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JALLESON, circ. 1734.
This man appears to have served, in 1733, as punch cutter to Mr. R. Wetstein of Amsterdam, for whom he produced, amongst other founts, the accented Roman with which the Dutch East India Company printed their Malay Edition of the Bible in that year. He came to London, and lived in the Old Bailey, where he attempted an economical way of multiplying founts by casting six different bodies of letter from three sets of punches, viz., Brevier and Long Primer from one set, Pica and English from another, Great Primer and Double Pica from a third. “Accordingly,” says Smith, “he charged his Brevier, Pica, and Great Primer with as full a face as their respective bodies would admit of, and, in order to make some alteration in the advancing founts, he designed to cut the ascending and descending letters to such a length as should show the extent of their different bodies. But though he had cast founts of the three minor sorts of letters, he did not bring the rest here to perfection.”[720]
While in England, “he printed the greatest part of a Hebrew Bible with letter of his own casting; but was, by adverse fortune, obliged to finish the said work in Holland.” Jalleson’s system, though apparently unsuccessful at the time, was eventually adopted, to a certain extent, by English founders.
JACOB ILIVE, circ. 1730.
This eccentric individual was a connection of the James’s, his mother, Elizabeth, being the daughter of Thomas James, the printer, and consequently cousin to Thomas James, the founder.[721] His father was a printer resident in Aldersgate Street,[722] and his two brothers, Abraham and Isaac, also followed the same calling.
About the year 1730, he applied himself to letter-founding, and carried on a foundry and printing house together in Aldersgate Street over against Aldersgate Coffee-house, where he was resident in 1734.
“But, afterwards,” says Mores, “when Calasio[723] was to be reprinted under the inspection of Mr. Romaine, or of Mr. Lutzena, a Portuguese Jew who corrected the {347} Hebrew—as we ourselves did sometimes another part of the work—he removed to London House (the habitation of the late Dr. Rawlinson) on the opposite side of the way, where he was employed by the publishers of that work. This was in the year 1746.”