3 interesting pieces, can you help ID these please?
Got these from a friend that whats me to sell them on ebay for him and wondered if anyone out there might know anything about them? The one with the book has the number C69 in the corner. The one with the rifle and what I think is two ducks does not have a number or pin mark. The last one looks like there is a jester on each end, and no number or pin mark. Anything you can tell me would be very helpful because I wasn’t sure where to start to identify and date them. Thank you, Gail
Haven’t found the gun/duck one yet. What does the pinmark on the side look like?
Your second image is part of a series of Vocational Cameos, introduced by ATF in the early 1920s.
Your third image is upside down. It is one o0f the Ad-Art Ornaments introduced by BB&S, also in the early 1920s.
Rick
Rick, you amaze me. There must be about a million typemetal graphics out there. Do you have a photographic memory and have you looked at every page in all those gigantic type specimen books? :-)
Barbara
Hi Barbara,
I love all of this stuff and have amassed a fairly decent library of foundry catalogues and books about typography and printing in the 3+ decades I have been into this. I also have 2,000+ fonts of handset type and God-only-knows how many dingbats, ornaments and borders. So I have been looking up my own stuff for decades too.
The ATF Vocational Cameo of the open book was easy for me to recognize because I pretty much have the whole series in several sizes. I simply went to the 1923 ATF catalogue to find the specific name for them.
The last one was also pretty easy simply because of the checkerboard pattern in the middle. The 1925 BB&S catalogue has hundreds of designs incorporating this design element. I think that Carl Junge designed almost all of them for BB&S. I opened the 1925 BB&S catalogue and found it right away and that’s how I knew it was upside down.
I do occassionally scan through my catalogues, but usually only when I am trying to look up a specific face to ID for someone. It does keep me relatively sharp to do this once in a while.
No photographic memory, but a lot of stored-up knowledge after repetative studying of the catalogues and books over the decades. There is no quick way to acquire all of this knowledge. Just happy to share when I can.
Also - this is a magnificent forum to share our knowledge in. I live on a farm in central Iowa and if I ever even thought about trying to talk about type and printing with my friends and neighbors, I’m sure they would think I was absolutely nuts!
Here, we are a community of kindred souls.
Rick
Hi Rick,
Thank you so much for the time that you have put in to helping me ID these. I admire your passion for all of this and am so happy that you are willing to share your extensive knowledge with others. I was so happy to have found Briar Press because for someone that has so little knowledge about the subject and has the task of liquidating all of Dad’s type etc. Briar Press has been a Godsend.
I examined the gun/duck piece under a Jeweler’s loop and could not see any pin marks. Just to clarify (here is my ignorance showing) a pin mark is a small round stamp on the side of the type, is that correct?
I look forward to hearing what you find on that piece.
It is funny, when I first started going through the type sets I really just wanted to get on with the job of selling it and clearing it out. As I learn more and handle the type I am starting to understand the love for it and the desire to preserve it. Well I have rambled on enough, thanks again Rick for your help.
Gail