Date: 1816 Designer:
William Caslon IV Foundry:
Caslon founder and printer Location:
London, England Current equivalent:
No direct modern equivalent exists See also:
FB Caslon's Egyptian, Johnston Sans, Adsans, Engraver's Gothic, Stephenson Blake's Grotesque
Technologies:
Wood
Metal (foundry)
Postscript
Opentype | | Famous for:
The first sans serif type. Applications:
Signage Ubiquity:
Very rarely used Category:
Sans Serif Grotesque Stress: Vertical
Serifs: Sans | | Design history:
According to Robert Bringhurst, earlier typefaces exist that do not have serifs (including a type to be embossed for the blind, by Valentin Haüy in Paris, 1786). Caslon is thought to have cut this uppercase titling face from signwriters 'block' letters around 1812, but it makes no appearance until the Caslon 1816 specimen book, in which it is erroneously categorised as an 'English Two Line Egyptian'. This is perhaps understandable when comparing the wide and heavy proportions of the Egyptians with Caslon's Sans Serif and the Grotesques, which followed on from this pattern in the 19th century. Sans Serif designs that incorporated a lowercase were thought to originate in Leipzig in the 1820s.
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