Following on from last month’s Optima Medium, for March we bring you the Italic in 12 point. One more variant is coming next month and after that some more new antique revival faces from the Charlie Broad Collection are in the pipeline. A few new Borders are in the works too. Dinosaurs will live and die again before we ever run out of stuff to cast for you!
And not to neglect the decorative side, here’s something new, the tidy little Border No. F-528. It’s a two-element design (Corner plus Runner, or Stretcher) which we have cast individually on em-body, but for your convenience in composition we also ganged three Runners on one body 12 x 36 points. That’s a great option to have in typefounding but it can only be done with linecaster matrices, and only on the Thompson casting machines, which we use exclusively.
Restocked: Worrell Uncial + Greek/Coptic Supplement. This has been has been a popular type face—and the Supplement too; we’ve now done six castings for a total of 221 fonts and 61 Supplements. Greek is of course a major language from the ancient world, and Coptic was essentially the Egyptian version of Greek, and I wonder what folks are using that type for? Our Dutch Auction page is steadily active, with some very rare type fonts posted and sold recently. Just added 8 new lots yesterday. Prices drop 4% every week!
Have you ever wondered about Skyline’s system for numbering Borders, such as F-528? Well here’s the story. The majority of our matrices for Borders and Ornaments are Monotype Display style, or “flat mats”. The company numbered these sequentially starting with 1 (which we have cast) and going up as far as about 1800. These we offer by the number, plain and simple. The Ludlow company also numbered their B&O designs but added a prefix of A, B, or C, and we use those designations when casting Borders from Ludlow mats. Mergenthaler Linotype likewise gave sequential numbers to their B&O, but at one point offered a whole series of ornamental elements intended to pair with Garamond, all prefixed with G. We use those designations; to the others we add the arbitrary prefix of F to distinguish them as Linotype. English Monotype had their own B&O designs, sequentially numbered, which we prefix E; then there is Intertype, whose sequential numbers we prefix with D. In Borders where there is more than just a single element, we use the number of the Runner (or first of the Runners, if there are two or more). For mats either unidentifiable or source unknown we use the letter U. Now you know the secret code.