So long, hot-metal men
Subtitle: the comprehensive Bird & Bull type specimen book
By: Henricus de Nova Villa [i.e. Henry Morris].
Contributors: Bird & Bull Press
Publisher: Bird & Bull Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Newtown, PA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 202
Subjects: Bird & Bull Press.; Printing -- Pennsylvania -- Newton (Bucks County) -- Specimens.; Printers' ornaments -- Pennsylvania -- Newton (Bucks County) -- Specimens; Type and type-founding -- Pennsylvania -- Newton (Bucks County) -- Catalogs.
Genres: Specimens.; Specimens; Catalogs.
Notes: T.p. printed in red and black.

Page numbering alternates irregularly between pagination and foliation.  Most pages are printed on one side only.

"For five centuries after its invention by Johann Gutenberg around 1440, metal type was an essential component of nearly all printing.  Typesetting by hand was a slow and costly process which endured for more than four of those centuries, until the first automatic typesetting machine was introduced in 1886.  The steady decline of handset metal type then began and it would take almost 100 years before it practically vanished from commercial use.  Much of what remains today is in the hands of private presses who have long since acquired a lot of the most desirable used foundry type as it became available ... Except for two poems and the letter and text on p. 96, this book has been hand-set from foundry type or Monotype in my own cases.  This Foreword and the preliminaries were set in 14-pt. English Monotype Dante, by Michael Bixler ... As can be seen in this book I bought the Trump Medieval series in many sizes and different weights, and also a large selection of ornaments and borders.  Many of the ornaments were designed by Hermann Zapf ... My Post Roman Bold is from C. E. Weber, another German foundry.  Georg Trump designed his Trump Medieval for Weber, who sold these matrices to Stempel when they closed.  There is not much from ATF in this book, but there is some Monotype material; Goudy's Californian series, and two sizes of his Hadriano Stone Cut.  Some of my types are in the way of becoming scarce artifacts.  I bought the original Caslon from Stephenson Blake in England, in 1958, and the Post Roman Bold from Weber in 1962.  The Caslon was for my first project, 'Receipts in Cookery', and the Post Roman Bold was used for 'Three Erfurt Tales'.  This book is all about metal type, which I have been using since the day I began learning to set type at the Dobbins vocational school in 1939 ... The types shown in this book represent a time when printing technology, which was still very much connected to Gutenberg, was on the threshold of a radical transformation facilitated by photography, offset lithography, computers and the electronic age."--Foreword.

"Commencing on November 2, 2005, it has taken until late October, 2006 to complete this book, which was set and printed by hand on the Vandercook, mostly in two colors."--Colophon.

MASS copy: "This is copy No. 93 of 140". Bound in quarter yellow morocco and green ribbed cloth.  Upper cover blocked in gold.  With publisher's prospectus laid in.  Enclosed in green ribbed cloth-covered slip case.
Table of contents: value: Foreword; value: Original Caslon; value: Post Roman Bold; value: Codex; value: Stempel Borders/Ornaments; value: Californian; value: Sapphire; value: Palatino Semibold; value: Carolus; value: Wood Type; value: Alt. Gothic, Franklin Gothic Cond.; value: Mortised Brass; value: Trump Mediaeval; value: Fry's Ornamented; value: Union Pearl; value: Hadriano Stone Cut; value: Sachsenwald; value: Tuscan Ornate, Craw Clarendon, Standard Bold Condensed; value: Thorne Shaded; value: Fournier; value: Champleve; value: Century Expanded, Franklin Gothic, Boxhead Gothic.