Type Tuesday's Birthday Tribute to Stanley Morison

Today marks the birthday of British typographer and printing historian Stanley Morison, born in the London suburb of Wanstead on May 6, 1889. Morison is most well-known as the designer of the very font you are reading now, Times New Roman. 

Morison had acted as a typographic consultant to the Monotype Corporation for 44 years, creating revivals of historic types such as Baskerville, Blado and Bembo. It was Morison's critique of London's The Times poor print that propelled him to typeface fame when the paper commissioned him to create a new font for their paper. With the help of graphic artist Victor Lardent, Morison produced Times New Roman for The Times in 1932, and it was offered by the Monotype Corporation in 1933.

Morison is also known for his books on the history of fine typography including an introduction to The Typographic Book published in 1963. The Typographic Book is a study of fine typography from 1450 to 1935, and of course, includes mention of Morison and his Times New Roman. 

Jaime Henderson,
Archivist

Manuscript Monday--Manifiesto a la Republica Mejicana

Acompaño a V. E. un ejemplar del manifiesto que hace a la Republica Mejicana mi antecesor el finado Sr. Gefe politico y Comandante general de este territorio D. Jose Figueroa, Vault MS 161, California Historical Society.

This broadside, signed and rubricated by Nicolás Gutiérrez (governor of Alta California) and Francisco del Castillo Negrete, Secretario, accompanied and presented the first book-length work printed in California, José Figueroa’s Manifiesto a la Republica Mejicana (Monterrey: Impenta del C. Agustin V. Zamorano, 1835). This recently cataloged copy belonged to the great bookman George L. Harding, founder of the California Historical Society’s Kemble Collection on Western Printing and Publishing.

Manifiesto a la Republica Mejicana que hace el general de brigada Jose Figueroa, comandante general y gefe politico de la Alta California, sobre su conducts y la de los Señores D. Jose Maria de Hijar y D. Jose Maria Padres, como directores de colonizacion en 1834 y 1835, Vault 979.403 F469m, Califonria Historical Society.

In the Manifiesto, Figueroa and other liberal Californios invoked the lawful rights of emancipated Indians to former mission lands in order to bolster their position, as Californios, against newly arrived settlers from Mexico. (In reality, most ranchos were granted to Californio men.) According to historian Lisbeth Haas in her fascinating book, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), the Manifiesto was widely read in Mexican California and “expressed, for the first time, a collective Californio identity.”

The Manifiesto is currently on exhibit in the CHS gallery as part of the show Juana Briones y su California: Pionera, Fundadora, Curandera.

Marie Silva
Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian

msilva@calhist.org

Type Tuesday - Borders from the Franklin Type Foundry

Cincinnati, Ohio's Franklin Type Foundry offers its customer an exotic way to ornament advertisements and other printed materials with Chinese and Egyptian borders. These intricately designed borders depict Chinese dragons, bamboo and stilt walkers or Egyptian pyramids, camels and palm fronds. From Franklin Type Foundry's 1892 type specimen catalog.

Jaime Henderson,
Archivist

Manuscript Monday—Muybridge Letter

Eadweard Muybridge letter: San Francisco, to the directors of the Mercantile Library, 1868 May 14, Vault MS 126, California Historical Society

Eadweard Muybridge wrote this letter to the directors of the Mercantile Library Association on May 14, 1868, requesting the board’s opinion of a few accompanying prints of the Yosemite Valley and expressing his interest in having them framed and hung in the library's new building. The ingratiating tone of the communication—"some of the members of your board I know to possess considerable discrimination and a very refined taste in artistic matters," "should this be concurred in by the rest of the board I shall be highly flattered,” etc.—contrasts weirdly with the extravagant self-praise of the prospectus on which the letter is written—"For artistic effect, and careful manipulation, they [Muybridge’s views of Yosemite] are pronounced by all the best landscape painters and photographers in the city to be the most exquisite photographic views ever produced on this coast, and are marvelous examples of the perfection to which photography can attain in the delineation of sublime and beautiful scenery, as exemplified in our wonderful valley."

Marie Silva

Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian

msilva@calhist.org

Type Tuesday - Serif Gothic

Type designers Herb Lubalin and Tony DiSpigna's 1972 contribution to the International Typeface Corporation's catalog of types. 

Jaime Henderson

Archivist

Manuscript Monday--John Sutter letter to Peter Lassen

Another recently cataloged gem from the CHS manuscripts collection is this 1844 letter, from John Sutter to blacksmith Peter Lassen. (Lassen is best known for promoting the treacherous Lassen Cutoff, or “Death Route,” to the California gold fields.)

John Sutter letter to Peter Lassen, 1844 September 14, Peter Lassen miscellany, Vault MS 93, California Historical Society.

Sutter requests that Lassen send him trappers, beaver traps, and knives (by canoe), and advises him on the status of his petition for his Tehama County Rancho, blaming the delays on Manuel Jimeno, “the enemy of all new citizens.” He also reports on current events, casually discussing the annexation of Texas; the arrival of a Mexican vessel “loaded with arms” in Monterey; and a visit in New Helvetia from the chiefs of the Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Nez Perce peoples and their families. Sutter writes: “I wish now to see very soon the Companies from the U.S. and I believe one more is coming from the Columbia River, at least Doctor White wrote to me that he is coming.” Major historical events and movements—the fur trade, land struggles, the Mexican War, overland emigration—are captured and brought to life in this fragile document. Reading it, one feels the tectonic shifts of the time, preparing for the great earthquake to come. 

Marie Silva

Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian

msilva@calhist.org

Type Tuesday - Modi-Film

Modi-Film was offered by San Francisco-based Timely Typography. The following sheets were tucked into a Timely Typography specimen book that was undated but looks to be from the mid to late 1960s. No description of Modi-Film or instructions for its use accompanied the material, but it seems it was Timely Typography's answer to Letraset, a London based company that offered sheets of type that could be transferred onto other materials through a wet or dry process. 

The much simpler dry process, which involved rubbing a letters from a sheet of plastic onto the desired surface, made Letraset a household hit - even a children's game, Action Transfers, was introduced by the company. Of course such a popular and simplified printing process would create other dry transfer products, such as Timely Typography's Modi-Film. 

If you have any information about Modi-Film, feel free to email me!

Jaime Henderson,
Archivist
jhenderson@calhist.org

Manuscript Monday--A San Francisco salon

E. L. Treat watercolor sketch, Bertha Stringer Lee guest book, Vault MS 41, California Historical Society.

This lovely watercolor sketch by the artist E. L. Treat is part of the California Historical Society’s recently cataloged Bertha Stringer Lee guest book. A native San Franciscan and student of William Keith, Lee was a California landscape painter who exhibited widely in the Bay Area. She was also a brilliant socialite, as her guest book, kept between the years 1912 and 1934, makes clear. Cards were dropped, and original sketches, poems, and songs contributed by, an astonishing array of celebrities, artists, writers, and musicians, including Winston Churchill, Arthur Cahill, Will Sparks, Charmian London, Theodore Wores, and William Keith. Lee’s guest book provides a remarkable view into the artistic milieu of San Francisco before the Second World War. 

Marie Silva

Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian

msilva@calhist.org

Type Tuesday - Moise-Klinkner Company

The Moise-Klinkner Company of San Francisco, "mastercrafters of marking devices," provided customers with a wide variety of trinkets and tools to help identify anything from pencil sharpeners to cattle. The following are samples from their 1923 catalog, which marked the company's 50 year anniversary.  

Jaime Henderson,

Archivist

jhenderson@calhist.org

Type Tuesday - Wallace, Kibbee & Son

Mid-century advertising typography from local printers Wallace Kibbee & Son

Jaime Henderson,
Archivist