[608] It is curious to note that the matter of not a few of Thorowgood’s early specimens has reference to the lucky numbers “always found in great variety in the Grand State Lotteries.” Such gratuitous advertisements are no doubt so many grateful acknowledgments of his own obligations to a time-honoured institution.
[609] The address to the printers, prefixed to this specimen, is as follows: “I cannot omit the opportunity offered in presenting my first specimen to your notice, to return my most sincere thanks to the profession for that portion of their patronage which I have received since my succession to Mr. Thorne. Although some difficulties presented themselves in redeeming the pledge I made of renovating my small founts and casting them of metal more durable than those in common use, yet I flatter myself that those friends who relied on my professions will bear ample testimony that they have not been disappointed, and that the superior facilities of manufacturing types possessed by myself in common with the other founders of the metropolis has been used to their advantage,” etc.
[610] This famous foundry, which still exists, was established by Bernard Christopher Breitkopf in 1719. His son, Johann Gottlieb Immanuel Breitkopf, was the inventor (simultaneously with Haas of Basle) of the art of map printing with movable types, and is claimed also as the inventor of movable music types about 1748. Many eminent punch cutters were employed on the founts of this foundry, which was in 1800 one of the largest in Germany. The first specimen appeared in 1739.
15. JOSEPH AND EDMUND FRY, 1764
[611] Hugh Owen. Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol, 1873, 8vo.
[612] Of these books we have one before us—A Collection of Hymns adapted for Public Worship. Bristol, (1769), 12mo, in the Long Primer of the foundry, showing, besides, several varieties of title-letters and flowers.
[613] Catalogue, i, 310, “Grande feuille collée sur une toile ou batiste fine.”
[614] Rowe Mores, after quoting the above, adds drily: “Their letter is neat. We do ‘set aside the influence of custom,’ and call it the law of fools, but we must recommend to the consideration of the proprietors the difference between scalping and counterpunching.” (Dissertation, p. 84.)
[615] “The Inventors, sensible of the great utility of their Discovery, have mentioned it to several of the Trade, who have made very considerable offers to encourage the laying open the Secret: But as their desire is, that every Printer in the Kingdom might be benefited by it they propose to make the Discovery as universal as possible, by making an honourable and generous present of it to the whole trade: To many of whom they are under some Obligations for the kind encouragement of their new Foundery. And as that is an object they desire here to recommend, they would further propose, (as they have nearly compleated all their founts, and can serve the Trade on as good Terms as any in the Kingdom, and with Types they will warrant to wear as long) that every Printer who shall give them an order for Ten Pounds worth of Type or more (Five Pounds of which to be paid on ordering and the Remainder on the Delivery) shall be made acquainted with the above improvements. So that the whole Advantage proposed is the selling some Founts of Letter which every Printer does or will want. And as they expect that the Trade in general will approve of their Plan, they beg that the Encouragers of it would send their orders with all convenient Speed to the above Foundery; (as they intend as soon as they have got a sufficient Number to lay open the whole) which they hope will not be less universal than the desire of being made Partakers of so interesting a Discovery: for it merits nothing less than the most cordial Encouragement of every Printer in Europe, though here so freely offered. And it will appear when laid open to be of such Service as nothing like it has been discovered in Printing for some Centuries. . . . The whole expence of altering the present presses to the above Improvement will be but about forty shillings.” A notice of this invention, as well as of a patent type-case designed by the same partners, is found in the Abridgments of Specifications for Printing, 1617–1857, London, 1859. 8vo, p. 88.
[616] History and Art of Printing, p. 244.