Caslon Type Foundry
The Caslon type foundry was a type foundry in London which cast and sold metal type. It was founded by the punchcutter and typefounder William Caslon I, probably in 1720. For most of its history it was based at Chiswell Street, Islington, was the oldest type foundry in London, and the most prestigious. In the nineteenth century, the company established a division selling printing equipment. This section of the company continues to operate as of 2021, and is now branded Caslon Ltd. and based in St. Albans. The type foundry section of the company was bought by Stephenson Blake in 1937. From 1793 to 1819 a separate Caslon foundry was operated by William Caslon III and then his son William Caslon IV, who split off from the family business. This was also bought by a predecessor company of Stephenson Blake. Background Metal type was traditionally made by punchcutting, carefully cutting punches in steel used to stamp matrices, the moulds used to cast metal type. Type foundries operated in London from the early days of printing. Some punchcutters worked in London in the seventeenth century, including Arthur Nicholls and Joseph Moxon, who wrote a manual of how type was made. However, London was seemingly not a hub of skill in typefounding and many of the types available in London were of poor quality. In the second half of the seventeenth century the Dutch Republic was one of the largest centres of printing expertise, and both Oxford University Press in 1670–2 and the London typefounder John James in 1710 imported matrices from it. William Caslon I and II William Caslon (1692 – 23 January 1766) was an engraver who had come to London from Cradley, Worcestershire. He began a career in London with work like cutting the royal coat of arms into government firearms and tooling for bookbinders. The quality of his work came to the attention of printers, who engaged him to cut first Arabic and then roman type. Specimens of the Caslon foundry published under the management of William Caslon II but in William Caslon I's lifetime wrote that he established his type foundry in 1720. His first roman type appeared around 1725; Caslon is the name now given to designs based on his work. Caslon's premises as a gun engraver were based in Vine Street, Minories. He later moved to Helmet Row, then Ironmonger Row from 1727 to 1736, and in 1737 had moved to Chiswell Street, where it would remain for the next two hundred years. The foundry was successful by 1730 and issued a first specimen around that time. Its first dated specimen appeared in 1734 and the inclusion of a specimen of its types in Chambers' Encyclopaedia made it well-known. By 1763 its stock had expanded to be shown in book form. Caslon's type designs were based closely on the seventeenth-century Dutch types popular in London at the time, cut by punchcutters including Nicolaes Briot and the Voskens family. In James Mosley's view, they were intended