Category: Press and typeface identification
Later topic: A Hickok rules at Mt. Pleasant
Earlier topic: Curtis & Mitchell Columbian No. 1

Mystery Wood Type

Here’s a font I can’t identify. It has the “Hamilton, Two Rivers” stamp on the ‘A’, and is 12 picas high. Anyone?

image: AGECopy.jpg

AGECopy.jpg

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Hello,
Is it in this catalog?
http://www.unicorngraphics.com/wood%20type%20museum/hamilton14/hamiltonf...

Daniel Morris
The Arm Letterpress
Brooklyn, NY

image: hamilton14-c01.jpg

i want that book, or 600 dpi scans of that book SO badly. haha.

I went through that catalog three times but didn’t see it. Page 46 had a close one, but the serifs were wrong. The catalog is great fun though. Thanks…

did you contact them directly? woodtype.org
I was there about a month ago looked familiar. Jim, Director, I’m sure would help you out. Can you let us know your progress?

Erst,
I think it is a face with only a number, and not a name, which is: Number 673.
It can be seen in Hamilton’s Seventeenth Edition Catalogue, on page 123.

Dave Greer

T.J.,

Thanks for identifying the type. I don’t have access to the 17th edition catalog so I’ll take your word for it and label the face as such. Too bad so many of those faces are numbers only…they certainly have enough ‘character’ to earn names…but maybe exhaustion set in during the 1890s….?

Anyhow, thanks again,

erst

Hi Erst,

This is a face that is exclusive to Hamilton Wood Type and was patented by them. It will not have a comparable “name” in a foundry type version.

The seventeenth edition catalog from Hamilton that Dave mentions is actually available as a reprint. Look in the Classified section of this site and go back to March 18 and look under the title Wood Type Specimen. John Horn was advertising a new facsimile of this book for sale.

I should say that this facsimile is a “must have” for those truly interested in wood type. I have a very fragile copy of the original catalog (c. 1907), but I bought a copy of John’s facsimile to use as a working reference book and I couldn’t be happier with the exceptional quality of the reprint.

Rick