Bookman (?)

see the T, g, W ; since of the 4 - Bookman ATF and not ITC *, I guess

edit: and maybe not.....since of the lc “t”

* edit (again) - I don’t know why I said ITC (founded in 1969, I think.....)

It’s probably one of the various faces called Antique. Most foundries had such faces, not identical, but similar. ATF’s Bookman was a consolidation of several of these.

There’s Antique Old Style (but the “g”.... not the same)

The “Antiques” I’m talking about have not been around for almost a century. There are similar faces still around, such as Bookman. It’s not likely you’ll find a perfect match in a current font.

Looks like Century Old Style to me.

There were only 6 letters in the sample that I could use in the Serif Font ID Guide: (a, b, e, g, y and W) . With those I came up with 39 fonts, including Bruce Old Style, several Century versions, some Caslons, several Bookmans, including Phemister’s original from 1860, Old Style No. 7 and a scattering of other faces too modern to be considered. If you could show a sample with a few more of the Guide’s Key letters (such as E, J, K, M, R and U) the results could be narrowed down much more. As Mark suggested this could be something that has no perfect current match, but you might see something that would be hard to tell from it without precise comparison.

(Unfortunately, the Guide is still in work, and we are still making sample images, but the names of fonts meeting the key characteristics are shown with the design, foundry and date information.)

- Mike Yanega

Very few of the typefaces suggested have oldstyle numbers: more likely it’s ATF’s Oldstyle No. 583, from their 1912 specimen book, rather heavily inked.

Mark,

I didn’t want to find a perfect match in a current font; for example see Jaspert page 8

Ah, yes, that’s the one I was thinking of.

Last night while doing a little research in an old Linotype specimen book, I found a better match: Linotype Antique No. 1. It’s also a more likely candidate, since the text in a book of any length would probably be set my machine, rather than by hand.

For what it’s worth, if you want another vote, I just looked at an old Linotype book to see if that looks right, and I agree that Antique No. 1 is very close. The weight and letterforms look just about right. The clincher would be to see the R, because Antique No. 1 has an odd leg on the R that thickens toward the baseline, without much of a serif, unlike the Antique Old Style in Jaspert..

- Mike Yanega

Could be, but my 1920 Linotype specimen book doesn’t show old style figures for Antique No. 1 whereas Antique Old Style (the one shown in Jaspert) has them. It would be helpful to see the italic—Antique Old Style has a cursive italic, similar to Century Old Style, while Linotype’s Antique No. 1 has a slanted italic, like Bookman.

My Linotype book is from the mid-30’s, but it does show old style figures. Actually, it shows both. Looks like maybe we are interested but the poster no longer is.

Too bad. I was hoping to see more letters.

- Mike Yanega

HI...thanks for all the great comments!

After careful consideration I found Century Old Style to be the closest I could purchase commercially and indeed I had it on my machine as it comes with CS2. I tried that fancy-dancy super-duper online font id’er using my loupe on the characters but it wasn’t very helpful as it turned out some bizarre results. Perhaps it just can’t deal with such old fonts.

Anyway, I think that COS is pretty darn close and will have to do for this project.

Thanks again for all your help. Great suggestions and I learn lots everytime I come here!!

Best,
Robert