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and in stock.   Home.
1 Oct. 2009
More good news; we have just cast & fonted ATF's 24pt. C I V I L I T E. This is the first time we have put up fonts of Civilite, and it's not been available for a long, long time. This size has 22 auxilliary characters; the alternate e that looks like a backwards 3 is missing from the font of matrices. If this casting of the 24pt. sells, we plan to cast the 18pt as well. In Nov., we will have a few small figure fonts available for those who need more. The scheme is 5A/15a/7-1. We tried to keep the font small and affordable, but with a larger lower-case for text use. Please order from the Types in Stock" page via direct email or via the the Art Dept's ebay store. (see
Types in Stock)

5 Sept., 2009
12pt. Garamond Italic is in stock for the very first time. We have one large font and 5 small fonts available, so don't wait. They won't last.
   We don't cast italic types as a rule, but we had a book-font order for the Roman, and the customer also wanted the italic. This is the only circumstance in which we will cast italic types. The labor involved in the very numerous knife changes for the kerning characters, is about 5 times that of the Roman, in most faces. Trouble is, we can't very well charge 5 times as much. The only way italic casting approaches economic sense, is when hundreds of fonts are cast at the same time. A large company like ATF could afford to do this, but we can't. And now that our metal alloy has reached $5.00+ per pound, we can no longer afford to maintain much in the way of shelf stock. This is the present reality. So when we cast something special, don't wait. (see
Types in Stock)

For a period of six months, we were been busy doing some historic casting for the Houghton Library at Harvard University. In Nov. 2008, we cast 4pp font of our B-42 Blackletter for Hope Mayo, the curator of the Philip Hofer Printing and Graphic Arts Collection in the Houghton Library. This is the first font we have placed with an institution that owns a complete copy of the 42 line Bible, and in a US library, at that
(in 2004, we sold an 8pp font to Keio Univ., Tokyo, owner of  the single vol. Doheny Copy). We hand delivered this font to Harvard -in Cambridge traffic- and were rewarded with two glorious hours with the first volume of Gutenberg's magnum opus, in the Early Printed Books reading room in the Houghton Lib. of Rare Books. "Oh my eyes!" We also did some private casting for them which will be published later on.  

BOOK-FONTS: We have also been busy casting 300-Line book-fonts for printers and college presses. A surprising number of printers of all levels of expertise have decided that they want to hand-set books, and have realized -at times- the ecomonics of buying Barth foundry-cast types. If a printer sets out to print a book of 120pp, then 12 pages can be set, printed and distributed ten times with a run of say, 150 copies. That equals 1,500 impressions, which barely impacts our foundry type even under a 5x loupe. The points and dots of the i's will still print just as strong on page one as on pg. 120. If not abused, this should be the case for another 10 or 20 like books. The printer has insured their future. They are not dependant on others for making polymer plates or setting Monotype comp., and their cost is far less, especially in book 2, 3 and 4. As easy as plates and Mono composition is, you can't distribute and reset them. Based on the number of small bookfons we have sold over the past 15 years, hand-set letterpress books will be around for some time to come. You can buy a 300-Line* font for about $2,850.00 - $3,250, plus a nominal amount for small caps. (*300 six-inch foundry lines, most characters have a one-line minimum. The typical bookfont contains, in terms of Lines, 4A/18a/1/1. In terms of actual proportion, it works out to about 1/10 or 1/12 for the first 300 Lines, with the second 300 Lines (if wanted) schemed to 1A/20a. Of course, the job-font ratio is 1A/2a, and if you buy a pile of job-fonts, you are buying mostlyf dead metal ! ! ! The 1/10-1/12  ratio is suitable for both straight text or poetry. Your font can be tweaked towards one or the other if so desired. We will work with you to meet your specific needs.

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Feb. 20, 2008

More good news;  FRANCISCAN is now (May 4) in stock.  We finally have the Franciscan fonted in small 10A/20a fonts as well as 20a lower-cases. 12/16 FRIAR caps is also in stock..

We have been very busy casting bookfonts for customers who have realized it's now or never. If you have the means, now is the time to insure foundry-cast type in your future. Please feel free to email us even if you don't know just what you need or want. We'll do our best to custom-scheme a font for you and your budget. Take a look at
"A Note to Academic Prog...."
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We have assembled a small auxiliary font of many of the
unseen/unavailable American Uncial characters cut by Victor Hammer. There are only 28 fonts available of this once in a lifetime offer [there are only 4 fonts remaining 9-09]. The font contains the unique personal pronoun "I"; long s; 2 sizes of paragraph marks; Euro quotes; cap & l-case dipthongs; musical Call & Response signs; cap & l-case accents; some points and more. This is a one-time limited casting. (Note: these types will not phase with Stempel or Castcraft fonts unless refitted)
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We also have put up a few small fonts of 18pt Cloister OS S-caps for binders and printers. A first for us in this size.
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We have recast Will Bradley's Bradley's Combination Ornaments and can be found
here.
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16pt  S O L E M N I S  is back in stock. We put together 50 fonts in July. If you want more than 2 or 3 fonts, please let us know now, and if you are a past customer, we will set the fonts aside for you. It has been very popular. The face was originally cast in Germany by J. Wagner Tpfy.. This font was cast by the Dale Guild Tpfy from electrotyped matrices fabricated at the Guild. The types were cast on one of our ATF Barth foundry casters using an alloy made from primary metals. These are the hardest printing types you can buy. They are more than hard enough for hot-stamping, as are all our types.

If you are not familiar with the use of new ATF or Dale Guild types, do yourself a big favor and put a font to the test. You won't need makeready. These types are .918 high, and stay that way for a long, long time. You can set and distribute, again & again and still need no makeready. Of course, someday you will, but you can delay this further by rotating the types, especially if you have several fonts in use.

IT IS A BEAUTIFUL CALLIGRAPHIC UNCIAL TYPE, but is based on the Capitalis Quadrata form, ca. 300AD (note the variant T of early Roman form). There are 10 pcs. of each T, so you can get two very different looks from one font by using one or the other, or both.

Want to set a small book? Buy 10-12 fonts. If you buy 10 fonts or more, we will make available a small font of 10pt. Solemnis to add to the overall usefulness of the 16pt.. 

Want to set a Christmas card? Buy 2-4 fonts.
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Goudy's 22/18 VILLAGE TITLING has been cast, and about 25 fonts will be put up and boxed before Thanksgiving. Use the links below to place your order. We cast apprx. 25 fonts which represent the 2nd casting this year.
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Victor Hammer's 14pt AMERICAN UNCIAL is in stock both in complete 10A/20a fonts and 20a lower-case fonts for those who want to set some text. They are available here on ebay; if you do not have any ebay account, just email the Art Dept and let us know what you want and we will get it to you right away. We have no plans to cast this font again unless someone is interested in ordering a bookfont. So speak now or forever hold..............
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Hammer's 24 RATDOLT TITLING, is in stock!
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24 Primose Border is also in stock! as are 24pt Moon Phases, 18pt Arrighi Ornaments and a variety of 72pt ATF Penline Flourishes. All and more are available directly or via ebay. See links above.
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We work at the foundry on a part-time basis, so if there is something you want, now is the time to ask. The order of a book-font goes right to the top of our casting schedule, so there is no guarantee that we will ever cast a particular face even if we hope to get to one font or another.
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Fonts scheduled for 2009; 24 Civilite (and 18pt if we get enough requests); Frederic Warde's original Arrihgi on an 18pt body; 14 Mediaeval; and if the string of life permits, 14 Caslon 471 w. sc and quaints, and
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Re: International Shipping

Types are best sent via Global Priority Flat-rate Air Mail. They will have a special box that will carry up to 20pounds for $31.00 to Canada, all other countries @ $43.50. This means you can ship about five fonts for this cost. We have successfelly sent several book-fonts in this way, and is about half the price of UPS or Fedex.
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Now for the bad news; Victor Hammer's 14pt AMERICAN UNCIAL is out of stock, and will no longer be available.We are sorry about this, but the owner of the original matrices collected them in July.

The price of type metal has gone way up along with the rest of the world commodities. These fonts were just cast and reflect a vast increase in the cost of our alloy which is made from primary metals. Our supplier has informed us that the Chinese now control the world prices of tin and antimony and that the price sometimes goes up hourly, like gasoline prices or pork bellies. It has doubled in the last 18 months, and in the past 3 years, prices to us have tripled. We thought a lack of interest would be our end, but it now appears that the Chinese will do what our obsolete statis could not, as tin and antimony are the most expensive metals in type alloy. We have not increased our prices in 13 yrs.. We have been absorbing these increases in a romantic effort to continue the craft, but just can't any longer. We don't have to tell you about the prices of other overheads such as natural gas for the casters, electric, heat and property taxes. All these conspire to end our attempts to continue for a little while longer.

We buy only alloy made from uncontaminated primary metals as did ATF, not remelted type from which we have no idea of the true alloy ratios. This insures the best possible type that will meet our customer's expectations from yr to year. We could buy cheaper Monotype or Linotype alloy, but we would rather not start down that road. We ask your understanding as we try to keep the prices of our types as low as possible.

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SUMMER 2007
We spent June and July casting nearly 700# of B-42. Of course such is the way; no easy work, and in this case, it was during the hottest time of the year. We did much of the casting during the "night shift." Fortunately we had quite a few of the total number of characters in stock, which made the near impossible, possible.. We had four orders to put up; most of the type went to Japan; some was used to set a page for a BBC documentary. It was a very pleasing time for Theo and I, and it was not without a sense of vindication
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B-42 Blackletter
We have a 2-Page Font in stock, schemed Bible setting. This font will set any 2 pages of Gutenberg's Bibel, with some exceptions.
Click Here  for further information. We can send a prospectus and showing of the types in text use via USPS or email a price list if you are interested in obtaining a font for text use.