" hand mold shown on p. 89 is not the Peek's of 1809. Rather, it is the "Englisches Gießinstrument" shown in Bachmann's articles in Archiv für Buchdruckerkunst (1867), which in turn would seem to date back at least to Prechtl's Technologische Encyklopædia, Vol. 17 of 1851.
In Practical Typecasting, Theo Rehak has one photograph of a pair of hand molds. It's a small image, but it is interesting because the mold shown open has a Mouthpiece which has an additional section outboard of the Woods. {Rehak 1993}
The Dale Guild Type Foundry has a page of page of various artifacts related to typefounding at: http://www.dalegui ld.com/Artifacts.html . Among these are a 24 point B-2 drive hand mold. (This is interesting because it indicates that the various depths of drives used for pivotal and Barth type casters at the ATF were also used with hand molds. This makes sense, particularly if the hand mold were used for justifying matrices for a particular machine. The "B-2" drive is for the ATF manufacturing Foundry B, which was the consolidation of their New York operations (mostly the Conner foundry).
Photographs by John Henry
Photographs taken by John Henry of a Double Pica (ca. 24 point) hand mold he owned at the time. They also show matrices and cast type.
This is a Flemish/German style mold. Curiously, it casts type without a nick.
(Actually, I'm only presuming that these are of the French style in their construction because they're French in origin. It's hard to see from the photographs. From what I can see, the mold for large bodies may in fact have Wings. )
{Mosley et. al. 2002} contains color photographs of three molds in the Imprimerie Nationale (France): A 36 point mold, a mold for large characters (with distinctive "side handles" which make it visually unlike an ordinary mold, and a beautiful close-up shot of a large type (probably 48 point) newly cast in the same large mold.
An image of a lever hand mold (identified simply as ハンドモールド (Handomōrudo, "Hand Mold)) appears on the "Adana Press Club" blog at: http://www.robundo.com/adana/blog/?p=4210 This is clearly a modern (late 20th or early 21st century) mold which resembles (or is?) the work of Stan Nelson. {Robundo 4210}
{Amman 1568} Sachs, Hans. Illus. Jost Amman. Eygentliche Beschreibung Aller Stände auff Erden. ["Exact Description of All Ranks on Earth] (Frankfurt am Main, Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel: [ ], 1568).
Note: The title as cited above is taken from the reproduction of the original title page in the Dover edition. {Bauer 1922} has " Eigentliche Beschreybung aller Stände auf Erden ... aller Küste und Handwerken ", which is effectively the same.
Popularly known as the "Ständebuch" (that is, "rank book," showing the ranks or classes of men). This is currently in print in an abridged facsimile with an introduction and abridged translations by Benjamin A. Rifkin, under the understandable but slightly misleading title The Book of Trades (NY: Dover Publications, 1973).
{Audin 1928} Audin, Marius. Histoire de L'Imprimerie par L'Image: Tome I - L'Histoire et La Technique. Paris: Henre Jonquières, 1928.
{Bauer, Konrad F. 1933} Bauer, Konrad F. Wie eine Buchdruckschrift entsteht. Frankfurt am Main: Bauersche Giesserei, n.d. [1933?] 20pp.
A scan of this book is online at: http://www.drukwerkindemarge.org/techniek/handleidingen/
{Bauer, Konrad F. 1953} Bauer, Konrad F. Wie eine Buchdruckschrift entsteht. Frankfurt am Main: Bauersche Giesserei, n.d. [1953?] 30pp.
{Bauer 1922} Bauer, Friedrich. Das Giessinstrument des Schriftgiessers. Hamburg und München: Scriftgiesserei Aktiengesellschaft Genzsch & Heyse, 1922.
I am priviliged to be able to work from my scan of what was formerly the personal copy of this volume of Oswald Schraubstadter (one of Carl Schraubstadter's sons, and a founder of the Inland Type Foundry). Ex- American Type Founders library, now in the papers of Paul Hayden Duensing preserved by Richard L. Hopkins.
{Biringuccio 1540} Biringuccio, Vannoccio. Trans. Cyril Stanley Smith and M. T. Gnudi. The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1942.
{Bruce 1838} US patent 632, "Machine for Casting Printing-Types." Issued 1838-03-17 to David Bruce, Jr. of Bordentown, NJ. (Bordentown is 4.6 miles from Mansfield)
{Bruce 1850} Bruce, David, Jr. "Type Founding" in the Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1850 (Washington, DC: Office of Printers to the House of Representatives, 1851): 398-403.
An extract of just this Report has been reprinted by CircuitousRoot in the Pivotal Type Caster Literature Notebook.
{Bruce 1874/1981} Bruce, David, Jr. History of Typefounding in the United States. Ed. James Eckman. (NY: The Typophiles, 1981).
See also the index to this work in the CircuitousRoot Notebook on David Bruce, Jr.
{Carter 1969} Carter, Harry. A View of Early Typography up to about 1600. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1969.
This is the published form of a set of lectures given by Carter in 1968. It has been reprinted, with a new introduction and with corrigenda by James Mosley (London: Hyphen Press, 2002). It should be on every typographer's bookshelf.
{DeVinne 1900} DeVinne, Theodore Low. The Practice of Typography: A Treatise on the Processes of Type-Making, the Point System, the Names Sizes, Styles and Prices of Plain Printing Types . NY: The Century Co., 1900
This has been digitized by Google Books.
{Diderot } [TO DO - proper biblio citation]
In addition to the above, Van der Waarde notes a facsimile reprint: Bookmaking in Diderot's 'Encyclopédie': a Facsimile Reproduction of Articles and Plates Farnborough [UK]: Giles Barber, 1972. {Van der Waarde 2004} I was unaware of this edition.
{Duverger 1840} Anon. [Eugène Duverger] Histoire de l'Invention de l'Imprimerie par les Monuments. Paris: [De l'Imprimerie rue de Verneuil, No. 4], 1840.
Note: {Bauer 1922} has " Histoire de l'Imprimerie par les monuments," which leaves off the rather importnt "de l'Invention."
This book has been digitized by Google from copies in the Bavarian State Library and at Ghent University (see below left and right, respectively).
[click image to view larger]
The plates showing molds as reprinted on Van der Waarde's website, at: http://users.telenet.be/waarde/Handmoulds/illustrations.html {Van der Waarde 2004} are in color. This seems to have been lost in the Google digitizations.
{Edinburgh 1809} The Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809, Vol. Second - Part Second . (Edinburgh, UK: James Ballantyne & Co., 1811). Digitized by Google from the University of California copy.
{Enschedé 1768} Epreuve de Caractéres. Harlem, Netherlands: J. Enschedé, 1768.
This specimen book has been digitized several times. Below are local copies of two different digitizations by Google of the University of Ghent copy. (Below left, Google ID o709AAAAcAAJ scanned by Google France. Below right, Google ID )
[click image to read]
{Fournier 1764} Fournier, Pierre-Simon [known as Fournier le jeune]. Manuel Typographique. Volume I. Paris:Imprimé par l'Auteur, 1764.
Volume II of the Manuel Typographique, published in 1766, was a specimen book.
For a discussion of the various editions of Fournier, see the section on Fournier in the Notebook on General Literature for making Printing Matrices and Types .
{Fournier 1764 Gallica} Volume I of Fournier has been digitized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and is available via their Gallica digital library (click here to go there). Here is a local copy of that digitization. Please note that it is licensed by the BnF for noncommercial use only (and is so used here). This license is in this sense more restrictive than the Creative Commons license used for most of this Notebook.
[click image to read]
For a discussion of the various editions of Fournier, see the section on Fournier in the Notebook on General Literature for making Printing Matrices and Types .
{Fournier 1764 Oxford} Volume I of Fournier has been digitized twice by Google: from the copy at the Bodleian Library (Oxford) and the copy at the National Central Library of Florence (Italy). The image below left links to a local PDF of the Bodleian version, and below right to the Florentine version. Note, however, that in the latter the plates were not opened up when digitizing, so they are incomplete and nearly useless.
For a discussion of the various editions of Fournier, see the section on Fournier in the Notebook on General Literature for making Printing Matrices and Types .
{Fournier & Carter 1930} Fournier, Pierre-Simon [known as Fournier le jeune], Harry Carter, Trans. Fournier on Typefounding: The Text of the Manuel Typographique (1964-1768) translated into English and edted with notes. London: The Soncino Press, 1930. (260 copies, 60 distributed in the US by Random House, Inc.)
Despite the subtitle, this volume does include all of the plates.
For a discussion of the various editions of Fournier, see the section on Fournier in the Notebook on General Literature for making Printing Matrices and Types .
{Fournier & Carter 1973} Fournier, Pierre-Simon [known as Fournier le jeune], Harry Carter, Trans. Fournier on Typefounding: The Text of the Manuel Typographique (1964-1768) translated into English and edted with notes. NY: Burt Franklin [Lenox Hill Publ. & Dist. Corp.], 1973. With a new Foreword and supplementary bibliography by Carter.
For a discussion of the various editions of Fournier, see the section on Fournier in the Notebook on General Literature for making Printing Matrices and Types .
{Fournier & Mosley 1995} Fournier, Pierre-Simon [known as Fournier le jeune], James Mosley, Ed. The Manual Typographique of Pierre-Simon Fournier le jeune: Together with Fournier on Typefounding, an English Translation of the Text by Harry Carter. Three volumes. Darmstadt, Germany: Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, 1995.
The first two volumes are a facimile reprint of the 1764 and 1766 originals. The third volume is a reprint of Carter's 1930 translation.
For a discussion of the various editions of Fournier, see the section on Fournier in the Notebook on General Literature for making Printing Matrices and Types .
{Fournier André 2010} Jacques André has produced a new edition (2010) of Fournier which he terms a "fac-similé", under the title Manual Typographique de Pierre-Simon Fournier. This is online at: http://jacques-andre.fr/ed/index.html It is not a facimile in the English sense of a photographic reprint. Rather, it is an edited re-setting of extracts from the text (in French, of course) with digital images of the plates. These are less distorted than the ones derived from the Google digitizations, but are a bit fuzzy.
For a discussion of the various editions of Fournier, see the section on Fournier in the Notebook on General Literature for making Printing Matrices and Types .
{Frier 1953} Frier, Paul. "Herstellung der Schrift," a sub-section within J. Bass, ed. Das Buchdruckerbuch: Studien- und Nachschlagewerk, Fachbuch für Buchdruck und Verwandte Gewerbe. Stuttgart, FRG: Deutscher Fachzeitschriften- und Fachbuch-Verlag, 1953.
{Fry 2008} Fry, Stephen, presenter. The Medieval Season [a television series, aka The Medieval Mind], Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press [an episode; aka "Stephen Fry and the Machine that Made Us" or simply "The Machine that Made Us"]. A BBC4 documentary film aired in 2008. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/medieval/gutenberg.html.
{Fuhrmann 1938} Fuhrmann, Otto W. "The Invention of Printing" in Lawrence C. Wroth, ed. A History of the Printed Book: Being the Third Number of The Dolphin. NY: The Limited Editions Club, 1938. Pages 25-57.
This is available online at Carnegie-Mellon University's Posner Library: http://posner.library.cmu.edu/Posner/ Regrettably, it is still in copyright and I can't reprint it here.
{Gaskell 1972} Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. 1972 first edition. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Contains a drawing of a hand mold (solid line version) which has some puzzling features, as discussed in {Mosley 2007-04-09}.
{Gaskell 1974} Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. 1974 "first edition." Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Contains a drawing of a hand mold (dotted line version) which has some puzzling features, as discussed in {Mosley 2007-04-09}.
Somewhat ironically (for a book on bibliography) both the 1972 original edition and the corrected 1974 reprint are both referred to as the "first edition" in online bibliographies and copies offered for sale. (Mosley refers to the corrections of the 1974 edition as "radical" {Mosley 2007-04-09}.) [TO DO: Get both and check] A later revised edition is still in print.
{Geßner 1740} Die so nöthig als nützliche Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgiesserey. [DMM: "The Arts of Printing and Typefounding, as Useful as they are Necessary."] 4 vols. Leipzig: Christian Friedrich Geßner, 1740-45.
{Hodgkin ca. 1902} "The Evolution of the Type-Mould." in Hodgkin, John Eliot. Rariora, being notes of the printed books, manuscripts, historical documents, medals, engravings, pottery, etc., etc., collected (1858-1900) by John Eliot Hodgkin. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company Ltd., [n.d., ca. 1902], pp. 47-63.
This chapter of Hodgkin's Rariora spends a great deal of time on then-popular "alternative" theories of early type making, but it does have some good illustrations of later hand molds.
This has been digitized by The Internet Archive from the University of California copy and is available at: https://archive.org/details/rariorabeingnote02hodg
{Hoger 1892} Hoger, Karl. Aus eigener Kraft! Die Geschichte eines österreichischen Arbeitervereines. ["From Own Strength! The History of an Austrian Workers Association"] Vienna: Verlag des Niederösterreichischen Buckdrucker- und Schriftgiesser-Vereines, 1892.
This reprints the plate showing an early 19th century type foundry which appeared originally in {Täubel 1805, v. 2} (see Täubel (1805), above for a reprint of the 1805 version).
{Howe 1955} Howe, Ellic. The Typecasters. London: "Privately printed for presentation to The Monotype Casters' and Typefounders' Society by The Monotype Corporation Limited", 1955.
This version of Howe's essay contains eight illustrations, six of which are in black-and-white photographic plates. It includes a photograph showing one plain hand mold (assembled) and one lever hand mold (in two parts). The lever hand mold is not identified as a lever hand mold.
{Howe 1957} Howe, Ellic. "The Typecasters" [being the entire contents of] The Monotype Recorder. Vol. 41, No. 1 (Summer 1957).
This version of Howe's essay contains twelve illustrations. These are generally different from those in its 1955 publication. None are done as photographic plates. The illustration of the lever hand mold from the 1955 version is not present.
{Jahn 1931} Jahn, Hugo. Hand Composition: A Treatise on the Trade and Practice of the Compositor and Printer. NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1931.
{Knight 1867} Arts and Sciences, or, Fourth Division of "The English Cyclopædia." "Conducted by Charles Knight." Vol. 6. London: Bradbury, Evans and Co., 1867.
{Koch 1933} Koch, Paul. Trans. Otto W. Fuhrmann. Illus. Fritz Kreidel. "The making of printing types." in The Dolphin. No. 1 (1933): 25-57. NY: Limited Editions Club, 1933.
This is available online at Carnegie-Mellon University's Posner Library: http://posner.library.cmu.edu/Posner/ Regrettably, it is still in copyright (although its current corporate owners probably don't even know it exists) and I can't reprint it here.
{Laboulaye 1845} Laboulaye, Charles. [Encyclopédie technologique:] Dictionnaire des arts et manufactures. Vol. 1, A-F. Brussels, BE: Libraire Polytechnique d'Aug. Decq, 1845. [Other versions of this edition are from Paris and are either undated or are dated 1847.]
In addition to being the editor of this general work, Charles Laboulaye was himself a typefounder, so this article on typefounding has greater authority than articles on the same subject in other encyclopedias (it was signed by him). Laboulaye's Dictionnaire went through several editions and enlargements, but the section on typefounding did not change in them. The article "Fonderie en caractères" begins on col. 1700 (PDF image 872). The images of a plain hand mold are on col. 4708 / PDF 876. The lever hand mold is discussed on cols. 4716-4717 / PDF 880-881.
This 1845 Belgian printing is unpaginated, but its columns are numbered sequentially. It has been digitized by Google from the University of Ghent copy. Here's a local copy of that digitization:
[click image to view larger]
{Laboulaye 18xx Paris} Laboulaye, Charles. [Encyclopédie technologique:] Dictionnaire des arts et manufactures. Vol. 1, A-F. Paris: Librairie de Lacroix et Baudry, [undated, circa 1845]
This edition has been digitized by ETH Zurich from their copy. It is available via e-rara.ch at: http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/titleinfo/8768368
{Legros 1908 A} Proceedings [of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers]. 1908, Parts 3-4. London: The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 1908. Pages 1027-1222.
This has been digitized by Google, but their version is poor and several of the plates are incomplete.
{Legros 1908 B} Typecasting and Composing Machinery ["Excerpt Minutes of Proceedings [sic] of the Meeting of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, 18th December 1908"] London: The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, [n.d.; use 1908]
This has been digitized by Google.
{Legros & Grant 1916} Legros, Lucien Alphonse and John Cameron Grant. Typographical Printing Surfaces. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1916.
Due to the strange details of copyright law, this book is clearly in the public domain in the US, but its copyright status in England is not knowable (until someone tracks down the date of death of John Cameron Grant). Google Books had scanned this text, but has released it in the US only. Apparently there was also a reprint (NY: Garland Publishing, 1980). More recently, I have placed my scan of the original 1916 edition online at The Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/LegrosGrantTypographicalPrintingSurfaces1916
See also Wallis, L. W. "Legros and Grant: The Typographical Connection." Journal of the Printing Historical Society. No. 28 (1999): 5-39.
{MacKellar 1882} MacKellar, Thomas. The American Printer: A Manual of Typography. 13th edition. Philadelphia, PA: MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, 1882.
{May 2008} Chasseaud, Peter. "Alan May's Gutenberg Press at the British Library." Posting on the blog of "Tom Paine Printing Press," 2008-05-17. Online at: http://tompainepress.blogspot.com/2008/05/alan-mays-gutenberg-press-at-british.html
{May 1992} May, Alan. Photographs by Elli Hadjiloizi and Nick Howells. "Making 'Real' Type: Virtue Regained." Printing Historical Society Bulletin. No. 32 (Summer 1992): 4-8.
Documenting a two-day punchcutting demonstration by Stan Nelson and Dan Carr at Reading University (UK) in 1991.
{May 1995} May, Alan. Printing Historical Society Bulletin. No. 40 (Winter 1995/1996): 15-23.
Note that this is the PHS' older publication, the Bulletin, which has now been discontinued and replaced by Printing History News.
This article has been revised into {May 2015}.
{May 2015} May, Alan. "Making Moxon's Type-Mould." Journal of the Printing Historical Society. New Series, No. 22 (Spring 2015): 5-22.
The article title as shown in the issue's Table of Contents says "Making Moxon's hand-mould." In the article itself it says "... type-mould."
This article is a revision of {May 1995}.
{Mori 1921} Mori, Gustav. Was Hat Gutenberg Erfunden? Mainz: Verlag der Gutenberg-Gesellscharft, 1921.
Digitized by Google from the University of Michigan copy and available via The Hathi Trust. Hathi ID: mdp.39015065641352. The image below links to a PDF assembled from the Hathi page images.
{Mori 1925} Mori, Gustav. "The Essence of Gutenberg's Invention" in Douglas McMurtrie, Ed. Ars Typographica. Vol. II, No. 2 (October 1925): 101-144.
Ars Typographica was reprinted in 1970 by the Greenwod Reprint Corp. in a high-quality edition. The original, and the Greenwod reprint, are both in the public domain. The images used here are from my scans of my copy of this reprint. Out of laziness, the text below is the Google/Hathi digitization.
Digitized by Google from the University of Michigan copy and available via The Hathi Trust. Hathi ID: mdp.39015033581037.
{Morison 1967} Morison, Stanley, with Harry Carter. John Fell: the University Press and the 'Fell types'. Oxford, UK: At the Clarendon Press, 1967.
This has been reprinted, with a new introduction by Nicholas Barker (NY: Garland Publishing Co., 1981).
{Mosley 1991} "Illustrations of Typefounding Engraved for the Descriptions des arts et metiers of the Académie Royale des Sciences, Paris, 1694 to c. 1700." in Matrix, No. 11 (Winter 1991): 60-80. Andoversford & Risbury: Whittington Press, 1991.
See the discussion of this very important work in the Notebook Typographical Punchcutting in Steel by Hand: A Survey of the Literature.
{Mosley et. al. 2002} Mosley, James, Sylvie de Turckheim-Pey, et. al. Le Romain du Roi: La typographie au service de l'Etat, 1702-2002. Lyon, France: Musée de l'imprimerie, 2002. ISBN: 2-85682-017-4.
{Mosley 2007-04-09} Mosley, James. "Drawing the Typefounder's Mould." Blog posting dated 9 April, 2007 at: http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/04/drawing-typefounders-mould.html
{Mosley 2007-08-27} Mosley, James. "Casting Bodoni's Type." Blog post dated 27 August 2007 at: http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2007/08/casting-bodonis-type.html
{Mosley 2012-01-06} Mosley, James. "Type Held in the Hand." Blog posting dated 6 January, 2012 at: http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html [The date encoded in the URL does not quite match that in the text of the posting itself.]
{Mosley 2015 Drawing} Mosley, James. "Drawing the Typefounder's Mould." Journal of the Printing Historical Society. New Series, No. 23 (Autumn 2015): 59-63.
This number of Journal of the Printing Historical Society is devoted entirely to Mosley.
{Mosley 2015 Jaugeon} Mosley, James. "Jacques Jaugeon's Account of the Typefounder's Mould, from the text of the 'Description des arts et métiers', 1704." Journal of the Printing Historical Society. New Series, No. 23 (Autumn 2015): 6-43.
This number of Journal of the Printing Historical Society is devoted entirely to Mosley.
{Moxon (Davis/Carter) 2nd Ed.} Moxon, Joseph. Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing. Ed. Herbert Davis and Harry Carter. Second Edition. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962. Reprinted (NY: Dover Publications, 1978).
What is generally termed the second volume of Moxon's Mechanick Exercises was devoted entirely to type and printing. It was published serially from 1683 to 1684 under the title Mechanick Exercises, Or the Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing (Davis & Carter's title, "Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing," is a modern construction). It has had two more-or-less modern editions: a facsimile reprint at the urging of Theodore Low DeVinne in 1896 (see {Moxon (DeVinne) 1896}, below) and the 1962 edition noted here, edited by Herbert Davis and Harry Carter. While it is sadly now out of print (even the Dover reprint), it is still generally available at modest cost. If you do not have it and have not read it, you are not serious about type.
{Moxon (DeVinne) 1896} Moxon, Joseph. Intro. by Theodore L. DeVinne. Moxon's Mechanick Exercises, Or the Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing. NY: The Typothetæ of the City of New-York, 1896.
For digital reprints (from Google) of the 1896 DeVinne reprint, see the CircuitousRoot Notebook on General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types
{Nelson 1985 A} Nelson, Stan. "Mould Making, Matrix Fitting, and Hand Casting." Visible Language, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1985): 106-120.
Reprinted, with permission, above.
{Nelson 1985 B} Nelson, Stan. From Punch to Printing Type: The Art and Craft of Hand Punchcutting and Typecasting. (Videotape; now DVD) NY: Columbia University School of Library Service, 1985.
This is still available (now on DVD) from thee Book Arts Press of the Rare Books School of the University of Virginia.
{Nelson 2013-08-19} Correspondence from Stan Nelson (e-mail) dated 2013-08-19. He indicates that the typecaster at work in The Oxford University Press and The Making of a Book. {Oxford 1925} is probably Sidney Squires.
{Nelson 2016a} Nelson, Stan. "Diagrams of Typical 'French' and 'German' Style Type-Moulds." Journal of the Printing Historical Society. New Series, No. 25 (Winter 2016): 5-6.
{Nelson 2016b} Nelson, Stan. "Reconsidering a Conclusion: Were the Earliest Types Cast or Cut to Type Height?" Journal of the Printing Historical Society. New Series, No. 25 (Winter 2016): 7-24.
{Oxford 1925} The Oxford University Press and The Making of a Book. [Film, directed by Percy Nash] ([no location]: Federation of British Industry, 1925).
This film was re-released online by the Oxford University Press in 2013 in conjunction with the release of their book The History of Oxford University Press. The announcemnt for this is on the OUP blog at: http://blog.oup.com/2013/11/oxford-university-press-making-a-book-silent-film/ The re-released version has music not present in the original and not, unfortunately, appropriate for the period.
The film itself is online both on YouTube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW7wsXuw2cI) and on Vimeo ( http://vimeo.com/77990781). While the original film is in the public domain in both the UK and the US, copyright on this digital version is claimed by the Confederation of British Industry, so I cannot reproduce it here.
The portions of special interest to typefounders begin, in this digital version, at 1:50 (punches and matrices), 2:17 (casting type in a hand-mould), and 2:38 (imperfect animation of a lever hand-mould).
Stan Nelson indicates that it is probably Sidney Squires doing the casting. {Nelson 2013-08-19}
{Parker 1974} Parker, Mike. "Early Typefounders' Moulds at the Plantin-Moretus Museum." In The Library, Fifth Series, Volume XXIX, No. 1 (March 1974): 93 - 102, 2 Plates. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1974.
This is in the issue honouring Harry Graham Carter.
{ Penny Cyclopædia 1843} Penny Cyclopædia of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Vol. 25 ("Titles of HOnour - Ungula") London: Charles Knight and Co., 1843.
{ Penny Magazine 1833} "The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine, No. II: Wood-Cutting and Type-Founding." Monthly Supplement of The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Vol. II, Whole No. 101 (Oct. 26, 1833): 417-424.
Reprinted (in various versions, including my scans from the original) in the General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types.
{Plantin 1567} Anon. [printing section assumed to be by Christopher Plantin] La premiere et la seconde partie des Dialogues françois pour les iuennes enfans. Antwerp, Hapsburg Netherlands: Plantin, 1567.
Excerpted in {Bauer 1922}, pp. 17-19, with additional German translation.
Reprinted in facsimile, with translation and notes by Ray Nash and foreword by Stanley Morison as An Account of Calligraphy and Printing in the Sixteenth Century from Dialogues Attributed to Christopher Plantin. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 1940). [Van der Waarde also notes (Lunenberg, VT, 1939) - that would be The Stinehour Press]. {Van der Waarde 2004}
Also in Calligraphy and Printing in the Sixteenth Century: Dialogue Attributed to Christopher Plantin in French and Flemish Facsimile. (Antwerp, Belgium: Plantin-Moretus Museum, 1964)
{Prechtl v. 17, 1851} Prechtl, Johann Joseph von, ed. Technologische Encyklopædia oder alphabetisched Handbuch der Technologie, der Technischen Chemie und des Maschinenwesens . Stuttgart, Kingdom of Württemberg: J. G. Cotta, 1851.
{Plomer 1900} Plomer, Henry R. A Short History of English Printing: 1476 - 1989. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co. Ltd., 1900.
This reprints the 1548 image of a printing press and a typefounder from the Ordinarye of Christians.
{PMM 1963} Anon. Printing and the Mind of Man: Catalogue of the Exhibitions at The British Museum and at Earl's Court, London, 16-27 July 1963. London: F. W. Bridges & Sons Ltd., 1963.
The title given above is the cover title. The actual title is wonderfully convoluted: "Catalogue of a Display of Printing Mechanisms and Printed Materials Arranged to Illustrate the History of Western Civilization and the Means of the Multiplication of Literary Texts Since the XV Century Organized in Connexion with the Eleventh International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition Under the Title of Printing and the Mind of Man, Assembled at The British Museum and at Earls Court, London, 16-17 July 1963."
The book is in two sections, one for the Earls Court part of the Exhibition and another for the British Library part. These two sections are paginated separately and their plates are numbered separately (and the items the catalogue are also numbered separately). The plates (and items) related to typefounding appear in the first, Earls Court, section.
{Pye 1885} Pye, Alfred. "Typefounding - No. III" [article in a series in] The Inland Printer. Vol. 3, No. 3 (December 1885): 143-144.
{Rees Vol. 15} Rees, Abraham, ed. The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature. Vol. 15 [issued 1810]. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1819.
Rees' Cyclopædia had a complex publication history. The English language Wikipedia page on it does a good job of sorting this out. This volume has been digitized by Google and is available online.
{Rees, Plates Vol. 3} Rees, Abraham, ed. The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature. Plates. Vol. III. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1820.
This volume has been digitized by the Missouri Botanical Gardens and is available via The Internet Archive, at https://www.archive.org/details/mobot31753002007406
{Robundo 4210} ダイカストと､先駆けとなった活字鋳造の産業革命－ブルース活字鋳造機の誕生 Google transliteration: Daikasuto to, sakigake to natta katsuji chūzō no sangyō kakumei - burūsu katsujichūzōki no tanjō. Google translation: "And die-casting, pioneer that became type casting of the industrial revolution - the birth of the blues [Bruce] type casting machine." Blog entry in the Adana Press Club (Japan) blog, at: http://www.robundo.com/adana/blog/?p=4210
{Rehak 1993} Rehak, Theo. Practical Typecasting. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Books, 1993.
{Ringwalt 1871} Ringwalt, John Luther. The American Encyclopedia of Printing. Philadelphia: Menamin and Ringwalt, 1871.
{Rollins 1938} Rollins, Carl Purington. "A Brief and General Discourse on Type" in Lawrence C. Wroth, ed. A History of the Printed Book: Being the Third Number of The Dolphin. NY: The Limited Editions Club, 1938. Pages 297-321.
This is available online at Carnegie-Mellon University's Posner Library: http://posner.library.cmu.edu/Posner/ Regrettably, it is still in copyright and I can't reprint it here.
{Saxe 2008} Saxe, Stephen O. [Review of {Fry 2008}]. APHA Newsletter, No. 168 (Fall 2008).
{Scholderer 1963} Scholderer, Victor. Johann Gutenberg: The Inventor of Printing. London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1963.
{Silver 1965} Silver, Rollo G. Typefounding in America: 1787-1825. Charlottesville, VA: By the University Press of Virginia for the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1965.
{Smeijers 1996} Smeijers, Fred. Counterpunch: Making Type in the Sixteenth Century, Designing Typefaces Now. Ed. Robin Kinross. First Edition. London: Hypens Press, 1996. ISBN: 0-907259-06-5 (paperback)
{Smeijers 2011} Smeijers, Fred. Counterpunch: Making Type in the Sixteenth Century, Designing Typefaces Now. Second Edition, revised and reset. London: Hypens Press, 2011. ISBN: 978-0907259-42-8 (paperback)
{Southward 1911} Southward, John, Arthur Powel, and George Joyner. Practical Printing: A Handbook of the Art of Typography. Sixth Edition. London: The "Printer's Register" Office, 1911.
{Täubel 1805, v. 1} Allgemeines Theoretisch-Praktisches Wörterbuch der Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgießerey [General Theoretical & Practical Dictionary of Printing and Typefounding]. Volume 1. Vienna, by Christian Gottlob [sic] Täubel, 1805. In three volumes.
Van der Waarde lists a reprint (Darmstadt, Germany: [by Martin Boghardt, Frans A. Janssen and Walter Wilkes], 1986). {Van der Waarde 2004}
All three volumes digitized by Google from the Bavarian State Libary. The three images below link to local copies of all three volumes of this digitization. The copy of v. 3 lacks a proper title page, and the technical details of the digitizaition are a little strange.
[click image to view larger]
The first volume has also been digitized by Google from the copy at the National Library of the Netherlands:
{Täubel 1805, v. 2} Allgemeines Theoretisch-Praktisches Wörterbuch der Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgießerey [General Theoretical & Practical Dictionary of Printing and Typefounding]. Volume 2. Vienna, by Christian Gottlob [sic] Täubel, 1805.
This volume has a frontispiece of a type foundry, showing also a type dressing bench.
Digitized by Google from the Bavarian State Libary (see volume 1, above, for copies).
{Täubel 1805, v. 3} Allgemeines Theoretisch-Praktisches Wörterbuch der Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgießerey [General Theoretical & Practical Dictionary of Printing and Typefounding]. Volume 3. Vienna, by Christian Gottlob [sic] Täubel, [1805?] ( {Mosley 2007-04-09} cites this as 1809. The third volume of the copy digitized by Google from the Bavarian State Library (the only copy available to me) is missing its title page, so he may be right. The first two volumes were 1805.)
This volume has a drawing of a hand mold.
Digitized by Google from the Bavarian State Libary (see volume 1, above, for copies).
{Typophile 2013-03-08} "looking for images of type casiting [sic] (hand?) mould, circa 1750, England." A discussion thread on the "Typophile" forum from 2013-03-08 to 2014-12-02. URL: http://www.typophile.com/node/101241 [dead]
This thread had images posted by "dberlow" on 2013-03-09 of Giet Instrument 48 at the Plantin-Moretus museum. Later comments posted by Stan Nelson on 2014-11-07 and following identify this mold and discuss the purpose of the technique of the typecaster's "shake."
In 2015 (or late 2014?) the Typophile.com site shut itself down. At present (2016) it is no longer available.
Captures of the site are present on the "Wayback Machine" at The Internet Archive / http://www.archive.org/, but those captures include only the earlier (2013) period of this thread; I have not been able to find a capture which includes Stan Nelson's 2014 comments. See for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20130516035440/http://typophile.com/node/101241 The earlier period (archived) does include the photographs of Plantin-Moretus G.I. 48. But it is only identified properly in Stan Nelson's 2014 comments (not archived).
Another archive of the former Typophile.com forums exists at http://typophile-archive.simon-cozens.org If you know the number of the thread, you can get to it; in this case, it is thread 101241: http://typophile-archive.simon-cozens.org/101241 This archive does contain Stan Nelson's 2014 comments (and the 2013 G.I. 48 photographs). Unfortunately, things are a little scrambled in this archive, and the attribution for the photographs ("dberlow") is missing (so they appear in this archive to have been posted by someone who did not in fact post them).
Printing is the Art Preservative of All Arts. The Internet is not.
{USNM 1891} Bulletin of the United States National Museum, No. 42 ("A Preliminary Descriptive Catalogue of the Systematic Collections in Economic Geology and Metallurgy in the United States National Museum.") Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891.
{Van der Heyden 1545} Van der Heyden, Cornelius. Corte Instruccye. Ghent [in Flanders], Empire of Spain: Joos Lambrecht, Lettersnijder, 1545.
This has been digitized by Google from the University of Ghent copy.
{Van der Waarde 2004} Van der Waarde, Karel. [Handmoulds]: A website about the development, shape and use of typefounders' moulds. Website at: http://users.telenet.be/waarde/Handmoulds/index.html (Apparently created 2004. Accessed 2015.)
{Weigel 1698} Weigel, Christoph. Abbildung Der Gemein-Nützlichen Haupt-Stände Von denen Regenten Und ihren So in Friedens- als Kriegs-Zeiten zugeordneten Bedienten an, biß auf alle Künstler Und Handwercker. [Free Imperial City of] Regensberg: [by the author], 1698.
This book has been digitized several times. Google has a relatively low-resolution digitization of the Austrian National Library copy. The plates (only) have been digitized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. These are available via their Gallica digital library. The entire work has also been digitized by the Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB).
{Wilkes 1990} Wilkes, Walter. Das Schriftgießen: Von Stempelschnitt, Matrizenfertigung und Letterguß. Darmstadt, DE: Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, 1990.
This is the most comprehensive historical/semi-technical study of typefounding in any language. Unfortunately, it is out of print and expensive.
{Williams 1919} Type Founders' Equipment. London: The Williams Engineering Co., Ltd., [n.d., but ca. 1919].
See the CircuitiousRoot Notebook on this Williams Engineering Co. Catalog (ca. 1919) for a full reprint.
These are sources I have not yet read. I am indebted to the "Handmoulds" website of Karel van der Waarde {Van der Waarde 2004} and the "Typefoundry" blog of James Mosley for most of them.
{Brietkopf 1777} Breitkopf, J.G.I. (1777) Nachricht von der Stempelschneiderey und Schriftgiesserei, zur Ereläuterung der Enschedischen Schriftprobe. Leipzig: [?] 1777.
Reprinted, with an introduction by Wilhelm Hitzig and Heinrich Schwarz. (Berlin: H. Berthold, 1925.)
{Henze 1844} Handbuch der Schriftgiesserey. Weimar: [?], 1844.
{Bauer 1910} Bauer, Friedrich. "Schrift und Schriftguß," an article in Das Moderne Buch, which is in turn the third volume of a series Die Graphischen Künste der Gegenwart. Stuttgart, German Empire: [publisher?], 1910.
{De Lama 1816} De Lama, Giuseppe. Vita del Cavaliere Giambattista Bodoni, Tipografo Italiano e catalogo delle sur edizioni. Parma: Stamperia Ducale, 1816.
New edition, edited by Leonardo Farinelli and Corrado Moingardi. Parma. 1989.
Van der Waarde directs our attention in particular to pp. 108-115. {Van der Waarde 2004}
{Fuhrmann 1950} Fuhrmann, Otto. "A Note on Gutenberg's Typemetal." in Gutenberg-Jarhbuch (1950) [Mainz?: [?], 1950.
Cited by James Mosley "Drawing the Typefounder's Mould"
{Hannebutt-Benz 2000} Hanebutt-Benz, Eva-Maria. (2000) "Die technischen Aspekte des Druckens mit vielfachen Lettern auf der Buchdruckerpresse," pp 158-189 in: Dr Wolfgang Dobras, Ed. Gutenberg Aventur und Kunst: Von Geheimunternehmen zur ersten Medienrevolution. Mainz: Verlag Hermann Schmidt, 2000.
{Mayhew 1865} Mayhew, Henry. The Shops and Companies of London and the Trades and Manufactories of Great Britain. London: Strand Printing and Publishing Company (Limited), 1865.
{Nelson 1984} Nelson, Stan. "Any Fool Can Cut a Punch." In Matrix,, No. 4 (Winter, 1984): 31-36. Gloucestershire: The Whittington Press, 1984.
When they appear for sale, back issues of Matrix 4 are well beyond my means.
{Parker et. al. 1960} "Early inventories of punches, matrices and moulds in the Plantin-Moretus archives." Typographica Plantiniana II. Vol. 38: pp. 1-139. Antwerp, Belgium: De Gulden Passer ["the golden compasses"; the printers' mark of the House of Plantin], 1960.
{Ruppel 1961} Ruppel, A. Die Technik Gutenbergs und ihre Vorstufen. (1961)
An illustration from this work is reprinted in {Scholderer 1963}.
{Wilkes 1981} Wilkes, Walter. "Garamonds Giessinstrument?" Philobiblon. No. 3. S 184 ff. Hamburg. [citation from {Van der Waarde 2004}]
The 1985 article by Stan Nelson, "Mold Making, Matrix Fitting, and Hand Casting," is copyright 1985 by him. It is reprinted here with his kind permission and the permission of the editors of Visible Language. Please do not republish it further without his permission.
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Bauer's Das Giessinstrument (1922), Legros' "Typecasting and Composing Machinery" (1908), the 1919 Williams Engineering Co. catalog, and McRae's Two Centuries of Typefounding are in the public domain in the US due to the expiration of all possible US copyright. My digitizations of/from them are in the public domain. The extracts from them here remain in the public domain.
Van der Hayden's Corte Instruccye, Duverger's Histoire..., Laboulaye's Dictionnaire (1845), the 1896 reprint of Moxon, Fournier, Täubel, the 1768 Enschedé specimen book, Southward (1911), the Patents for Inventions: Abridgments of Specifications Relating to Printing , Rees' Cyclopædia, The Penny Magazine, The Universal Magazine, the Record of the International Exhibition (1862), Volume 3 of The Inland Printer (Pye), and Mori's Was Hat Gutenberg Erfunden? are in the public domain in the US due to the expiration of all possible US copyright. The Google/Hathi digitization of them are in the public domain. The reprints of and extracts from them here remain in the public domain.
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The copyright on Jahn's Hand Composition, ATF's Type Speaks!, and Anthoensen's 1939 reprint of Moxon's material was not renewed, as was then required. They therefore entered the public domain upon the expiration of their initial copyright. The reprints of and extracts from them here remain in the public domain.
The copyright on Ars Typographica (containing Mori's article) was not renewed, as was then required. It therefore entered the public domain upon the expiration of its initial copyright. The 1970 reprint of it by the Greenwood Reprint Corp. did not claim new copyright, as would then have been required to secure it; it therefore is also in the public domain. The reprint of it here and the extracts from it here remain in the public domain.
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