“Should it be my good fortune to meet with this indulgence, I wou’d use my utmost efforts to perfect an Edition of them with the greatest Elegance and Correctness; a work which I hope might do some honor to the English Press, and contribute to improve the pleasure, which men of true taste will always have in the perusal of those sacred Volumes.”
This preface shows clearly the purpose with which Baskerville entered upon type-founding and printing. He desired to advance this art, not by printing many books, but only books of consequence or established reputation, which the public would be pleased to see in an elegant dress, and would, as he thought, be glad to purchase at such a price as would repay the “extraordinary care and expence that must necessarily be bestowed upon them.” He did not print for the many, but only for the few, and he was sanguine enough to believe that the few would pay for the books which he printed a price sufficient to reimburse him for his expense.
Fortunately he obtained an artist for cutting the punches—John Handy—who worked well with him, and yet with Handy to help him, days, months, and years passed before a single fount was completed. It was not until 1752 that he was able to report progress with a fount of Great Primer.
About this time Baskerville became acquainted with the poet Shenstone, and also met with the London publisher and playwright, Robert Dodsley, who became a great admirer of Baskerville’s work.
During 1750 and until about the autumn of 1752, Baskerville quietly proceeded with his type foundry, and in this time the apparatus for printing was being set up in his house. He spent some six or eight hundred pounds upon the types. Of these he said in a letter to Dodsley: “They please me, as I can make nothing more correct. You will observe they strike the eye much more sensibly than the smaller characters. The R wants a few slight touches, and the Y half an hour’s correction. We have resolutely set about 13 of the same sized italic capitals, which will not be inferior to the Roman, and I doubt not to complete them in a fortnight.” Then he adds, indicating that the time for publishing the Virgil had been already set: “You need be in no pain about our being ready by the time appointed.” Baskerville was not to be hurried. He did his work regardless of time and, to an extent, of money. In a later letter, in 1753, he said: “You may depend upon my being ready by your time (Christmas), but if more time could be allowed I should make use of it all in correcting and justifying. So much depends on appearing perfect on first starting.”
Of course, the initial labor in preparing type was immense: “He had at first to design his model alphabet letter by letter, so that each letter should bear its due relation to the other letters, on a scale of absolute proportion. The design fixed, the next step was to decide the particular size on which he would begin.... Then came the critical manual operation of cutting each letter separately in relief, on steel, to form the punch.... Each punch would then have to be hardened and struck into copper to form the matrix, and each matrix would need to be justified and adjusted to the type mould, so as to produce a type not only an xact counterpart of the punch, but absolutely square with every other letter of the fount.... The moulds for casting the type ... would have to be constructed each of a large number of separate pieces of iron and wood, fitted together with the most delicate precision, so that every type would come out uniform in height and body. When matrixes and moulds were ready the operation of casting would ensue.... The types would require dressing before they could be used: a delicate operation, consisting in the smoothing away of every chance irregularity left by the casting, without interfering with the mathematical height and squareness of the letter.”[19] Then there were the press and the ink.
Baskerville constructed his own presses. From the beginning, even as early as 1752, he had a press in operation on which he printed his specimens. He wrote to Dodsley: “I have with great pains justified the plate for the Platten & Stone on which it falls, so that they are as perfect planes as it will ever be in my Power to procure, for instance, if you Rest one End of yr plate in the Stone & let the other fall the height of an inch; it falls soft as if you dropped it on feathers or several folds of silk, and when you raise it, you manifestly feel it such (if you’ll excuse so unphilosophical a term). Wet the two and either would support the other with a couple of 500 weights added to it, if held perpendicularly. To as perfect a plane I will endeavour to bring the faces of the type if I have time. Nor do I despair of better ink & printing (the character must speak for itself) than has hitherto been seen.”
He said in a letter to France, that the presses were exactly of the same construction as other people’s, but that he had made them better, especially in the stone and the platen, all of which could be done with a person who gave attention to it; and that in printing he used but one double of finest flannel, other people used two or three double of thick swanskin; and for a description and drawing of his presses he referred to Palmer’s “History of Printing,” and “The History and Art of Printing,” by Luckombe, in which he said there was a print of every part of the press.
Hand-press such as was used by Baskerville
From Luckombe’s “History and Art of Printing”