Unknown Type?

Hard to say if it originated at Johnson because it is also shown as Two Lines Pica Ornamented No.5 from Caslon in England, also c. 1865.

Don’t know of any contemporary catalogs showing this face. It shows up in some of my 19th-Century catalogs. The old boys were smart enough NOT to show full alphabets in their specimen catalogs.

Also, I do not recall ever seeing this face in any size larger than 24pt.

Rick

Hi Rick,

Thank you for the info. I am wondering if you can upload the showing of this typeface from your specimen catalogs?

It is very hard to locate these catalogs especially since I do not know which one to look for…

Best Regards,

Unfortunately I am pretty much a Luddite when it comes to technology. I do not have the know-how, much less the capability to scan and download the images. Also, the old Caslon and the old McKellar, Smiths & Jordan (includes Johnson material) catalogs that I have are extremely brittle and fragile. The wood pulp in the paper did not hold up well over the last century.

I did carefully get my c.1887 H.W. Caslon catalog out of its homemade slipcase/box and look at it since my first post. It is named Ornamented no. 23 in that catalog and is shown is 4 sizes, the largest being two-line English. I assume that this is probably the equivalent of 30 pt.

This is a very thin catalog and each specimen is comprised of only one word.

Rick

Load of Rubbish & Red Herrings prompted by the full word as seen in your specimen above.
I. E. *AEOLIAN* laugh maybe but that word from a long time back sits well with Proper music fans.!!!

Explanation. = Monotype Hot Metal (Tolbert Lanston,s of course) is driven by 31 Channel Punch Tape so it was probably inevitable that I would cotton on to 88 note Punch Tape as fitted to Good Pianos to turn them into Player Pianos.

My first Pianola was *RITMULLER* out of Germany, but with *Chase & Baker* Action.

CHASE & BAKER, out of Buffalo. N.Y. around the 1880,s. With 3 crank air motors to drive the 88 note Punch Tape music rolls, amazing mechanics, Ritmuller could not better it. !!

With something like *Scott Joplin,s* Maple Leaf Rag or similar, at full tilt with the front off, and the loud pedal down it would almost over power the Monotype in the W/shop.

Scott Joplin must have been Double Tracking Many Years before Les Paul or Chet Atkins, because in a Crescendo there was/is as many as ten notes across the Tracker Bar simultaniously… The best the Monotype could manage even with Extended arrangement & Unit shift = 16 x 17 rows in the die-case was 5 perf,s across the tracker bar, and that was short lived, anyway.!

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Apologies for the Ramble, but just Possibly a trawl of Chase & Baker records (If Any at all) from 1880,s onward might throw up clues to the Type face used in their AEOLIAN Publicity.

* * * * *
Commercial follows:- (with apologies to the Moderators) I would trade a fair amount of letterpress equipment for an 88 Note Pianola roll of Les Paul,s *The World is waiting for the Sunrise or Tiger Rag*

Love ya to death Mick, but you really do need to adjust your meds once in while. This stream of whatever is a real corker, even for you.

Rick