Serif from an early 20th c. train time table

[Ákos Polgárdi]

Dear All,

Can you please help me with identifying the serif type(s) in this 1908 train time table? It was printed in Budapest by a local printing company (Pesti Könyvnyomda Rt.) who also had their own type foundry, but my guess is that they were working mostly from German matrices. Variants of the same design with minor differences are to be found all over Hungarian books, newspapers etc. from the preceding and following decades, so it must have been a fairly widely used typeface.

Thanks,
Ákos

[Riccardo Sartori]

It is a typeface in the very popular Scotch genre, such as Century. To pinpoint exactly which metal version is beyond my expertise.

A similar, if a bit condensed, relatively recent historical revival is TT Marxiana.

[Ákos Polgárdi]

Thanks, Riccardo! Century Expanded was as close as I got myself, but there are some quite crazy details in both roman and italic that I couldn't find in any Century iteration. Thanks anyway!

[Riccardo Sartori]

31 minutes ago, Ákos Polgárdi said:

there are some quite crazy details

Which ones in particular you noticed?

[Ákos Polgárdi]

For instance the vertical tail of the lowercase t in the roman.

[Ralf Herrmann]

German foundries all had a design like this under generic names like “Antiqua” which just means roman typeface. But I am also not an expert for that era and can say who sold which matrices to whom. I had a quick look at the Schelter & Giesecke book and Anker Schulantiqua with italics seems to be a pretty good match. It certainly has that t. What seems to be unusual is the rather short tail of the a. Most German fonts in that style seem to have a high tail on the a. 

[Ákos Polgárdi]

Thanks a lot Ralf, I wasn't aware of Schulantiqua at all! From the name I would guess that this might be a Century Schoolbook-inspired design. In any case, it seems a perfect match, so thanks again – we've been working on a very loose revival from this sample for the last 10 months, and it's always nice to know the origin 🙂

[Ákos Polgárdi]

Just one more thing, Ralf: can you please let me know what year your S&G specimen book is? I found the earliest Schulantiqua specimen in T. Goebel's Die graphischen Künste der Gegenwart so it's probably a couple of years earlier than that. Thanks!

[Ralf Herrmann]

I looked in the 1912 “Hauptprobe”

https://pavillon-presse.de/archiv/sammlung/schrift-und-typografie/c1/hauptprobe-jg-schelter-giesecke-r1468/

[Ákos Polgárdi]

Thanks again, Ralf!

[Riccardo Sartori]

On 9/11/2022 at 9:09 AM, Ralf Herrmann said:

the 1912 “Hauptprobe”

Also available online.