page_title: Clarendon (typeface)
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Clarendon (typeface) / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Clarendon in a Fann Street Foundry specimen book of c. 1874, showing its use for emphasis within body text.
context_page_description: Clarendon is the name of a slab-serif typeface that was released in 1845 by Thorowgood and Co. of London, a letter foundry often known as the Fann Street Foundry. The original Clarendon design is credited to Robert Besley, a partner in the foundry, and was originally engraved by punchcutter Benjamin Fox, who may also have contributed to its design. Many copies, adaptations and revivals have been released, becoming almost an entire genre of type design.
  Clarendons have a bold, solid structure, similar in letter structure to the "modern" serif typefaces popular in the nineteenth century for body text, but bolder and with less contrast in stroke weight. Clarendon designs generally have a structure with bracketed serifs, which become larger as they reach the main stroke of the letter. Mitja Miklavčič describes the basic features of Clarendon designs as: "plain and sturdy nature, strong bracketed serifs, vertical stress, large x-height, short ascenders and descenders, typeface with little contrast" and supports Nicolete Gray's description of them as a "cross between the roman [general-purpose body text type] and slab serif model".
context_section_description: Slab serif lettering and typefaces originated in Britain in the early nineteenth century, at a time of rapid development of new, bolder typefaces for posters and commercial printing. Probably the first slab-serif to appear in print was created by the foundry of Vincent Figgins, and given the name “antique”. Others rapidly appeared, using names such as “Ionic” and “Egyptian”, which had already also used as a name for sans-serifs. (At the time typeface names were often adjectives, often with little purpose to their name, although they may have been in this case reference to the “blocky”, geometric structure of ancient architecture. There was limited separation between the name of typefaces and genres; if a font proved popular it would often be pirated and reissued by other foundries under the same name.)
  Compared to Figgins' "antique", the Clarendon design uses somewhat less emphatic serifs, which are bracketed rather than solid blocks, that widen as they reach the main stroke of the letter. Besley's design was not the first font with this style by at least three years, as typefaces labelled "Ionic" had already appeared in this style (other typefaces would copy this name), but the Clarendon design was particularly popular and its name rapidly copied. Historian James Mosley suggests that an inspiration for these designs may have been the style of handlettered capitals used by copper-plate engravers.
  Besley's original Clarendon design was quite compressed, unlike most later 'Clarendons' intended for display setting, which are often quite wide. One of the original target markets for Besley's Clarendon design was to act as a bold face within body text, providing a stronger emphasis than the italic type that had been used for centuries for this purpose, and in this it matches the quite condensed body text faces of the period. (The modern system of issuing typefaces in families with a companion bold of matched design did not develop until the twentieth century.) Slab serifs had already begun to be used for bold type by the 1840s, but they were often quite lumpy in design and quite poorly matched to the body text face they were intended to complement. Mosley has written that "the Clarendon type of the Besley foundry is indeed the first type actually designed as a ‘related bold’ – that is, made to harmonize in design and align with the roman types [regular weight typefaces] it was set with...Before the launch of Clarendon type printers picked out words in slab-serifs or any other heavy type." However, because of the Clarendon design's strong reputation for quality, it was rapidly copied. Historian Nicolete Gray considered the earlier "Ionic" face from the Caslon Foundry in the same style more effective than Besley's: "[Besley's] became the normal, but it was certainly not the first…in 1842 Caslon have an upper and in 1843 a lower case with the characteristics fully developed, but of a normal width…Besley's [more compressed] Clarendon is much less pleasing, it has lost emphasis and confidence, and gains only in plausibility."
  Besley registered the typeface in 1845 under Britain's Ornamental Designs Act of 1842. The patent expired three years later, and other foundries quickly copied it. Besley was nonetheless successful in business, and became the Lord Mayor of London in 1869. Theodore De Vinne, a printer who wrote several influential textbooks on typography in the late nineteenth century, wrote that its name was a reference to the Clarendon Press in Oxford (now part of Oxford University Press), who he claimed immediately used it for dictionaries, although later authors have expressed doubt about this.
  With its growing popularity for display use, new versions often changed these proportions. By around 1874, the Fann Street Foundry (now Reed and Fox) could offer in its specimen book Clarendon designs that were condensed, "thin-faced" (light weight), extended, "distended" (extra-wide) and shaded. Revivals continued in the twentieth century, particularly in the 1950s.
  The label "Ionic", originally also used for display faces, has beco
caption: Clarendon in a Fann Street Foundry specimen book of c. 1874, showing its use for emphasis within body text.
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