Ornamented Types. Twenty-three alphabets from the foundry of Louis John Pouchee. Specimens, with an introduction by James Mosley.

POUCHEE (Louis John)

About this Item

Ltd. to 210 sets, 200 for sale, printed on a special making of 175gsm acid-free white Zerkall mould-made paper. Folio (21 x 15"; 530 x 380mm). 25 alphabets displayed in 46 sheets of specimens with 6 additional sheets of prelims and endmatter, in a Solander box, together with a uniform, cloth-bound introductory volume, pp. viii, 37 + colophon, with 51 full-size illustrations, in a slipcase. New. / The twenty-three large decorated alphabets in the St Bride Printing Library which are the subject of this publication are believed to be the most richly ornamented letters ever to have been made for letterpress printing. The original hand-engraved woodblocks from which they have been printed form one of the finest collections of typographical material to have survived from the early nineteenth century. / These blocks are typefounders' patterns, each letter engraved on a piece of endgrain boxwood. From them the typefounder would make reproductions in typemetal by a process known as 'dabbing', by which the block would be driven into cooling typemetal creating a matrix which would in turn be 'dabbed' to make a metal cast for sale to printers. / This mode of producing big decorations and ornamental letters belonged to the later eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth. Types produced by 'dabbing' were superseded by machine-cut types made entirely of wood. Wood types were cheaper, lighter, and less vulnerable, but they were also less complex in design, and it was never possible to reproduce the delicate surface decoration of the letters 'dabbed' from engraved patterns such as these. / The blocks have been printed to the highest standard, providing brilliant proofs of a collection of decorated types without parallel in the exuberance and inventiveness of their design. The accompanying volume gives a full account of the types' history, purpose and stylistic origins. / Winner of the Premio Felice Feliciano 1995.

Seller Inventory # 002438

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ornamented Types. Twenty-three alphabets from the foundry of Louis John Pouchee. Specimens, with an introduction by James Mosley.
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: London: I.M.Imprimit in association with
• Condition: New