The heyday of monogram initials on one’s stationery and other personal items coincided with the Art Deco and Big Band era—the 1930s. American Type Founders offered a number of designs and many of these were copied by other foundries. We are fortunate to have bootleg matrices for Elite Monogram Initials in 36 and 48 point, and have cast them for your printing pleasure. The Elites appeared in ATF’s slim 1934 catalog and for the last time in the 1941 book, their final hardbound specimen.
Another project undertaken last month was a face called Reverse Extended. As shown in McGrew, this white-on-black bannerlike design was created in Ludlow-style matrices, by a secondary supplier, for use on that linecasting machine. Our Thompson typecasters have the marvelous versatility of being able to cast individual foundry types from most any kind of matrix: Monotype cellular, display, or giant; English Montype; Linotype or Intertype; Ludlow; and standard foundry-style. While we have successfully cast other faces and borders from our Ludlow mat library, this one ultimately proved not possible due to the technical matters inherent in a contiguous image from one character to the next. We gave it our best shot.
We continue to evaluate New Old Stock ATF type and add to the inventory, now consisting of over 1,400 line items. The PDF dated October 1 can be found in the main menu of the Skyline site. Still got about 5,000 lbs yet to do.
Restocks: Borders No. 88 (36pt), 474, 643, 875, F-1202, F-1223, G-23.
Earlier this year we experienced intermittent problems with customers not receiving invoices sent out from the Skyline site. Our local specialist was tasked with investigating this, and found that substantial changes elsewhere in the internet had negatively impacted our site’s functionality. Major upgrades were done and all is working smoothly now.
Happy Birthday on the 23rd of this month to John S. Thompson, the 1907 inventor of our casting machines. Unlike him, they are still working for a living 117 years hence.