t is often said that William Morris created the first modern imitations of fifteenth-century types for his Kelmscott Press (active 1889–1896). This is not strictly true, for throughout the early and middle part of the nineteenth century, English and French type founders offered more or less faithful renderings of early types for specialty work. Morris was the first to return to Jenson for direct inspiration, with the advice and encouragement of printing historian Emery Walker. Morris undertook detailed study of original Jenson books and photoenlargements of Jenson’s type. After more than a year of drawing, cutting, and revising, his Golden Type was ready in January of 1891. It was not a close copy of Jenson. The lower case letters were thickened and gothicized so that the overall effect is much more compact than Jenson’s. The result is a bold black page.
After Morris, there were two distinct kinds of Jenson imitation. Some designers followed Morris and created Jenson-style types with the same dark color and compact form. Examples were Daniel Berkeley Updike’s Merrymount and Charles Ricketts’ Vale, both named for the private presses that first used them. Other designers returned to Jenson himself as a model and, admiring especially the elegant silvery color of the original pages, reproduced the more open, sinuous forms and wider spacing they saw there. Both Bruce Roger’s Centaur and Ludlow Eusebius fall into this latter category. They were in turn the models for many later revivals that copied the elegant and open Jenson forms.
Paste up of lines from Golden, Merrymount, and Centaur
Specimen lines of three early imitations of Jenson’s Roman type.
Copyright ©1997 Paul Baker and Paul Gehl
Line 1: The
Golden Type of William Morris (1891).
Line 2:
Merrymount by Daniel Berkeley Updike (1895).
Line 3:
Centaur by Bruce Rogers (1913)
Version 1 May 17, 1997