Looking for a font consistent with old Bible typefaces

[Dan B.]

Looks like an interesting book, Randy.

[kentlew]

Forgive me for being too literal, but your "book" looks more like a magazine -- no bulk; certainly not a big book.

[Yaronimus-Maximus]

Kentlew - exacly what i was thinking.
if it's a kind of a representation of the "book of books", it needs to be far more thick, and also the "binding".

[eliason]

Maybe a horizontal line below could serve as both a "binding" for the implied book and an underscore for the word?

[Dan B.]

@Kent & Yaronimus
I understand what you mean. In my thinking, it does not look like the entire book, but only the top of it. In this sense, you're not seeing the cover (and the binding), but only the outline of the pages where the book is opened. The cut letters beneath that outline are the "body" of the book.

@Craig
Will work on your suggestion, but I'm not sure I understand the final part of your comment. Would you please explain?

[eliason]

I just mean something like this.

[Dan B.]

A picture is worth more than a thousand words, I guess :-) But I don't think this improves it.

[quadibloc]

As William Berkson noted, there are two kinds of Bible typefaces. Recently, I've been looking for information on the type used to achieve legibility for the small printing required to allow so large a Book to be published in an affordable single volume.

I have now found one deserving of a new post, and not wishing to double-post, I've gone to this old thread...

It turns out that the face Cushing Old Style, here shown from the ATF specimen for 1900,

also has the descending J which led me to link the Mediaeval-Egyptienne of the Bauer type foundry with the Petit Mediaeval Clarendon used in the Cambridge Cameo Bible and other Bibles from them.

That face was also 25J from Lanston Monotype

and it originated at the Central Type Foundry shortly before it joined ATF.

[donshottype]

Cushing Old Style looks legible to me. Presumably this is the digital version? http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/itc/cushing/
don

[quadibloc]

Thank you. Actually, I was aware of this, although I hadn't gone out to take a look at the digital version yet, because my searches led me to this thread:

https://typography.guru/forums/topic/111985-forwarding

among other results.

[donshottype]

I find it difficult to decide what is what for the old Cushings and the digital ITC Cushing. Here is what Adobe has to say about ITC Cushing:
---start quote---
In 1897, J. Stearns Cushing designed a typeface called Cushing No. 2 for American Type Founders. Frederic W. Goudy added the italic in 1904, and ATF released a variety of other loosely related faces bearing the Cushing name. International Typeface Corporation licensed the typefaces from ATF, and designer Vincent Pacella redrew the typefaces into a consistent family. ITC Cushing, released in 1982, has a fairly large x-height and linear serifs that are a revision of the original sloping serifs. It has four weights plus matching italics.
---end quote---
ITC Cushing is low contrast. I wonder if the old Cushing Monotone was even lower contrast?
Don

[quadibloc]

ITC Cushing is low contrast. I wonder if the old Cushing Monotone was even lower contrast?

Well, that question is not difficult to answer, given that the relevant specimen books are available on the Web:

It is also low contrast, but not no contrast. Unlike Lining Cushing No. 2:

What struck me as odd is that ITC Cushing is more condensed than Cushing Old Style, as shown above. However, the version shown in the 1912 ATF specimen book is about the same - but that may not mean the face was changed, just that I'm looking at larger point sizes, which are easier to use as masters:

This is Cushing Oldstyle No. 2, in the 42 point size.

[donshottype]

Thanks for the further info. I can definitely see the difference.
As for point sizes, I do know that the ATF of that era was a pioneer in adjusting font contours so that at small point sizes the letters had less contrast and perhaps were wider. ATF did not merely scale the font, unlike much of the first generation of digital fonts, which as a result of optical scaling, are very poor for book size use. I recall reading some articles on this, but I can't recall where.
Don

[quadibloc]

Interesting.

I remember reading in various general references on the history of type that ATF did make faces wider and bolder in smaller sizes.

I have personally deduced, from looking at the ATF specimen book, and from information in the classic book Typographic Printing-Surfaces (Legros) that ATF would have had to make tiny adjustment to the width of letters in each point size in any case, as they made all their types in integral multiples of 1/4 point in width in order to facilitate justification.

However, this did not lead me to conclude that ATF was a pioneer in making these adjustments. Linn Boyd Benton pioneered in using the pantograph, and made those adjustments from the beginning in his use of the pantograph. But, as another Typophile thread noted in a quotation from a French-language reference, smaller=wider (and, thus, I presume also bolder) was true during the pre-pantograph era of actually cutting punches as well.

[hrant]

Indeed, saying "the ATF of that era was a pioneer in adjusting font contours" is misleading because before the ATF's pantograph all sizes were cut individually anyway! ATF did implement something called "cutting slips" that "algorithmically" optimized the pantographic cutting from the large masters in order to optimize for size, but eventually largely stopped bothering with size-specific optimization, to cut costs.

hhp

[donshottype]

Thanks hrant for the "cutting slips" reference. This jogs my memory on how ATF did size-specific optimization.
Don

[quadibloc]

There is an excellent article on this face on Luc Devroye's site here.

Although the article doesn't mention that the face came from the Central Type Foundry before ATF, it did note that in addition to Lanston Monotype 25J, there was a copy by the Keystone Type Foundry called Richelieu,

and Linotype's version was called Title No. 1 - while some old Bibles were done on Lanston Monotype machines, as I was able to tell by the typefaces used for the footnotes, Linotype is, of course, the most popular choice for long stretches of text.