I am wondering if this masterplate type was originated from metal type. I have only seen this specimen in the Cronite Master Styles Catalogue.

Also, it is called Masonic Text and Shaded Masonic Text in Cronite catalogue but not sure if there exist a different names...

Curious who designed the typeface. 

 

Here is a good article on social stationery printing, and Cronite in particular. While some of their faces were direct translations of traditional printing types, there evidently are hundreds of Cronite typefaces that do not have an origin in letterpress (metal or wood) type, and this seems to be one of them.

Do you know the year (or decade) of your samples?

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for the link. I will take a look at the article. 

As for year of the sample, I have no idea... 

I also saw a flickr album scan of an earlier undated version of Cronite catalogue. The sample also presented on it.

Cronite catalogue

I assumed it was an earlier version since I bought mine directly from Cronite 2 or 3 years ago and it has a couple more pages and styles that are not shown in the flickr version. However, my version is also undated...