[TO DO: I believe that the copyright on Eckman's two PAGA articles on this type foundry was allowed to lapse; doublecheck, and if so scan and reprint.]
Chicago. 1855-1892 Begain as a branch of Elihu White's Type Foundry. Sold to John Marder (its bookkeeper) ca. 1860-1863 as White's became Farmer, Little & Co. In partnership with David Scofield, became D. Scofield & Co. Herman F. Toepfer joined in 1867 and it became (briefly) Scofield, Marder, Toepfer & Co. Then briefly Scofield, Marder & Co. A. P. Luse joined (late 1860s?) and it became Marder, Luse & Co, dba Chicago Type Foundry. Merged into American Type Founders at its creation in 1892. {Annenberg 189-192}
Complex links with Nelson Hawks and his various typefounding enterprises in San Francisco.
Eckman. PAGA VII
Eckman, James. "The Chicago Type Foundry of Marder, Luse & Company, 1863-1892." Printing and Graphic Arts. Vol. VII (1959). (Lunenburg, VT: The Stinehour Press): 69-83. This article is the standard modern reference on Marder, Luse. It includes an illustration of their pre-Fire building at 139 Monroe.
Note: PAGA was issued quarterly, but frequently bound as complete volumes without any indication of the original issue numbers; my copy and citation are from such a complete volume.
Eckman. PAGA VII, Specimens
Eckman, James. "Chicago Type Foundry Specimen Books." Printing and Graphic Arts. Vol. VII (1959). (Lunenburg, VT: The Stinehour Press): 112-124.
Inland Printer (1890)
Anon. "The Typefoundries of the United States: No. II - Marder, Luse & Co." The Inland Printer. Vol. 8, No. 2 (Nov. 1890): 173-174.
Scanned by me from the original. Here are links to the other articles in this series .
Old Monroe Street (1914), 1880s View
Mack, Edwin F. Old Monroe Street. Second Edition. (Chicago: Central Trust Company of Illinois, 1914.) This contains a view of Monroe street in the 1880s which includes the Chicago Type Foundry. This would have been their building at 139 (or 139-141) Monroe, constructed after the Great Fire.
Digitized by Google from the Harvard University copy. The icon here links to an extract (in PDF format) of the single page showing this view. For a complete copy of the Google scan, see the Notebook City Research (Chicago).
Here is a copy of the view as a PNG format image rendered from the Google Books JP2 digitized image (it isn't an exact copy of the page, as I had to reassemble the image and the text by hand, but it's close and the image itself is unaltered).
1881. Specimen Book of Printing Types
Specimen Book of Printing Types, Borders, Brass Rule, Etc. (Chicago: Marder, Luse & Co., 1881.) This volume contains the original explanation of the "American System of Interchangeable Type Bodies" which gives equivalents in the then new point system for the old body sizes. Note that a "point" is here called an "American," and that while it is indeed defined as 1/12 pica, the pica itself is not defined. I believe that at this time (1881) the pica in use at Marder, Luse was a pica of 1/6 inch. (See also an 1884 Specimen Book by Palmer & Rey, a foundry with ties to Marder, Luse and to the developer of the point system, Nelson Hawks.) However in 1886 the industry would adopt as a standard the pica in use by another foundry, MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan: 35/83 centimeter. This present Specimen also has a nice introductory essay on "Practical Type Making."
This is a dreadful digitization. I should know; I did it myself. By way of explanation, this was done with an improvised setup. The book in question was a very fragile library volume that I did not dare open flat for proper scanning. It is, at least, a volume not presently online elsewhere. The version linked from the icon has been reduced to half the original image size and is therefore not always readable (but it is still 135 Megabytes). Here is a link to a full-size version (410 Megabytes) (click to read, or (usually, and preferably) right-click to save a local copy for offline reading).
1889. Abridged Specimen Book of Printing Type
Chicago Type Foundry. Abridged Specimen Book of Printing Type from Marder, Luse & Co. Type Founders . (Chicago: Marder, Luse & Co., 1889.)
Digitized by Google Books (q.v.) The icon at left links to a local copy of the Google Books digitization. This same digitization is also available at higher resolution at The Hathi Trust (ID: nyp.33433000824080). Here is a local copy of that version assembled from the page scans at The Hathi Trust: marder-luse-1889-hathi-nyp-33433000824080-png.pdf
1890. Price List and Printers' Purchasing Guide
Price List and Printers' Purchasing Guide Showing Specimens of Printing Type Manufactured by Marder, Luse & Co., Chicago . (Chicago: Marder, Luse & Co., 1890.)
Digitized by Google Books (q.v.) The icon at left links to a local copy of the Google Books digitization. This same digitization is also available at higher resolution at The Hathi Trust (ID: mdp.39015033790497). Here is a local copy of that version assembled from the page scans at The Hathi Trust: marder-luse-1890-hathi-mich-39015033790497-png.pdf
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