Caslon Type Foundry
The Caslon type foundry was a type foundry in London which cast and sold metal type. It was founded by the punchcutter and typefounder William Caslon I, probably in 1720. For most of its history it was based at Chiswell Street, Islington, was the oldest type foundry in London, and the most prestigious.
In the nineteenth century, the company established a division selling printing equipment. This section of the company continues to operate as of 2021, and is now branded Caslon Ltd. and based in St. Albans. The type foundry section of the company was bought by Stephenson Blake in 1937.
From 1793 to 1819 a separate Caslon foundry was operated by William Caslon III and then his son William Caslon IV, who split off from the family business. This was also bought by a predecessor company of Stephenson Blake.
Background
Metal type was traditionally made by punchcutting, carefully cutting punches in steel used to stamp matrices, the moulds used to cast metal type.Type foundries operated in London from the early days of printing. Some punchcutters worked in London in the seventeenth century, including Arthur Nicholls and Joseph Moxon, who wrote a manual of how type was made. However, London was seemingly not a hub of skill in typefounding and many of the types available in London were of poor quality. In the second half of the seventeenth century the Dutch Republic was one of the largest centres of printing expertise, and both Oxford University Press in 1670–2 and the London typefounder John James in 1710 imported matrices from it.
William Caslon I and II
William Caslon was an engraver who had come to London from Cradley, Worcestershire. He began a career in London with work like cutting the royal coat of arms into government firearms and tooling for bookbinders. The quality of his work came to the attention of printers, who engaged him to cut first Arabic and then roman type. Specimens of the Caslon foundry published under the management of William Caslon II but in William Caslon I's lifetime wrote that he established his type foundry in 1720. His first roman type appeared around 1725; Caslon is the name now given to designs based on his work.Caslon's premises as a gun engraver were based in Vine Street, Minories. He later moved to Helmet Row, then Ironmonger Row from 1727 to 1736, and in 1737 had moved to Chiswell Street, where it would remain for the next two hundred years.
The foundry was successful by 1730 and issued a first specimen around that time. Its first dated specimen appeared in 1734 and the inclusion of a specimen of its types in Chambers' Encyclopaedia made it well-known. By 1763 its stock had expanded to be shown in book form.
Caslon's type designs were based closely on the seventeenth-century Dutch types popular in London at the time, cut by punchcutters including Nicolaes Briot and the Voskens family. In James Mosley's view, they were intended as "unobtrusive substitutes" for specific types his clients already used, and closely resembled them. Besides this, some types he sold came from other founders. He jointly valued the Grover type foundry in 1728 with John James of the James Foundry, although ultimately he did not buy it, and he did buy part of the foundry of Robert Mitchell in 1739. Some older types were sold by the foundry, including a display typeface cut by Moxon.
By the end of Caslon's life his types were quite conservative in design, although very popular. They therefore did not follow the more delicate, stylised and experimental "transitional" styles gaining ground in Europe taking inspiration from calligraphy and copperplate engraving. Alfred F. Johnson notes that his 1764 specimen "might have been produced a hundred years earlier". Stanley Morison described Caslon's type as "a happy archaism". His other types were also close copies of earlier designs: his blackletter types on textura designs, originally French and long standard in British printing, his Greek types on the sixteenth century Grecs du roi model and his Armenian type on types cut in the Netherlands by Miklós Kis.
Caslon trained his son William Caslon II to also be a punchcutter. He was cutting his own types at the latest by 1738 and by 1746 the firm was styled as "W. Caslon & Son". William Caslon I retired from the business in 1758 and moved out of the city to Bethnal Green.
The firm's labour history was not always harmonious. The firm had two apprentices, Thomas Cottrell and Joseph Jackson. According to Jackson's later client and friend John Nichols, when Jackson showed a punch he had made to William Caslon II, Caslon II hit him and threatened him with jail. Jackson had in fact secretly drilled a hole through a wall to observe Caslon I teaching his son how to cut punches. Nichols wrote that after a dispute over the price of labour, Caslon II dismissed Cottrell and Jackson on suspicion of organising a deputation of workmen appealing to his retired father. They later set up as type founders themselves, first jointly before Jackson established his own foundry. According to Edward Rowe Mores, Caslon's brother Samuel worked at the foundry for a time as a mould maker before quitting following a dispute and moving back to Birmingham to work for another type founder, Anderton.
William Caslon II continued the business with success until his death in 1778. In c. 1774 – 1778, he introduced some very large poster-size types, likely intended for stagecoach services.
Competitors
The firm's competitors evolved over its existence. At the start of its existence, its main competitors were in London, especially the James foundry, which through purchasing the Grover and other foundries took over almost all the other London foundries which preceded Caslon, but gradually declined; on John James' death in 1772 it was purchased by the antiquarian and insurance pioneer Edward Rowe Mores for historical value. Alexander Wilson set up a Scottish type foundry in the 1740s and the low cost of labour in Scotland allowed it to undercut London prices.By the time of William Caslon I's death, and certainly by the death of William Caslon II, aesthetic tastes were on the verge of changing. John Baskerville's 1757 edition of Virgil, printed in new types taking inspiration from calligraphy, attracted considerable attention. Baskerville's types were proprietary to him and only used by him and some printers he was connected with in Birmingham, but other founders rapidly began to create types in the same style.
Despite this, the Caslon style continued to be popular with printers. The Fry foundry of Bristol first entered the market in 1764 with copies of Baskerville's types, but finding them not commercially successful, proceeded to then produce copies of Caslon's, to the outrage of the Caslon family.
The anonymous introduction to a 1787 Fry foundry specimen frankly admitted "The plan on which they first sat out, was an improvement of the Types of the late Mr Baskerville of Birmingham...but the shape of Mr. Caslon's Type has since been copied by them with such accuracy as not to be distinguished from those of that celebrated Founder." Decades later, Dr. Edmund Fry, the foundry's last owner, commented that the foundry began operations
"about the year 1764, commencing with improved imitations of Baskerville's fonts...but they did not meet the encouraging approbation of the Printers, whose offices generally, throughout the kingdom, were stored from the London and Glasgow Founderies with types of the form introduced by the celebrated William Caslon...By the recommendation, therefore, of several of the most respectable printers of the Metropolis, Doctor Fry, the proprietor, commenced his imitation of the Chiswell Street Foundery...at vast expense, and with very satisfactory encouragement, during the completion of it."
James Mosley describes the Fry Foundry imitation of the Caslon types as "a very close copy that is not easy to tell from the original."
1778 to 1809
Since William Caslon II died intestate in 1778, ownership of the foundry was divided between his widow, Elizabeth, and their two sons: William Caslon III, and his younger brother Henry until his death in 1788. Henry Caslon's widow was Elizabeth, née Rowe. An obituary of William Caslon II's widow Elizabeth Caslon in the Freemason's Magazine of March 1796 felt that:
An arduous task now devolved on Mrs. Elizabeth Caslon...the entire management of a very large concern did not, however, come with that weight which it would have borne upon one unaccustomed to the habits of business. Mrs Caslon...had for many years habituated herself to the arrangements of the foundry; so that when the entire care devolved upon her, she manifested powers of mind beyond expectation from a female not then in very early life. In a few years her son, the present Mr. William Caslon, became an active co-partner with his mother, but a misunderstanding between them caused a secession, and they separated their concerns...the urbanity of her manners, and her diligence and activity in the conduct of so extensive a concern, attached to her interest all who had dealings with her, and the steadiness of her friendship rendered her death highly lamented by all who had the happiness of being in the extensive circle of her acquaintance.
The London printer Thomas Curson Hansard saw the fifteen years of the foundry's history after William Caslon II died in 1778 as a period of stagnation, with "little augmentation" to its stock of punches. Hansard wrote in Typographia, his 1825 textbook on printing:
It will not appear extraordinary that a property so divided and under the management of two ladies, though both superior and indeed extraordinary women, should be unable to maintain its ground triumphantly against the active competition which had for some time existed against it. In fact, the fame of the first William Caslon was peculiarly disadvantageous to Mrs. Caslon, as she never could be persuaded that any attempt to rival him could possibly be successful.
The foundry issued a new specimen book in 1785 and separate specimen of its large capitals, showcasing a range of complex printers' flowers and interlocking designs. James Mosley felt that the specimen of 1785 contained "little that is really new", with only two new typefaces compared to 1766, a script and an extra size of Syriac, although new flowers had been added. It attacked imitators of the Caslon foundry's types, writing that "the acknowledged excellence of this foundry...has excited the jealousy of the envious".
William Caslon III decided to leave the family business in 1792, buying up the foundry of Joseph Jackson. In 1793, the major type founders in London formed a society or association, with the goal of functioning as a cartel for price fixing. Both Elizabeth Caslons attended for the Caslon foundry. William Caslon, now running his own foundry, also joined for his company. Elizabeth Caslon, the wife of William Caslon II, died in 1795. According to Hansard "the foundry was put up for auction in March 1799 and was bought by Mrs. Henry Caslon for £520. Such was the depreciation of the Caslon letter foundry, of which a third share, in 1792, sold for £3000." A. E. Musson felt that although the foundry had depreciated, this value exaggerated the situation and the price "was doubtless because she and her young son already had a large share in the firm."
Elizabeth Caslon decided to renew the foundry's materials, moving on from the types of William Caslon I which were going out of fashion. According to Hansard:
The management of the foundry devolved on Mrs. Henry Caslon, who, possessing an excellent understanding, and being seconded by servants of zeal and ability, was enabled, though suffering severely under ill health, in a great measure to retrieve its credit. Finding the renown of William Caslon no longer efficacious in securing the sale of his types, she resolved to have new fonts cut. She commenced the work of renovation with a new canon, double pica, and pica, having the good fortune to secure the services of John Isaac Drury, a very able engraver, since deceased. The Pica, an improvement on the style of Bodoni, was particularly admired, and had a most extensive sale. Finding herself, however, from the impaired state of her health...unable to sustain the exertions required in conducting so extensive a concern, she resolved, after the purchase of the foundry, to take as an active partner Mr. Nathaniel Catherwood, who by his energy and knowledge of business fully equalled her expectations.
Much of Drury's work survives intact in the collection of St Bride Library.
From 1807 the foundry was paid to cast a new "Porson typeface" for Greek for Cambridge University Press based on the handwriting of classicist Richard Porson, which had been cut by punchcutter Richard Austin. The design became successful and was widely imitated. The foundry seemingly had no input into the design of the punches and the Porson types were apparently exclusive to Cambridge, but the Caslon foundry later issued types from its own punchcutters in similar design. Less successfully, around 1802–4, the foundry was commissioned to make Rusher's Patent Type, an attempt to create a new paper-saving typeface with no descenders. The type did not become popular.