Very few books today are printed from wood or metal type. This may be why type specimen books continue to exert such a hold on book collectors, even those who have no especial interest in the book arts:
[t]he ideal specimen book shows the typefaces in a range of sizes, using short sentences rather than A-Z strings (which are of little use for getting a feel for the type in use). Color is sometimes used, but usually very discreetly, such as a red title. Samples in text sizes (6 to 14 point) typically show a longish block of text to help one judge readability, but would not be shown for decorative and display typefaces. It is quite common not to show a complete character set: foundries have always been concerned about piracy. Instead, a chart might be shown in an appendix where the characters included in all the foundry’s fonts are shown.
For a foundry’s more important typefaces, individual specimen books are sometimes produced that concentrate on just a single typeface family:
Over the centuries, type specimen books have been produced for all types of markets:
Because type specimen books were published to show off a foundry's type to best effect, they were very expensive to produce. As publishing moved from wood and metal type to phototypesetting and digital publishing, the need for such expensive books was greatly diminished. Nowadays, only a handful of foundries still issue printed specimen books. This has made older type specimen books very collectible. Regrettably, many of these books have been disbound so individual pages can be framed and mounted (à la broadsides). Complete copies in anything approaching Fine condition are both scarce and expensive, and for many type foundries will prove to be virtually unobtainable. The titles depicted below will prove invaluable to folks collecting specimen books issued by American type foundries:
Recent Comments