Since the pothooked characters seem to reference scripts that were engraved into copper plates; thus the name copperplate; would this account to some degree for the piecemeal implementation that you mentioned? The punchcutter referencing a technique that comes from an engraver seems a substantial break from the norm.

The Caslon references the Italic broad-edged pen, but the Bodoni Italic strives for a more geometrical balance. Not sure if the Didot fonts of that time came up with their proportions as seen in the rounded strokes by seeking that kind of balance or if their was reference made to engraved scripts.

I think the entry strokes are simply an interpretation of the way in which x-height entry serifs on italic letters mirrors the baseline exit serifs, a convention already long established in oldstyle italics. If you compare the Caslon and Scotch Modern italics in your specimen, you will see that the pattern is basically the same.

Bodoni’s model is consistently different.

Very true; they do both have that even if they have very different weights and lengths. I do notice, however, that the transition in weight from beginning and ending strokes of the Scotch Modern Italic is similar to the type of transition that engraved and written copperplates scripts share. The Caslon weight coming into the main downstroke is more like that of a broad-edged pen. Since both are essentially drawings for metal type, then its difficult to know for sure why its drawn the way it is, but undoubtedly its tied up n the fashions of the time.

The gap left when right bottom and left top hooks converge in Scotch Modern seems to draw attention to itself. I would suspect that the Bodoni Italic would be easier to read than the Scotch Modern counterpart since Bodoni is so much cleaner in that respect. But that’s off topic a bit.

I’ll stop here as my type history is weak compared to you guys. I just wanted to point out my observations as I come from a calligraphy background more so than Typographic.

Nick

There is this same ethos in a lot of Fritz Poppl’s work. His forte was script and staid Roman but often he mixed the restrained with the “slightly flourished.” Scotch Modern seems to be a similar hybrid that speaks to a forward thinking form - flat serifs combined with faux exit/entrance joins. Do you have a copy of the Canadian magazine “Studio” that his work appeared in at least a decade and a half ago?

Michael

Is there a correlation between more elaborate/longer entry strokes and increased slope (in line with the samples you posted)? Maybe the entry strokes help to “right” visually the more strongly leaning letters.

(And would the lean also account for the metrics you mentioned?)

I hope it won’t be hijacking the thread to add my own questions: how many metal italics were cast on leaning parallelogram (instead of rectangular) bodies? When and where did that start, what casting tools allowed for it, and how common was it?

Good point Craig. The body of the Scotch Modern Italic is quite condensed, but the large serifs enable it to have a word count comparable to the roman.

Also, because the serifs are so long, they almost touch the median height of round letters (see n_o_p), and “almost touching” is a strong concept in this style, especially in the roman with its small apertures.

Yes indeed, were any of these styles cast on a parallelogram body? How many kerns (bits of letters protruding off the body) were there? I’m quite prepared to believe the lower case was on a rectangular body; you can imagine it here, and perhaps the bottom left serif of the “p” was a kern, which is why it’s broken off in the first p:

However, does that mean that the top right of the capitals were all kerned? It kind of looks that way in the combination “Sp” here:

Michael, no I don’t recall that Studio.

Stephen: The gap left when right bottom and left top hooks converge in Scotch Modern seems to draw attention to itself.

In text, it’s perhaps more likely that the strokes just fade away, the optical suggestion being that the line is continuous, but beneath the threshold of vision.

Perhaps this is another aspect of the style, although it’s hard to tell from subsequent revivals, where the metrics may have been significantly altered from the original.

Nick, did you “copy” the spacing from your Scotch Modern model, or did you space it as you would an original font?

Craig asks:

>> how many metal italics were cast on leaning parallelogram (instead of rectangular) bodies? When and where did that start, what casting tools allowed for it, and how common was it? <<

There were indeed some metal faces cast on “leaning parallelogram bodies.” Primarily these were display scripts. Right now no names come to mind and the few metal specimen books here at the salt mine do not yield any answers. I imagine that standard casters were used, but with moulds arranged for the parallelogram bodies. It was not all that common, at least not since the early 20th century.

I do not think there would have been any italic companions to book faces cast that way.

Recall what I showed about some Ludlow italic mats at TypeCon in Buffalo.

There was also an ATF script face that was cast on what we might term a “squiggle” body (sorry: it’s Friday and I have a lot to do; that’s the best term I can come up with). The bodies of the types were neither rectangles nor parallelograms. As best I can recall, the very top and very bottom parts of the type bodies were rectangular. But then the middle parts were curved in such a way that the top and bottom rectangles were not aligned. The top sat a bit to the right of the bottom. Of course, special spaces were also cast for this face. I may have some of this in that nasty garage that needs cleaning out. I’ll look.

powers

Craig, I did it by eye, which is how I drew the glyphs.
I’d say my “kerns” (overhangs from a presumed rectangle) match that of the original—although I moved the entire italic a little to the left, so that it fits a bit better optically when mixed with roman. There are no digital kerns in the image below, and the black rectangle shows where the sidebearings are, so if you imagine the rectangle moved a tad to the left, that’s where the body of the metal type would be. So it looks like in the metal Scotch Modern, the capitals were kerned on the top right.

In the Bodoni, by Berthold (left), it looks like there would have been no kerns in the metal capitals. So yes, the design of the italic was strongly informed by how they tackled the problem of fitting and kerns. But as for the original by Bodoni himself, can’t say.