Extinct Typefaces

Can typefaces become extinct, like dinosaurs? Not quite, but they can become hard to find. Computers offer fonts galore. But one of the delights of being a letterpress printer is the ability to use fonts that are available only in metal or wood. Personally I love using typefaces you can’t find in font software or on the Internet. That way nobody will pick up my letterpress printing and say, “Did you do this on your computer?” Ouch! Not the best thing to say to someone who’s spent hours setting slivers of metal type by hand.

Here are a few of my favorite extinct typefaces. These are creations of the 19th century, though some more modern faces have become extinct, too.

Scribner, illustrated above and at the top of this page, can best be described as eccentric. The wiggly, curlicued letters, designed by the Central Type Foundry of St. Louis in 1883, seem to wander all over the place. Below is a piece we printed that takes advantage of this tendency.

The “Attitudes” piece above is printed in Grolier, an elegant MacKellar, Smiths, and Jordan script from 1887 designed by Herman Ihlenberg. This lovely face is hard to find, sadly. My husband Bob and I have metal fonts of it in 12, 18, and 24 point. Its fragile kerns have held up over time thanks to careful storage and babying. The design is timeless, as beautiful in the 21st century as when it was created. Below is a valentine that shows off some of Grolier’s gorgeous capital letters.

Vertical Writing is another favorite of mine that you don’t find available very often. Joseph W. Phinney patented it 1898 for the Boston branch of American Type Founders. Designed to look like informal 19th century handwriting, its letters appear to be fully connected and widely spaced. It’s surprisingly legible, and quite charming in an old-fashioned way.

If you’re sad because you don’t have “extinct typefaces” at your disposal, there’s a way to remedy that. Some of the older fonts are being recast and are available again.

One of my favorites is Freak, recently produced by Sky Shipley of Skyline Type Foundry http://skylinetype.com. This wildly eccentric 1889 gem is pictured below.

Yes, fonts are fun, and especially if you’re using one that very few people commonly see. Using extinct typefaces is a big perk of letterpress printing. It’s great to be able to share them with the world!

River Rat Printers

My husband and I have spent most of our lives along the Mississippi River, appreciating both old time letterpress printing and the romance of the steamboat era. We began in La Crosse, Wisconsin, moved downriver to Lynxville, Wisconsin, then to St. Louis, Missouri. We’ve learned that our twin interests are more linked than you might imagine: newspaper printing was the mass media of the 19th century, and riverboats a major form of transportation. The Mississippi was like a super highway in those days, and printers depended on it to deliver presses, type, and paper, and distribute news up and down the river.



As printers interested in history, we’ve done quite a few pieces relating to riverboats. Our first was “A Little Book of Steamboat Puns”, a small booklet of atrocious river puns we made up ourselves. Though the puns were bad, the booklet was nice. We gave a copy to the late John Hartford, musician and river lover, at one of his performances. Years later we met him again, and he actually remembered our booklet. Maybe it was because the puns were so awful.



While in St. Louis we became volunteers at the Golden Eagle River Museum, and got to use our riverboat cuts some more. We printed programs, name badges, and bookmarks for the group.




We also added to our riverboat cut collection through the generosity of Golden Eagle members. Irv Braun had worked for transportation printer Con Curran, and saved many railroad and riverboat cuts from oblivion when the company switched from letterpress to offset. And James Swift, known to everybody as Jimmy, was a writer and historian for the Waterways Journal, a St. Louis based river magazine. Jimmy bequeathed his collection of river cuts to us. Some of our cuts from Irv and Jimmy are shown below.



While in St. Louis, we actually had the opportunity to print on a steamboat. The Bibliographical Society of America hosted a Mississippi River cruise at its 2004 meeting. Bob and I hauled a Baltimorean table top press, paper, and supplies over uneven riverfront cobblestones and onto the boat, where we were offered a small, wobbly table to set up. We wondered if any of the attendees from major libraries and rare book rooms would want to bother printing our little bookmark. To our surprise, we had a long line. People were thrilled to have the opportunity to print something themselves.



Years later we once again find ourselves printing along the Mississippi River, this time back in our hometown of La Crosse. We’ve come full circle, and we wonder what links between letterpress printing and the river we’ll discover this time around!

Type Lust: It's A Good Thing!

How many fonts of type are enough? 200? 500? 1000? And how many cuts, borders, and ornaments does a person need? For letterpress printers there’s always another typeface, border, or cut just around the corner. It’s truly an addiction, and pretty much incurable. But there’s a lot of fun and camaraderie along the way.

My husband Bob and I enjoyed that camaraderie this past weekend at the Great Northern Printers’ Fair in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This three day affair offers both new and experienced printers the opportunity to actually use any of the machines housed at Printers’ Hall. If you’re new you can ask for coaching on a machine, and you’ll get a printer who’s happy to walk you through the process.

On Friday afternoon Bob and I tried out the Reliance hand press, a newly renovated addition to the Printers’ Hall collection. With our older, worn wood type, inexperience with a hand press, and some problems with the alignment of the platen and bed of the press, we had difficulty getting a good impression. Probably with a little more time we could have gotten it right. But we had a great time anyway, and learned something about printing on hand presses in the process. No point in hanging back, you’ve got to jump in and get your hands dirty!


Below are some of the projects that were going on in Printers’ Hall at the Great Northern. All kinds of presses were in action, including the giant Babcock newspaper press. Printers young and old tried their hand at using the various machines.





The Saturday swap meet was certainly a highlight of the weekend. Eager buyers checked out the rectangle of tables early, looking for treasure. It was a typographical feeding frenzy, true type lust gone wild. What was out there? Would that long sought after typeface, border, or cut be on somebody’s sale table?



After the first rush the group settled in, making the circuit over and over, buying, selling, talking. As exotic wood type fonts and old specimen books sold, interest in rusty galleys and guess-what-it-is press parts picked up. There was plenty of time to chat, exchange ideas and printing samples, and get to know the other people there.



Personally, we had a great time! We met a lot of talented young printers just starting out, and caught up with some of our long-time printing friends at the same time. United in our love for the same fascinating, inky process, time truly flew by. Will we be back next year? You’d better believe it!

The Perfect Print Shop

What letterpress printer doesn’t dream about the perfect print shop? I know my father Gary Hantke did. No matter how many fonts of type or ornaments or borders are in any print shop, there’s always that one illusive item that would make it absolutely perfect.

But by the end of the 1980’s, my father had assembled a pretty amazing print shop, full of wonderful type, cuts, or other printing paraphernalia. Decades of hard work and patient sorting had given him literally tons of options for printing.

Unfortunately in the last two years of his life Dad was too ill to print. His declining health wouldn’t allow him to stand and set type, much less run the printing press. He tried to content himself with immersion in one of his other hobbies, stamps. But more than once Dad told me how much he wished he could print.

After my father’s passing in 1990, my husband and I printed a flyer to be given away to those attending the memorial service. A good printer friend, Rich Hopkins of Hill and Dale Press, produced a booklet of his memories of my father that was distributed throughout our APA printing hobbyist group.




As the months wore on after his death, I wonder how Dad was doing. I missed him terribly. Was he happy? Was he still separated from the printing hobby he loved so much?

Then one night I had a dream. In it I saw my father in a huge, beautiful print shop. He was designing printed pieces, happily collaborating with printing friends who had passed on before him ― Emerson Duerr, Jim Eckman, Norman Forgue, and others.

The unique thing about this print shop in the dream was that it was absolutely unlimited. No type, cut, ornament, or border was lacking. Anytime a printer needed anything, all he or she had to do was think of the item and it would manifest, ready for use. All the setting and press work was still done by hand. That’s the fun of the hobby, after all. But anything a printer could imagine using ― like ornaments from the Bruce Foundry, or fanciful borders from MacKellar, Smiths, and Jordan ― was available instantly through thought.

What a print shop! It made me so happy to think about Dad working there, enjoying the company of his dearest friends.

This printing blog was started a year ago, and it’s been a joy to produce. With a long-distance move of the print shop in my husband’s and my near future however (see April 27th blog), I’ll be taking a break until the move is complete, possibly some time in June. By then I’m sure there’ll be lots more to share.

I’ll close for now with the printed piece my father always kept posted over his Chandler and Price press. Since the long s characters make it hard to read, here’s the text: “I have been obliged by the sheer Weight of Fatigue to leave my Post, & repair to my Dwelling-house, until I have recovered my usual Composure. All Patrons will find me of a cheerful Demeanor, and in good Readiness for Business or for Consultation upon my Return on the Morrow.”

Letterpress for Mother's Day

Though not a printer herself, my mother Ruth was always a big supporter of letterpress. She had an eye for good design, too. Often my father Gary Hantke would have her proofread and take a look at a piece he was about to print. Mom would catch the typos and suggest a bit of white space here or there.

Mom became good friends with several of the printer’s wives, and enjoyed attending Dad’s annual APA printing conventions. Often she managed to charm free cuts, paper, or ink from vendors at the swap meets. Mom and Dad even took a month long trip to Europe with one of the couples from APA.


She was also a wonderful mother. My sister and I never lacked for attention. She sewed our Halloween costumes, Easter and Christmas dresses, and spring and fall wardrobes. She loved to garden and play the piano, and was an excellent cook whose homemade bread, coffeecakes and pizza were legend.

In 1966 Dad printed a lovely poetry booklet for Mother’s Day and gave it to her. All that setting and design work, and he just printed one copy ― for her. I found it with some of her papers after she died.



After my mother’s death in 2008, my husband and I printed a memorial piece in her honor. The type was Murray Hill, her favorite typeface, and the quote was surrounded by a border of flowers and musical notes.



I miss you, Mom! Thank you for all you taught me and gave me. And Happy Mother’s Day. Love, Carole

Moving A Print Shop -- Oh, No!

Have you ever done something you hope you’ll never have to do again? Moving a print shop is like that. As my husband and I plan the cross-country move of our print shop from Missouri to Wisconsin, we are dreading it. Transporting a print shop is not for the faint of heart. It takes a sturdy soul to haul tons of metal type and cast iron machinery across the country.

Nineteen years ago my husband and I moved my father’s print shop from Wisconsin to St. Louis. Dad’s basement print shop was average in size, but jam-packed. Every nook and cranny held more boxes of stuff, especially type from the Duluth print shop Dad had bought out a decade ago. We hauled goodies out of that print shop until we were ready to drop.

It took two U-Haul trucks, both grossly overloaded, to handle all the type, machinery, paper, cuts, leads and slugs, and miscellaneous. On one of the runs we hit a torrential rainstorm, worrisome since the truck had been unevenly loaded and one side rode five inches below the other! Thankfully we made it safely, and to our great relief some printing friends showed up to help us unload the truck.


Getting the print shop installed in our basement took several weeks. The garage became our staging area. Each type case had to be hauled downstairs individually. The presses and cutter had been taken apart to make them easier to move, but were still unbelievable heavy. I remember dragging Chandler and Price press pieces down the basement steps. It was like hefting brontosaurus bones!

Gradually our St. Louis print shop assumed its current shape. But my husband and I never forgot the ordeal of moving. Over the past nineteen years, we’ve made conscious efforts to reduce the tonnage of the shop. At just about every printers’ gathering we’ve pushed out huge quantities of heavy types like Cheltenham Bold and Franklin Gothic, peddling them for little fonts of old display faces. We’ve sold paper piled high on hand trucks, excess leads, slugs and galleys, and small machinery. We’ve recycled junk type to our local area type founders. The 1100+ fonts we brought to St. Louis now number about 900. Still, there’s more than a ton of print shop to move. Good grief!

Now piles of type cases are stacking up in our garage as we prepare for the big move. Since we’re now nineteen years older, we’ll be hiring help. No sense throwing your back out and hardly being able to walk! But we’ll be doing some of the work ourselves, too. And the ever-useful garage is acting as our staging area again.

We are excited about our new Wisconsin printery, but will be ever so relieved once the heavy stuff has been hauled in and we’re settled again. Moving a print shop ― it’s certainly not for wimps!

Favorite Wood Type Faces

It’s hard to pick a favorite wood type because it’s all so fascinating! Most wood type is old, a relic of a time when casting large sizes of metal type was difficult to achieve without bubbles or other imperfections in the molten lead. To add to the challenge, large metal type was heavy and hard to manipulate in forms. Specialized manufacturers of wood type sprang up and did a booming business throughout the 19th and early 20th century.

One of my favorite wood types, Gothic Flourish, is shown below. It was manufactured by Hamilton Wood Type circa 1892. I love the odd squiggly letters with long tails that extend into each other.


Another favorite is the Tuscan Antique that makes up the words “Amazing Hours” shown on the poster below. There were many varieties of Tuscan manufactured in wood ― this one dates back to 1859.



Most wood type manufacturers stamped their name into the capital A’s of a font. Here’s an example from Cooley of New York.


I love wood ornaments, too, though they’re pretty hard to find. The random corners and decorative ornaments shown below all came to us from S.G. Adams, an old St. Louis printing firm. Unfortunately, we don’t always have four corners, which means we either need to make multiple impressions or improvise.


It’s fun to collect certain characters in wood. The piece below shows part of our collection of wood ampersands. Of all the characters, I think the ampersand is my favorite, maybe because it’s so swashy and carefree. That and the Q, which seem to be a different design in virtually each font of type made.


Sometimes you’ll find a piece of wood type with a letter on both sides. Usually you can tell which side was hand carved. If the printer ran out of a letter, he’d whittle the needed character on the back of another piece of wood type, and no one would be the wiser once the job was printed.


Wood type is a natural for printing posters. Below are some examples of posters printed by us and by members of our national APA printing group:




Wood type is so tactile, so beautiful in its own way. To me the carefully carved designs on old oiled wood are an art form in themselves. Happily, wood type is now being manufactured in the 21st century and used in letterpress design. But I still treasure the delightful old stuff in our basement. How I wish it could talk and share a little of the history of where it’s been!