John Baskerville's Book of Common Prayer
While googling in search of info about Baskerville typeface I came across this page with lots of scans from John Baskerville books. I did a quick search in typophile and it seems that the link it hasn’t been posted before:
http://www.riversevenpress.co.uk/bask.html
By the way, this River Seven Press produces books “by using letterpress printing”... they also link http://www.britishletterpress.co.uk/.
Regarding Neo-classical typefaces, I’d love to share some thoughts about Walbaum and Bulmer, two very nice fonts that doesn’t seem to get the attention they deserve.
13.Mar.2008 2.44am
Thanks for this — I love looking at Baskervilles’s title pages. Works of art!
13.Mar.2008 3.22am
Baskerville’s title page for the Prayer Book is remarkable in that he was obliged by his client to forgo his usual neoclassical austerity and work in retro ecclesseastical mode.
It’s strange that his normal style would have been considered too pagan, when one considers some of the neo-classical churches being built at the time, resembling temples from Ancient Greece.
13.Mar.2008 4.21am
And don’t you just love that mock Roman feel with ’Birminghamiae’ — just north of the Tiber apparently!
13.Mar.2008 7.52am
It’s strange that his normal style would have been considered too pagan, when one considers some of the neo-classical churches being built at the time, resembling temples from Ancient Greece.
Compliance is a virtue. Thought… not so much.
13.Mar.2008 7.08pm
Too bad he isn’t around to tell us what he thought about doing this particular job...
13.Mar.2008 8.22pm
Someone enlighten me about the final word of the column set flush right by itself and then repeated at the top of the next page.
13.Mar.2008 10.53pm
That’s a fairly common feature in books intended either to be read aloud or to be followed while someone is reading/reciting aloud. The word at the bottom of the page is a cue for the first word on the next page, the idea being that you don’t miss anything while you are turning the page.
A similar feature is found in most copies of the Qur’an, and provided an opportunity for scribes to demonstrate their skill in writing the same word in two different ways using dissimilation of letterforms.