It has a clarendon flavour

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/clarendon/black/

It looks like a Clarendon, show us a G or W.
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/clarendon/

Looking forward to the regeneration.
Tim

Edit: cross post with Brett, but it looks like the right direction

Brilliant guys, thank you! here are 11 more letters. The G is similar to the regular linotype cut, but the weight is wrong, also the H has differences. any more ideas?

definitely a clarendon derivative... reminds me of the lettering used on tiles for street names in the hampstead area... the cut is rough (see A and C), so could have been hand formed... oh, and the H is upside down :-)

There is a certain clumsiness/naivete to these, do you know how they were produced? (for example routed, painted, screen printed)

Tim

There is certainly a roughness to them.

In terms of fabrication, that’s actually generated a lot of debate here. In section the discs have a sandwiched construction of white/brown/white we think that they’re made of formica. Anyway that’s how we plan on reproducing the missing ones.

One thought has occurred to me. On the myfonts site it says that Clarendon was produced in 1953. That’s 2 years after the Royal Festival Hall was opened! The architecture firm responsible for the interior of the RFH was German, as were the creators of Clarendon. Could this be an early proto version of the font? does anyone know the circumstances of the font’s creation?

oh yes, apologies for the H!!

ah I’ve just wikipedia’d it...

created in England by Robert Besley for the Fann Street Foundry in 1845. Besley went as far as trying to patent the typeface, though this failed. The original matrices and punches remained at Stephenson Blake and latterly at the Type Museum, London. They were marketed by Stephenson Blake as Consort, though some additional weights (a bold and italics) were cut in 1950s

It was named after the Clarendon Press in Oxford. The typeface was reworked by the Monotype foundry in 1935. It was revised by Hermann Eidenbenz in 1953.

could still be a proto version of the bold cut

http://typophile.com/node/14025

http://www.linotype.com/385/hermanneidenbenz.html?PHPSESSID=c6c0173ed6e7...

More on Clarendon, the information on Myfonts is about the recut in 1951, Clarendon is 19th Century British. So are you rebuilding the Skylon?

Tim

I’m getting the hang of cross-posting

more interesting still, have just learnt that Hermann Eidenbenz worked on the Swiss pavilion for the world exhibition in Paris in 1937

or am I just getting over excited?!

Ha Ha... not that i’m aware of.

From your description of the sandwich construction I would guess that the characters are routed out by pantograph to the depth of the dark plastic, which would account for some of the crudeness.

Tim

Tim is right about the way these were made. Now you have just to find some of the original equipment & someone to operate it. I have an aquaintance who used to do this type of work in the seventies and early eighties, but he has switched to restoring piano’s.

That’s what we thought originally except the middle layer is brown not black, and the letter is flush with the surface. We think it’s formica - multiple layers of white and kraft paper plasticized by laminating together in resin under huge heat and pressure. the top layers (maybe 20 sheets) would have the letter printed on them. this might become distorted under the huge pressures involved. we experimented with routed and laser etched plastics but couldn’t find one durable enough to withstand being repeatedly trodden on. we could easily be wrong though.