Here it is, a favorite antique face from matrices that were lost in our vault for 17 years! (See the January news release for that story.) This is an 18 point face, but cast on a 24pt body. Why? Because it fooled me. The mats were tagged 18 but a proof casting of the cap H in that size left almost no shoulder for descenders. I smugly declared that it was in fact 24 point, and we went into production on that size body. But when we got to the first lowercase character, it dawned on me that this is one of those 19th century faces with a double line standard: the baseline for lowercase is higher that that of caps. At the higher line the lowercase has adequate room for descenders. So this casting of Crayonette 18/24 was completed and you get 6 points of free leading between lines.
Copper & Brass! Copper & Brass! We got ’em at last! Sparkling new-manufacture thin spaces put up in convenient 3½ ounce packets. Thins 14 through 36 point are available now and we’re working on more sizes. Find these on the Quads & Spacing page of our web site.
Our Model 5 is, so far as I know, the only remaining operational Linotype machine in the state of Arizona. We extracted it some years ago in pieces and with considerable difficulty from the basement of a historic building in downtown Flagstaff. Getting it properly reassembled and functional was quite a challenge. It is now used to produce the text lines in Copperplate Gothic Heavy Condensed for our specimen cards and product labels, and to cast the decorative dashes and other ornamental material in some of our Collections. (And sometimes the text in printing-for-fun projects.) Her name is Buttercup. Although in service again, she’s nevertheless prone to all kinds of minor irregularities that we must diagnose and outsmart as they occur. Always braced for anything! Well, last month she jammed up solid partway into a cycle. We tried everything. With that sinking feeling of all hope slowly draining away, I slumped down in the operator’s chair. Meanwhile, peering into the depths of the great array of cams on the back side of the machine, our lantern-jawed, steely-eyed Chief Casterman Jared cried out, “There’s a book down in there!” Huh?? I brought a light and looked. Sure enough, way down in the cams, barely visible and definitely not reachable, I saw the spine of a paperbound book. Don’t know how he did it, but Jared succeeded in fishing it out (all chewed up), and that cured the jam. Who’d a thunk it?
