TITLE-PAGE OF 1847
TITLE-PAGE OF 1872
Showing the development during the nineteenth century of a severe and uninteresting style
Attractiveness is as necessary to the typography of the general job of printing as dignity and legibility are to a law brief, but, endeavoring to get attractiveness into their work, job printers often go astray. They wrongly labor under the impression that to have a job distinctive it must be made freakish. Typography is not good unless based upon art foundations.
Ideas in plenty could have been plucked by the printer of the nineteenth century from old books, especially from those printed for religious organizations, such as the “Book of Common Prayer.” A handsome edition of a book of this kind was printed in London by John Murray in 1814. Each pair of pages is different in decoration and typography, the designs being by “Owen Jones, architect.” The decorative treatment of the page of Psalms reproduced from this book is worthy of study and adaptation.
THE TREND TOWARD DAINTINESS
Title-page of MacKellar’s manual, “The American Printer,” 1882
About the time of the Civil War the job printer was less fettered than ever by the customs of the book printer. While title-pages of books were being composed without ornamentation in severe-looking modern romans, the job printer, influenced by the typefounder, took a liking to fancy typography, for the production of which there were shaded, outlined, rimmed and ornamental letters, in imitation of the work of the copperplate engraver. The business card on the next page, and the “bill of fare” here shown, are specimens of such work.
