🥁 Welcome INDIA STREET LETTERING, the book! 🥁

I’m working with @blaft to bring together my documentation of letterforms from India’s cityscapes into a book — a 200-page hardcover full-colour volume showcasing striking public lettering from around the country.

We need your help to make this book happen 🤝🏼 Our Kickstarter campaign is live. Please chip in, pre-order the book and share the project with everyone you know ➡️ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blaft/india-street-lettering-a-book/

I wasn't expecting this to go live so soon but here's a little project I'm collaborating on with Jay Smith. The aim is to reprint the Coast Manual of Lettering and Designs (1907).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coastmanual/the-coast-manual-of-lettering-and-designs?ref=dp310a

The manual is one of the rarest sign painting books out there, and it was a series of lucky events that led to Jay having a copy in his possession: https://bl.ag/bookish-good-luck-at-mclellan-signs-in-nampa-idaho/#mclellan-signs-nampa-idaho.

I'll share more with mailing list subscribers soon, but please back it and boost 😊

#SignPainting #Lettering #Boost

@onpaperwings well if it’s anything like the previous season about Ana Mendieta … then this’ll be good. Thanks for sharing the link!

HBD Darius Wells born 26 April 1800 Kingsboro, NY. He invented the router—a lateral revolving cutting tool—to make the first machine cut wood types. 1st specimen catalog in 1828 co. became D. Wells & Co in 1835 & Wells & Webb in 1839.

He was an active abolitionist, and ran a “station” on the underground railroad in Patterson, NJ helping enslaved humans make their way north to Canada to live as free humans.

#WoodType #router #letterforms #typography #design #bibliography #archives #libraries

HBD Henry P Hamilton born 21 Apr 1862 youngest of 3 brothers, worked with older brthr George at _The Detroit Record_ as a printer & then with oldest brthr James at Hamilton & Baker, later Hamilton Mfg Co Credited patents USD37308 & 37309
http://www.woodtyperesearch.com/hamilton-mfg-672-673

#WoodType #letterforms #typography #archives #libraries #collections #bibliography #TypeSpecimen #TypeDesign #TypeHistory #letterpress #type #design #history #NineteethCentury #19thCentury #patents #uspatents

@nicksherman had so much fun following along! Thanks thanks!

Happy Birthday Horatio Nelson Bill born in Lebanon, Conn., USA, March 25, 1824. He worked as a sign painter before (w/ brother Jeremiah) cutting wood type for Edwin Allen. They formed their own wood type company, H & J Bill, in 1850 & moved the company 6 miles north to Willimantic in 1851. It became Bill, Stark & Co 1853, closed in 1854, and was sold to Wm. H. Page in 1856.
Horatio was listed as Type Maker in 1863 & listed variously as a sign-, house-, & fine arts-painter in the 1870s & 80s.

Happy Birthday William Hamilton Page—born in Tilton, New Hampshire, March 14, 1829. Page lived nearly 40 years of his adult life in Norwich, Conn as a wood type manufacturer. Images shown here from 1878 specimen catalog, slightly repurposed from specimen catalog from 1867. Engraving likely created by Charles Tubbs.

More about Page’s life and work at www.woodtyperesearch.com/william-hamilton-page/

👀 💌 In Feb. 2016, Alphabettes.org published 29 Love Letters to geek out over things we love. By the end of the month, we saw the blog’s potential to amplify new voices — there was so much love to share. Full series: https://www.alphabettes.org/love-letters/

📗 Alphabettes Soup 2015–2025: Ten Years of Feminist Approaches to Type (Bikini Books), will feature 26 letters, along with 50+ new and revised essays. Help make it happen! Sponsor or donate:
👉 https://tinyurl.com/alphabettes-soup

🔤: Tiny Grotesk by Robin Mientjes

@celiason @letterformarchive fantastic! Great news Craig! Congratulations!!

@typegirl Amazing! I’ll second your vote for this being some of the best writing on typography. So great to have access to everything (especially to those earlier issues). Thanks for sharing!!

Type historians don’t talk enough about how start a research, how to organize materials and informations. I hope my journey as an independent researcher digging in the past of my home country will inspire and support more people to do the same: because so much of the history of type is yet to be rediscovered, made accessible, preserved, archived, narrated. 4/

I’m voting Anne De Marcken’s novella _ It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Gone_ (New Directions Publishing, paperback, 2024) as my favorite read of 2024. It’s a lovely hybrid of genres (speculative fiction, horror, fantasy…) It also won the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction this year. Compelling story questioning what it means to be human, impeccably written.

@onpaperwings @nclm @glennf
Such a great thread! Thanks all!! (And so timely for me) I’ve finally starting documenting my library using LibraryThing and fine tuning the auto-populated book entries. Y’all’s convo has been super helpful (and @glennf article link)

@colinmford I feel seen and heard, thanks!

Happy Birthday George Case Setchell born 17 December 1838 in Norwich, CT.

Setchell was a skilled type cutter who perfected the die-cut method of wood border manufacture in the late 1870s. He was first listed as an employee of William H. Page & Co. in 1868 as a type cutter. By 1872 Setchell had worked his way up to foreman of the typeshop, and became President of the William H. Page Wood Type Co in 1881.

Image of Setchell during his time in the US Union Army.

http://www.woodtyperesearch.com/setchell/

Would really love a Spotify Wrapped but for the typefaces I actually used, in ranked order, over the past year.

But like Spotify it’d probably just disappoint me by telling me I use the same few over and over, mostly boy designs. I always feel like I’m stretching my boundaries till the year end tally just tells me I’m still stuck in my (same, old) ways.

@nicksherman 🤯

Amazing crowdsourcing project by Richard Ardagh @richardardagh documenting the phenominal Type Archive in London. Stunning, handsome, pretty, luxe, erudite…pick your adjectives! Typographers, historians, siblings-in-ink check it out, and definitely consider supporting the project so it can make it’s way into the world.

https://vol.co/collections/type-archived
______

#typography #letterpress #letterforms #archives #libraries #collections #bibliography #history #design #NineteenthCentury #19thCentury

@onpaperwings lurv this!