Archived entries for American Wood Type Mfg. Co.
I ♥ Wood Type
12 line wood type heart
This one’s for you Paul Brown.
Thanks to Bill Jones, proprietor of Virgin Wood Type, for the inspiration to make this special Valentine’s Day post and for confirming my suspicions that American Wood Type was the manufacturer.
Specimen Sunday
American Wood Type Mfg. Co. 1937 price list, recto
This price list was included with the recently acquired Catalog No. 36.
Price list detail
Metal type cabinets with 23 California Job cases and an angled work top for $83.50 – I’d be ecstatic to see a return to those prices!
Specimen Sunday
This is the back (verso) side of a single sheet insert found inside a recently acquired American Wood Type Mfg. Co. Catalog No. 36.
Specimen Sunday
This is the front (recto) side of a single sheet insert found inside a recently acquired American Wood Type Mfg. Co. Catalog No. 36.
Not All the News That’s Fit to Print
12 line Newstype
Minimal wear, no manufacturer’s imprint, and a font cut from the side grain led me to believe this was cut by the American Wood Type Manufacturing Company, of Long Island, New York. The distinctive flattened bowls of the capital B, R, and D of this font directly match the showing of Newstype in my American Wood Type Mfg. Co. 1958–9 Catalog, shown below (notice the misspelling in the 6 line version):
L is for Lonely
8 line Ultra Bodoni Condensed
Rob Roy Kelly identified three primary styles of wood type designs, Roman, Antique, and Gothic. A large majority of the secondary and tertiary styles are directly derived from the primaries. My collection contains many fine examples of Antiques and Gothics, but I am acutely aware of the paucity of Roman styled letters – this 8 line Ultra Bodoni Condensed capital L is a lonely sort – especially in the vein of the nineteenth century fat face. Nicolete Gray defined the fat face thusly:
. . . a large letter with (a) vertical shading, (b) abrupt modelling, so exaggerated that the thick stroke is nearly half as wide as the letter is high, and (c) certain characteristic forms, all tending to emphasize the roundness in the letters; R with a curly tail, short ranging J terminating in a round blob, Q with a tail making a loop with the bowl, S, C and G with barbed terminals and G with a pointed spur.
The roughness (clearly visible in the proof) on the right side (left in the proof) of the main stem is the result of poor cutting – or a lack of finishing – on the part of the manufacturer.
À La Mode
12 line Mode Condensed
Pages 22–24 of the AWT 1958–59 Catalog from American Wood Type Mfg. Co. shows Mode—a geometric sans serif very similar to Futura—in Medium, Condensed, Bold, and Extra Bold Condensed, and in sizes ranging from 6–15 lines. According to the price list on page 6 of the Catalog, the smallest font comprising capitals, lowercase, figures, and punctuation contained 135 characters. At $0.30 per letter for 12 lines, this font of Mode would have cost $40.50 in 1958–59.
The Big Three
24 line Futura Bold
This character comes from another font of unfinished (no varnish or shellac on the face) side grain type, probably cut by American Wood Type Manufacturing Co. in the 1950–60s. The entire font has seen so little use that the router marks are clearly visible on the shoulder. The photo also reveals semi-circular craters around the perimeter of the face, vestiges of the production method that become obscured with use.
Awkward Pause
30 line Gothic Bold
This previously uninked semicolon comes from a big, bold Gothic font, most of which has never been printed. The body of this character is actually taller than 30 picas (notice the large shoulder above the dot) because the terminal extends below the baseline. The pantagraph router marks are quite prominent on most of the characters in this side grain font. There is no manufacturer’s imprint, but because the font has seen so little use, the fact that it was cut from a softer wood (I’m guessing pine) and the face was left unfinished (no shellac), and the style of the letters – not quite Futura-esque, but definitely leaning towards the geometric – lead me to guess it originated from the American Wood Type Manufacturing Company, a company still serving the printing and graphic arts industries as American Printing Equipment & Supply Co.
XoXo
8 line Rugged
Rugged is the American Wood Type Manufacturing Company’s copy of Neuland, a foundry type which was handcut – without the use of patterns – in 1923 by Rudolf Koch for the Klingspor foundry in Germany. For a more erudite description of the design and enduring appeal of this face, see Koch’s Neuland by Richard Kegler.