1922 - . Founded by Ollie E. McLaughlin in Vermontville, Michigan. Casting on Thompson and Nuernberger-Rettig type casters, primarily from Linotype matrices. Later castings from matrices made for him, with corporate logos a specialty. (Of the Ford "egg" logo, he is reported by David C. Churchman as saying "That one kept the foundry going and paid for every machine we ever bought.")
1950. Sold to Frank Sassamon, Charlotte, Michigan. Sassamon died in November, 1982.
1983. Sold to David C. Churchman and David W. Peat of Indianapolis, Indiana. Moved to Indianapolis. At the time of the move the casting equipment consisted of two Thompson Type Casters and two Nuernberger-Rettig / Universal type casters. The two N-R machines were never used, and were moved in 2013-2014 to Skyline Type Foundry with assistance from CircuitousRoot.
1987. Many Andrew Dunker matrices purchased by Sterling Type Foundry.
Sterling Type Foundry still sells type and occasionally has type cast for it.
The two Sterling Type Foundry Nuernberger-Rettig / Universal Type Casters went to Skyline Type Foundry in 2013-2014 (with a brief stop at CircuitousRoot on the way).
Churchman. Eggs. (1992)
Churchman, David C. "The House that Eggs Built: A Brief History of the Sterling Type Foundry." In a keepsake for the 1992 American Type Founders conference in Williamsburg, VA, published under the title Observations and co-written with Bruce Washbish (who contributed an article on computers in hot metal typesetting).
Reprinted by permission of David C. Churchman. This item is copyright by Churchman and Bruce Washbish; please do not republish it further without their permission.
NOTE: The specimen brochure of Sterling Type Foundry is still available from David C. Churchman.
Typecast Cuts (McLaughlin era)
A photocopy of a single page from a specimen
In larger sizes these would have been cast on Nuernberger-Rettig/Universal casters.
The image at left links to a 2048 pixel wide JPEG reduction of the original scan. Here is the full-resolution (1200dpi) PNG version (but be aware that this is a scan of an old photocopy); it is 176 Megabytes in size: sterling-type-foundry-typecast-cuts-mclaughlin-era-photocopy-1200rgb-crop-7936x13296.png
I had the opportunity to photograph many of the Nuernberger-Rettig/Universal matrices of Sterling Type Foundry as they were on their way to Skyline Type Foundry.
The McLaughlin-era "Sterling Typecast Cuts" specimen is in the public domain. Its reprint here remains in the public domain.
The 1992 ATF Keepsake, "Observations," is copyright by David C. Churchman and Bruce Washbish. It is reprinted here with the permission of DCC. Please do not reprint it further without their permission.
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2014 by David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
Circuitous Root is a Registered Trademark of David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution - ShareAlike" license. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ for its terms.
Presented originally by Circuitous Root®
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