The EconomistDecember 21st 2019 Hot-metal type 25are willing to commit their lives to them.”
People like Duncan Avery. When he first joined Monotype in
1945 at the age of 17, Mr Avery was set to work machining parts for
Bren guns, for that was the way things were at the end of the war.
He stayed with Monotype all his working life. At 91 he is the oldest
of the crew of former Monotype workers who have been volunteer-
ing at the Type Archive for a quarter of a century. He drives up from
Sussex two days a week, collecting 81-year-old Douglas Ellis, who
looks after the matrix machines, on the way.
On a recent November morning, Mr Avery was dealing with an
American order for a set of 24-point Centaur matrices: “Lovely
font.” The archive’s commercial side is not extensive. But revenues
are no longer declining, and indeed, thanks to Mr Maret’s inquiry
into the technology and the mindset of early-20th-century print-
ing, there has been an uptick.
It was not just intellectual curiosity, Mr Maret admits, that led
him to try to create a new Monotype font. “I’ve always wanted to
make a typeface that could be set in paragraphs.” Why? “Because it
would be fun. There’s no practical economics in this. I wanted a
complete typeface that I could write a book in and send to a type-
caster, for no other reason than it would cause me joy.” Now that it
is an art not an industry, hot-metal printing is no longer bound by
economic logic. Those who practise it do not have to seek the most
efficient solution to every problem.
In the spirit of inquiry and enjoyment, Mr Maret adapted one of
the fonts cut in the 17th century by Peter de Walpergen for Bishop
Fell. He called his version Hungry Dutch: de Walpergen was Dutch,
and the font was originally intended for a book called “Hungry Bib-
liophiles”. Then it was over to London, for the old gang plus some
younger apprentices to turn it into a Monotype font.
Parminder Kumar Rajput, at 71 the youngest of the old gang, is
the only man left in the world who can operate all the various
Monotype machines needed to produce a typeface from scratch.
Because the business was highly specialised, most workers mas-
tered only one short slice of the long and complex process. Mr Raj-
put’s first foreman, eager to promote him, encouraged him to learn
how to master the whole process. Mr Rajput happily learned how
to use all the machines; but he declined promotion, staying on the
shop floor for all his working life.Richard Ardagh’s route into type production has
been different to Mr Rajput’s. A 38-year-old graphic de-
signer, he got interested in letterpress at art school.
Mrs Shaw showed him round the archive, and he was
hooked. “The employees being so long in the tooth
heightened my sense that I should get involved as soon
as I could.” Having studied under Mr Rajput, he cut
around two-thirds of the punches for Hungry Dutch.
This work does not contribute directly to his earn-
ings, but may do so indirectly: “Your cup has to be full
of inspiration, wherever you get it from.” On the same
day that Mr Avery was processing the Centaur order, Mr
Ardagh ran up the rickety stairs from the vault to Mrs
Shaw’s office in a state of high excitement. In one of the
cast-iron Stephenson Blake safes he had found the
punches for an Irish font cut by Joseph Moxon in the
1680s. Mrs Shaw was jubilant. “We’ve been looking for
our mislaid Moxon’s Irish for 15 years!”
Making a new Monotype font was quite a challenge.
The equipment needed for the beginning of the pro-
cess—transferring a drawing onto a metal pattern by
means of a glass plate, wax and electrolysis—had been
lost. The Type Archive workers tried making the pat-
tern through etching instead. After trial and error, a
computerised milling machine did the job.
But the main difficulties with the process con-
cerned the question at the centre of Mr Maret’s investi-
gation. The Monotype workers redrew his Hungry
Dutch letters according to the Monotype protocols,
which require the characters to conform to 15 common
widths, with standardised weights, height, slope and
axis. That was the way it was done in Monotype; but
that was not what Mr Maret wanted. So when the long
tail of the upper-case Q was shortened, he insisted that
it should be lengthened. Since Mr Maret was the cus-
tomer, he won the day. Some regard the font which the
process produced as a little uneven, but to the un-
trained eye it is lovely.
Thus Mr Maret got both his font and his answer: al-
though some of the changes to the Poliphi-
lus font were imposed by the technology,
not all of them were necessary. The histori-
cal font could have been given more free-
dom. “The machinery embodies a system
with certain rules...but it was neither the
system nor the rules that resulted in the
look of late-industrial typefaces. They
might have suggested it, but it was the peo-
ple who used the machines who took that
suggestion as fiat.”
Mr Ardagh has also gained from the pro-
ject. He has been experimenting with mak-
ing fonts through 3d printing, and has
learned far more about the old way of mak-
ing type by doing it himself than he could
have by reading about it.
At the Type Archive, aside from a flurry
as a bunch of young people arrive from the
Science Museum to digitise some of the
material, things go on much the same. Mrs
Shaw continues to try to rustle up money to
display her treasures. Mr Avery continues
to drive up from the countryside to keep
the business side afloat. And Mr Rajput
continues to cajole vast old machines into
producing tiny gems of shining type.
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