The Alexander S. Lawson Archive

March 15

ASL archivist — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:00:41 +0000

“I think I am dying,” wrote Sir Sidney Carlyle Cockerell upon a set of postcards of the spring flowers in Kew Gardens, and sent them to his family and friends, postmarked this day in 1962. The fact that he was then in his ninety-fifth year and had been confined to his bed for a [...]

March 14

ASL archivist — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:00:05 +0000

John Mansir Wing, compositor, editor, and bibliophile, died on this day in 1917 in the city of Chicago, leaving all of his earthly possessions to the Newberry Library of that city. Born in New York’s Oswego County in 1845, Wing served an apprenticeship at the type case at an early age and worked as a [...]

March 13

ASL archivist — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:00:35 +0000

On this day in 1895 a young man named Charles Harry St. John Hornby sat down to tea with William Morris, following an inspection of the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith. The Press was then engaged in the printing of the great folio Chaucer. Just one year previously Hornby had started a small private press, as [...]

March 12

ASL archivist — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:00:54 +0000

“There is no such thing nor can there be such a thing as ‘the ideal book.’” So began an essay on the ideal book, written by Porter Garnett, of the School of Printing at Carnegie Institute of Technology and founder of the Laboratory Press. He was born on March 12, 1869 in San Francisco. After [...]

March 11

ASL archivist — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:00:17 +0000

“The rush of office-seekers upon the departments exceeds anything of the kind ever before known. From all morning till late in the evening, Uncle Abe and each of the members of the cabinet are beset by men, women and children.” So said the Baltimore Sun of this date in 1861. It was describing Washington where [...]

March 10

ASL archivist — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:00:36 +0000

“Hearing / Before the / Committee on the Library / House of Representatives / Seventy-first Congress / Second Session / on / H.R. 6147 / A bill authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to pay to the Joint Committee on the Library the sum of $1,500,000 for the purchase of the collection of three [...]

Printers To Observe Goudy Centenary March 8

ASL archivist — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:20:30 +0000

Goudy was among the last of a breed of type designers who regarded type as something artistic as well as functional. March 8 will mark a most significant event—the centenary of the birth of the great Frederic W. Goudy. Today, with the printer attempting to keep pace with the astonishing technological changes now taking place in the [...]

Archivist’s Note 14

ASL archivist — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:19:58 +0000

In support of the Typocurious’s 2010 theme “Type Designer of the Month,” the Lawson Archive will post a non–Printer’s Almanac article or two each month relating to whomever the type designer of the month is. The entire month of March is dedicated to Frederic W. Goudy. Here, from the February 1965 issue of The Inland [...]

March 9

ASL archivist — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:00:04 +0000

A slyly inserted item appeared in the New York Tribune under this date in 1868, concerning its rival, the World: “On Wednesday night the compositors of the World quarrelled over a ‘fat take,’ and during the row accidentally pied a ‘saving galley,’ containing the following words: —146 Grants, 122 drunken louts, 40 Greeleys, 6,000 Tribunes, [...]

March 8

ASL archivist — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:00:29 +0000

Born on this day in 1865 in Bloomington, Illinois, Frederic W. Goudy lived to be the best known American printer of his times. He achieved international renown as a letterer, a type designer, and a typographer. He was also the operator of a most distinguished private press, the Village Press. Fred Goudy came late to his [...]