The American Printer: A Manual of Typography / Containing practical directions for managing all departments of a printing office, as well as complete instructions for apprentices; with several useful tables, numerous schemes for imposing forms in every variety, hints to authors, etc.

by Thomas MacKellar

TYPE-FOUNDING IN EUROPE.

For a long period after the discovery of printing, it seems that type-founding, printing, and binding went under the general term of printing, and that printers cast the types used by them, and printed and bound the works executed in their establishments. Type-founding became a distinct calling early in the seventeenth century. A decree of the Star Chamber, made July 11, 1637, ordained the following regulations concerning English founders:—

“That there shall be four founders of letters for printing, and no more.

“That the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London, with six other high commissioners, shall supply the places of those four as they shall become void.

“That no master-founder shall keep above two apprentices at one time.

“That all journeyman-founders be employed by the masters of the trade, and that idle journeymen be compelled to work, upon pain of imprisonment and such other punishment as the court shall think fit.

“That no master-founder of letters shall employ any other person in any work belonging to the casting or founding of letters than freemen or apprentices to the trade, save only in pulling off the knots of metal hanging at the end of the letters when they are first cast; in which work every master-founder may employ one boy only, not bound to the trade.”

By the same decree, the number of master-printers in England was limited to twenty.

Regulations like the above were in force till 1693. The “polyglot founders,” as they have been called, were succeeded by Joseph Moxon and others. But the English were unable to compete with the superior productions of the Dutch founders, until the advent of William Caslon, who, by the beauty and excellence of his type, surpassed his Batavian competitors, when the importation of foreign type ceased, and his founts were, in turn, exported to the Continent.

By an act subsequently passed, no founder was to cast any letter for printing, no joiner to make any press, no smith to forge any iron-work for a press; no person to bring from parts beyond the seas any letters founded or cast for printing; nor any person to buy any letters or any other materials belonging unto printing; without application to the master and wardens of the Company of Stationers.