Ty2ed Bird Ellie Text v15

1
2
From the book to the streets
© 2014 Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, the authors and photograhpers
ISBN 978-1-901677-44-3
www.institutbuchkunst.co.uk
Design: Ellie Bird
Photographs: Jakob Argauer, Johannes Ernst
Printed by DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg GmbH
From the book to the streets:
Large type in public spaces
Edited by Julia Blume, Pierre Pané-Farré, and Fred Smeijers
Published by the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, 2014

Contents
Foreword 3
Photographic city walk 5
Treaties
Julia Blume, Urban space literature or characteristic characters in Leipzig 11
Luise Bräuer, Manipulated Postcards – Mirrors of Their Time? 16
Pascal Renger, The Riquet elephant 19
Fragments 21
Articles
Rob Banham, ‘The largest type in England’: wood lettering for jobbing printing 1800-1830 27
Eric Kindel, Stencil dies: new tools for an old trade 41
Pierre Pané-Farré, What came after black and red? The development of chromacity in
letterpress posters by the German speaking print industry from 1827 to 1865 61
Fred Smeijers, Putting letters next to each other: a historical overview 81
Bibliography 101
Rob Banham
‘The largest type in England’:
Wood Lettering for Jobbing Printing,
1800–1830
The explosion of new display types in Britain in the

nineteenth century has been well documented, most
notably by Nicolete Gray and James Mosley. This article will
focus not on the design of these new foundry types but on
letters cut in wood for use in jobbing printing. Commercial
wood types were not widely available until the 1830’s and
in the preceding thirty years many printers cut their own
wood lettering. A distinction can be made between wood
lettering, where each letter is cut by hand, meaning that
every character is different, and wood type, which is cut
mechanically and produces identical copies of each character.
Printers using wood lettering pioneered many of the new
letter forms which later appeared in metal. Wood lettering
was also produced at larger sizes than metal type — one
family of printers even claimed that their letters were ‘the
largest type in England’.
The period 1800–1830 saw the industrial revolution
in Britain reaching its peak. Countless technological
improvements and the shift to mass production created
a rapidly expanding world of commerce, which was able
to take advantage of improved transport systems to
enable goods to reach customers across the nation. This
had an enormous impact on demand for jobbing printing;
1 The population of England and Wales
increased from around 9 million in 1801 companies with products to sell needed to advertise, and to
to 14 million in 1831 [Mitchell, B.R., British shout louder than their competitors. The audience for such
Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988) p. 11]. Rising literacy
advertising was also growing rapidly as both population and
levels are more difficult to measure. Statistics literacy levels increased.1
on the numbers of people who could sign As far as typefaces were concerned, this meant larger
their name are not reliable indicators of
literacy because many more people could
and bolder designs were needed. The second half of the
read than write. Circulation numbers for eighteenth century had seen the introduction of a variety of
newspapers and periodicals do not account new ‘modern’ types, such as those produced by Bodoni and
for the fact that most readers were found in
coffeehouses, meaning that several people
the Didots.2 By 18oo the high contrast of the strokes in these
would read each copy sold. However, the designs had become more extreme and as a result they were
proliferation of printed advertisements at somewhat bolder in appearance than the earlier ‘old’ faces.
the beginning of the nineteenth century
suggests that a good number of households
Jobbing printers who wanted large type for bills and posters
had at least one member who was able to could buy the same designs in display sizes, but these were
read and understand them. Improvements still based on letterforms designed for continuous text, not
in education meant that reading was part of
everyday life for the majority of Britons by
jobbing work. The few decorative types the founders offered
the second half of the nineteenth century: were produced in relatively small sizes and were arguably
‘Never before in English history had so many better suited to title pages than to posters. However, this was
people read so much. In the middle class,
the reading circle was the most familiar
all about to change:
and beloved of domestic institutions; and
In the course of the first two decades of the nineteenth century the
as cheap printed matter became more
accessible, hardly a family in Britain was whole pattern of jobbing printing changed with the introduction of
without its little shelf of books and its sheaf of large, bold, eye-catching types which were designed specifically for
current periodicals, whether church papers
the purpose of advertising.
or the latest hair-raising episodes concocted
by Holywell Street hacks.’ [Altick, R.D., The
English Common Reader (Chicago: The
The visual impact of these larger and bolder types is
University of Chicago Press, 1957) p. 5]. illustrated by Michael Twyman in his book on the printer
John Soulby.4 In the first decade of the nineteenth century
2 For a detailed account of the
development of modern types see John Soulby Snr was printing bills and notices using a
Morlighem, S., The ‘modern face’ in France range of about twenty different types. His type specimen
and Great Britain, 1781–1825: typography as
shows sizes up to 16-line pica but the largest type used in
an ideal of progress, PhD thesis (Reading:
University of Reading, 2014). any surviving examples of his work is only 7-line. In the
1820’s his son, John Soulby Jr, was printing the same kinds
3 Twyman, Michael., Printing 1770–1970
(London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970) p. 68.
of documents. None of his types were larger than those
shown in his father’s specimen, and the number of types
4 Twyman, M., John Soulby, Printer,
at his disposal was not much greater. However, the designs
Ulverston (Reading: University of Reading/
Museum of English Rural Life, 1966). were much more varied and there is a clear difference in
the boldness of his types, and the resulting increase in the
amount of ink on the page [figs 1–2].
The printing of these new designs at ever larger sizes
was facilitated by developments in technology for the
production and printing of type, in the form of machine-
made paper, inking rollers, new printing presses, and the
sanspareil matrix. As far as jobbing printers were concerned
the latter two inventions were arguably the more critical.
The sanspareil matrix enabled the casting of much larger
2 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

2
Figure 1 Theatre bill for New Theatre,

Ulverston. John Soulby Snr (1808) 419 x 184
mm. [Barrow Public Library (ZS 506)
1
Figure 2 Theatre bill for Ulverston
theatre. John Soulby Jnr (1826) 368 x 159
mm. Soulby Snr uses a larger type in 1808
than any shown here, but Soulby Jr’s types
are much bolder. [University of Reading;
Department of Typography & Graphic
Communication: Soulby Collection 376]
ROB BANHAM 3
5 Mosley, J., Ornamented types: twenty-
three alphabets from the foundry of Louis sizes of type:
John Pouchée (London: I. M. Imprimit, 1993)
vol. 1, p. 7. Normal methods of typefounding A circular drawing attention to his invention of types cast with the
could only be used to produce type up sanspareil matrix, which T.C. Hansard called “the greatest single
to a certain size. Towards the end of the
improvement in the art of typefounding to have taken place in
eighteenth century larger types were cast
in sand; a more refined technique, ‘the so modern times”, was published by William Caslon IV (1781–1869) in
called “sanspareil matrix”, was evolved for 1810. There is little doubt that it was this technique for making large
casting the big poster types that appear
matrices that enabled the English typefounders to produce their
during the first decade of the nineteenth
century. In the sanspareil matrix the form of profusion of poster types which are excellently cut and cast, during
the letter is cut through a brass or copper the second decade of the nineteenth century.5
plate. A backing plate to which it is riveted
forms the face of the type. The principle is The iron press invented by Lord Stanhope in 1800 was
simple, but to make an effective matrix the
cutting and riveting must be done with great
superseded by an improved design in 1807 and machines
accuracy: the profile of the cut must have a from other manufacturers were introduced in the following
consistent slope, so that the type leaves the two decades. Iron presses used a system of compound
matrix cleanly, and each isolated counter, like
the centres of A or the lower-case g, must be
levers which meant that they not only delivered greater
separately cut and riveted in place.’ pressure than a wooden common press but also that they
required less physical effort to operate. This gave printers
6 The term slab serif rather than Egyptian
is used because while Egyptian became the the ability to print larger posters than before and at much
common term for slab serif in the nineteenth greater speed— iron presses could print a single sheet at
century early in the century, it was also used
one pull of the press whereas the wooden common press
to describe sans serifs. Slab-serif types are
characterised by evenness of line, with thin required two. However, the greatest impact of the iron press
strokes around two thirds of the width of for the jobbing printer was that its superior power meant
the thick strokes, and slab serifs of about the
that densely inked pages of large display types could be
same thickness as the thin strokes. There are
some similarities between the appearance of printed with ease. It cannot be a coincidence that such types
these typefaces and Egyptian architecture, proliferated after the advent of the iron press.
in addition to which recent architectural
In addition to making types that were much larger and
discoveries in Egypt meant that it was a
civilisation that was very much in the minds bolder, the typefounders also introduced groundbreaking
of people at the time and this would explain new designs, the most significant being fat face, sans serif,
the naming of slab serif as either Egyptian or
and slab serif.6 There were also many decorative variants
Antique. Nicolete Gray regarded the design
of the slab-serif typeface as the ‘most brilliant from the addition of shading or shadows [fig. 21] to the
typographical invention of the century’, and incredibly complex designs of Pouchée [fig. 3]. Although
far superior to the fat face: ‘Instead of the
large numbers of new types were published during this
weak lines and thin serifs of the fat face here
are magnificent solid stems founded on period, the typefounders were generally followers, rather
serifs like rocks. All the colour and emphasis than innovators, in the development of new letterforms. For
is retained without that suggestion of
a typefoundry to invest time and money in a new design
insufficient support to its grandeur which is
the weakness of the first display type.’ [Gray, was risky; a new type could take several months to produce
N., Nineteenth-century ornamented types and there was no guarantee it would sell. The first sans
and title pages, (London: Faber & Faber,
serif printing type, published by William Caslon IV between
1976) pp. 23–24].
1811 and 1816, is a case in point [fig. 4]. It was not taken up
7 Figgins’s 1828 design is shown in by printers until many years later and more than a decade
Lommen, M., (ed.), The book of books:
500 years of graphic innovation, (London:
passed before Figgins released the next sans serif design
Thames & Hudson, 2012) pp. 242–243. in 1828.7 A successful design, on the other hand, would be
Thanks to John Lane for drawing this to my copied by competitors almost immediately, so the period in
attention, and for providing information
about the dates of early sans serif types.
which a type foundry had an exclusive new design was short.

For typefounders it made more sense to respond to demand 8 See Mosley, J., The nymph and the grot:
the revival of the sans serif letter (London:
than to launch a speculative new design. Other makers of Friends of St Bride Printing Library, 1999)
letterforms — calligraphers, signwriters, architects, and 2nd ed.
engravers of letters in wood, metal, or stone – had much

greater freedom, and it seems likely that it was these
craftsmen who developed new ideas and were the first to
bring cutting-edge letterforms to the attention of the public.
James Mosley has presented compelling evidence that the
sans serif letterform was revived in the second half of the
eighteenth century, long before its first manifestation as a
typeface.8
3
Figure 3 Pouchée’s 26-line pica, his
largest type. [L-.J. Pouchée, Ornamented
types: Twenty-three Alphabets from the
Foundry of Louis John Pouchée with an
introduction by James Mosley (London: I.
M. Imprimit, 1993)]
Figure 4 William Caslon IV’s ‘Two lines

English Egyptian’ (1816). The only date
that can be ascribed to this type with any
certainty is 1816 but it seems likely that it
was available before this, possibly as early
as 1811. The typfeace is widely held to
have never been used other than in type
specimens but James Mosley has seen an
example of the type in use in a handbill of
1831 and a ‘commercial perpetual almanac’
of 1846. Thanks to James for drawing my
attention to these examples of the type in
use and to the late Justin Howes for the
photograph of Caslon’s specimen. [Type
4 Archive: SB/TS/03]
ROB BANHAM 5
9 Kelly, R.R., American wood type 1828– Important contributions to the development of display
1900: notes on the evolution of decorated
and large types and comments on the types were also made by some of the more enterprising
related trades of the period (New York: Van printers of the period, who used letterforms cut or engraved
Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969) p.33 in wood. All of the major new styles appeared as wood
10 Stower, C., The printer’s grammar; lettering before being produced as type faces. Wood type
or, introduction to the art, with the was not commercially available on a large scale until after
improvements in the practice of printing, for
the last fifty years (London: B. Crosby & Co.,
1827 when Darius Wells invented the lateral router. Wells
1808) p.519. himself published the first known catalogue of wood type
in 1828, but it was only after the router was combined with
11 Grant, G.L., ‘The English state lottery
1694–1826’, Journal of the Printing Historical Leavenworth’s pantograph in 1834 that the manufacture of
Society, n.s. 13 (2009) p.5. wood type really became practical.9 However, many printers
12 Sampson, H., A history of advertising
used wood lettering for printing before this, either by cutting
from the earliest times: illustrated by separate letters or by cutting whole words or phrases into
anecdotes, curious specimens, and a single block of wood. Most such lettering was produced
biographical notes (London: Chatto &
Windus, 1874) pp. 423–24.
in-house but some wood-engravers were advertising this
service as early as 1808.10
The best source of examples of wood lettering in the
period 1800–1830 are found in printed advertising for the
state lottery. The current national lottery in the UK was
introduced in 1994 but lotteries have a much longer history
— state lotteries began in 1694 and continued until 1826.11
Until the late eighteenth century, lotteries were resorted to
only when finances were particularly poor or to fund public
buildings, but later lotteries were run regularly to provide
the Treasury with an annual source of income.
‘The State lottery was framed on the simple principle, that the State
held forth a certain sum to be repaid by a larger. The transaction
was usually managed thus. The Government gave £10 in prizes
for every share taken on an average. A great many blanks or
prizes under £10, left, of course, a surplus for the creation of a few
magnificent prizes wherewith to attract the unwary public. Certain
firms in the City, known as lottery-office keepers, contracted for
the lottery, each taking a certain number of shares; the sum paid
by them was always more than £10 per share; and the excess
constituted the Government profit. It was customary, for many
years, for the contractors to give about £16 to the Government and
then to charge the public from £20 to £22. It was made lawful for the
contractors to divide the shares into halves, quarters, eighths, and
sixteenths; and the contractors always charged relatively more for
these aliquot parts. A man with thirty shillings to spare could buy
a sixteenth; and the contractors made a large portion of their profit
out of such customers.’12
The lottery-office keepers spent huge sums on publicity;

typically there were two or three lotteries per year and 13 The figure of £13,00 is confirmed by
an auditor’s report for the third lottery of
upwards of £13,000 was spent promoting each one.13 In 1809: Report of the four auditors appointed
the first quarter of the nineteenth century the lottery was to inspect the accounts delivered by
by far the largest advertiser in London and also became Richardson, Swift & Co for expences [sic]
in the third lottery for 1809, drawn 19th
the first industry to market its wares on a national scale, October, 1810, in which they were the
distributing bills and posters across the country and placing contractors (London: Richardson, Swift &
advertisements in both local and national newspapers.14 Co, 1811) [National Archives: T/64/324]. Even
using the lowest indicators £13,000 in 1820 is
Hitherto, the most persuasive advertising had come from the equivalent to almost £906,700 today [http://
www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/
salesmen of patent medicines, but there was never in this field the relativevalue.php].
sharp rivalry of a limited number of lottery promoters, engaged in
14 For more on the design, production,
the keenest competition since very high stakes were involved. So
and distribution of lottery bills and posters
it was the lottery advertisers who are to be credited with infinite see Banham, R., ‘Lottery advertising
invention in manner, and there is hardly a device of the modern 1800–1826’, Journal of the Printing Historical
Society, n.s. 13 (2009) pp.17–60.
advertising agency that has not been anticipated during the lottery
fever of 1800–1826.15 15 Handover, P.M., Printing in London from
1476 to modern times (London: George
The lotteries pioneered new methods of distributing printed Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1960) p. 187.
advertisements during this period, including use of direct

mail and mobile methods of displaying posters [figs 5–7].
The handbills that were most commonly used to advertise
the lotteries also broke new ground in their design and
production. From the end of the fifteenth century until the
second half of the nineteenth century most printing was in
black only and purely typographic, but many lottery bills
were printed in two or more colours and featured woodcut
or wood-engraved illustrations [fig. 8].
These bills were printed in vast numbers – at a
conservative estimate £13,000 would have paid for around
5b
Figure 5 a&b. Lottery bill for
Richardson, Goodluck & Co. Anon (1816)
205 x 168 mm, folds to 65 x 127 mm. This is
an example of a lottery bill used as direct
mail – the bill was folded and addressed ‘to
the occupier of this house’. Other surviving
examples are personalized, suggesting that
the lottery-office keepers kept records of
their customers. [Bodleian Library; John
5a Johnson Collection: Lotteries vol. 6 (2a)]
ROB BANHAM 7
6
Figure 6 A ‘horse-sandwich’
advertising the last lottery in 1826.
[Smith, W., Advertise.  How? When?
Where? (London: Routledge, Warne, and
Routledge, 1863) p. 102]
Figure 7 The ‘octagonal

perambulator’ advertising the last lottery
in 1826. [Sampson, H., A history of
advertising (London: Chatto & Windus,
1874) plate facing p. 466]
Figure 8 Lottery bill for Bish. Anon.

(1826) 222 x 98 mm. The mixing of black
and red in the type is probably not
intentional and may result from an attempt
to print both colours in a single impression.
[Private collection] 7

three million bills, which is consistent with Henry Sampson’s 16 Sampson, H., A history of advertising,
p. 465.
assertion that in 1826 the largest lottery contractor, Tom Bish
Junior, ‘showered millions of bills and miles of doggerel verse
upon London just before the final draw took place’.16
The demand for innovation in lottery bills and the huge
quantities in which they were printed meant that lottery
printers wanted the latest types and would buy them in
large quantities. Thus they were quicker to take up new
designs than provincial printers such as the Soulbys, and the
shift to using larger, bolder types specifically designed for
use in advertising took place much earlier in lottery printing
[figs 9 and 10]. Thus they were important customers for the
foundries, some of which targeted pages of their specimen
books directly at lottery printers. Many specimens contained
a pound sign followed by numbers or a particular amount
of money, usually £20,000, commonly the largest prize in
the state lottery [fig. 11]. The text in many type specimens
also referred more specifically to the lotteries [fig. 12] and the
name ‘Bish’ crops up in several.
Figure 9 Lottery bill for Richardson,

Goodluck & Co. Evans & Ruffy (1805) 225 x
9 10
142 mm. [Bodleian Library; John Johnson
Collection: Lotteries vol. 7 (7b)]
Figure 10 Lottery bill for Bish. Anon

(1817) 192 x 105 mm. [Bodleian Library; John
Johnson Collection: Lotteries vol.
ROB BANHAM 9
11
12
However, the typefounders did not always supply what

was required and the alternative for the enterprising
lottery printer was to use lettering cut or engraved in wood.
As well as the freedom to have the exact size and design
required there were numerous other advantages to using
wood lettering. Firstly, it removed the potential problem
of running out of sorts, which in extreme cases led to
Figure 11 Vincent Figgins’s ‘Five Lines
printers having to change size or style within a single line
Pica, No. 1’ (1815). [Wolpe, B., (ed.), Vincent of type [fig. 13]. Secondly, it made it possible to join letters
Figgins type specimens 1801 and 1815, together or to kern them in ways that were not possible with
reproduced in facsimile (London: Printing
Historical Society, 1967)].
metal type [fig. 14]. In lottery bills this was often used for a
company name cut from a single block, which saved time in
Figure 12 Caslon & Catherwood’s ‘Four-
typesetting [fig. 15]. Using a single block also made it possible
line pica antique’ (1821). [St Bride Library]

to move away from the horizontal and vertical constraints
of letterpress and have lettering on curved lines. Thirdly, it
was easy to reverse out wood lettering and thus produce
white characters on a black (or coloured) background [fig.
16]. When the typefounders started to produce reversed out,
or ‘white’, types in the mid 1820s they were rarely printed
successfully because it was almost impossible to avoid white
spaces between the characters, a problem which was avoided
if the lettering was cut from a single piece of wood. Finally,
use of wood lettering also allowed printers to integrate text
and image – often in ways that would have been extremely
Figure 13 Poster for Sadler’s Wells

Theatre. W. Glendinning (1825) 370 x 225
mm. The compositor ran out of capital Rs
in the 3-line slab serif and substituted a
modern face for the R in ‘ROSE’. The shift
from caps to lowercase for ‘Fairy Red’ also
13 14 suggests a lack of sorts. [Islington Local
History Centre and Museum: SWT/1/3/3/4]
Figure 14 Poster for Astley’s circus.

Anon (c.1865) 360 x 223 mm. The shape of
the first S in ‘ASTLEY’S’ has been adjusted
to improve the letterspacing in the AST
combination. [Look and Learn / Peter
15a 15b Jackson Collection: XJ102991]
Figure 15 a–e. A selection of logotypes

for lottery offices (1805–1821) 118 mm wide.
Most of the lottery-office keepers changed
their logotypes regularly but some were
15c 15d fairly constant; Sivewright consistently used
slab serif lettering on a curved line – and
could be considered an early form of
branding. [Bodleian Library; John Johnson
Collection: Lotteries vol. 7 (8b); vol. 3 (54b);
15e vol. 2 (49); vol. 3 (53b); vol. 9 (9)]
ROB BANHAM 11
16
Figure 16 Lottery bill for Bish. Anon

Johnson Collection: Lotteries vol. 2 (8b)]
17 18
Figure 17 Lottery bill. Gye & Balne

(1810) 222 x 135 mm. [Private collection]
Figure 18 Lottery bill for Richardson,

Goodluck & Co. Anon. (1810) 224 x 138 mm.
[Private collection]

difficult, if not impossible, using metal type [figs. 17–18]. 17 In his PhD thesis on the modern face
Sébastien Morlighem uses André and
Printers using wood were of course able to use the Laucou’s method, adapted from the work
medium to trial new or unusual designs [fig. 19]. Given that of Peter Karow, to measure the weight of
they were such great buyers of new types it seems likely that typefaces: K (weight) = w × 100 / h where w
is the width of the stem and h is the height
some of the experimental letterforms employed by lottery of the character. On the accompanying scale
printers influenced what was released by the typefounders semi-bold types have a K value between 15
and there is certainly some evidence to support this theory. and 24, bold between 25 and 32 and fat (or
black) greater than 32 [André, J., and Laucou
The first true fat-face types were not produced until around C., Histoire de l’ecriture typographique:
1810 but fat-face cut in wood features in lottery bills as le xixe siècle français ([Méolans-Revel]:
early as 1805 [fig. 20].17 The first slab-serif types were cut by Atelier Perrousseaux editeur, 2013) p.22].
Morlighem suggests that the first genuinely
Vincent Figgins, probably in 1817, but possibly shortly before ‘fat’ types were not cut until 1810, the year in
which Thorne shows a ‘16 Lines Pica’ type,
in lowercase only, which has a K value of
35. An earlier type, Caslon & Catherwood’s
‘Two line double pica’, cut sometime
between 1805 and 1810, has caps which
have a K value of 33.33 but the lowercase is
only 23.33. All of the other types cut before
1810 are classed as semi-bold or bold. See
Morlighem, S., The ‘modern face’ in France
and Great Britain, 1781–1825, pp. 349–357.
The wood lettering shown in the bill
illustrated in figure 20 has K values of 33.97
(caps) and 33.75 (numerals).
19 20
Figure 19 Lottery bill for Bish. Anon.

(1817). 218 x 142 mm. [Bodleian Library;
John Johnson Collection: Lotteries vol. 2 (3)]
Figure 20 Lottery bill for Bish. Evans

& Ruffy (1805) 225 x 139 mm. [Bodleian
Library; John Johnson Collection: Lotteries
vol. 2 (4a)]
Figure 21 Vincent Figgins’s ‘Five Lines

Pica Antique’ (1817). Although the title page
of the specimen is dated 1815 this page and
another showing the four-line pica antique
only appear in copies that contain leaves
watermarked 1817. [Wolpe, B., (ed.), Vincent
21 Figgins type specimens 1801 and 1815]
ROB BANHAM 13
18 Mosley, J., Ornamented types, vol. [fig. 21]. Figgins’s design was in uppercase only – lowercase
1, p. 7.
did not become available until 1821 – but lottery bills of
19 See Mosley, J., The nymph and the grot. 1816 show not only well-resolved lowercase forms but also
shaded versions [fig. 22]. At a smaller scale, on lottery shares,
the slab serif can be found much earlier [fig. 23]. There is no
evidence of the slab serif before its appearance in lottery
printing and it may be that it was first conceived by one
of the lottery printers or, as James Mosley suggested in his
introduction to Ornamented types, one of the lottery office
keepers.18 It certainly appears to have been well developed
as a wood-engraved form before Figgins’s typeface was
released. Sans serif letterforms also appear in lottery shares
several years before William Caslon IV’s typeface [fig. 24] but
the sans serif form has a long history and was by no means
an invention of the lottery printers.19 As well as being able
to produce experimental new letterforms the engravers
could, of course, also match, and customize as necessary, any
designs that were available from the typefounders [fig. 25].
22
Figure 22 Lottery bill for Sivewright 23

with slab serif wood letter. Anon. (1816) 218
x 124 mm. The two-colour lettering is one
of the first such examples in jobbing work.
[Bodleian Library; John Johnson Collection:
Lotteries vol. 3 (54b)]
Figure 23 Lottery share featuring a slab

serif N. Anon. (1811) 65 x 182 mm. [Bodleian
Library; John Johnson Collection: Lotteries
box 2 (48b)]
Figure 24 Lottery share featuring sans

serif lettering for the word ‘ticket’. Anon.
Johnson Collection: Lotteries box 2 (40b)] 24

25
Figure 25 Poster for Astley’s circus. T.

Romney (1833) 495 x 380 mm. Apart from
the printer’s name and address at the foot
this entire poster is printed from wood.
The anonymous engraver shows a full
repertoire of letterforms: fat face, slab serif,
tuscan, and a number of variants of sans
serif including lowercase, italic, small caps,
outline, and even a backwards-slanting
italic. [Look and Learn / Peter Jackson
Collection: XJ122867]
ROB BANHAM 15
20 Dickens, C., ‘Bill-sticking’, Household The author Charles Dickens names the principal printers
Words, 52 (22 March 1851) pp. 603–604.
of posting-bills as ‘Messrs. Evans and Ruffy, of Budge Row;
21 Vauxhall Gardens was a model Thoroughgood [sic] and Whiting, of the present day; and
for pleasure gardens across the world
– Paris, St. Petersburg, and New York
Messrs. Gye and Balne, Gracechurch Street, City.’20 All four
had gardens named after it, and it was firms printed extensively for the lottery, but it appears
also the inspiration for Tivoli Gardens that Gye & Balne were the most deeply involved. Frederick
in Copenhagen. Established in 1661,
Vauxhall became fashionable after being
Gye was a friend of Tom Bish Junior, the dominant lottery
remodelled and reopened by Jonathan office keeper. After Gye won a large prize in the lottery
Tyers Snr in 1732. Jonathan Tyers Jnr adopted in 1817 the two went into business together, establishing
the name Vauxhall Gardens in 1785. From
1821–41, under Gye’s management, it
the London Genuine Tea Company and The London Wine
was one of London’s most popular places Company, and forming part of a syndicate that rented
of entertainment. For more on Gye’s Vauxhall Gardens from its owner, Jonathan Tyers.21 Gye
involvement with Vauxhall see Banham, ‘Gye
and Balne: printing families’ pp. 28–33.
and Balne had moved to London from Bath where they had
learned the printing trade from Frederick’s father, William
22 See Banham, R., ‘Gye and Balne: printing
Gye, to whom Giles Balne was apprenticed. William died
families’, Journal of the Printing Historical
Society, n.s. 5 (2003) pp.17–42. in 1802 and shortly afterwards the firm of Gye & Balne was
established in London, settling at 38 Gracechurch Street
23 Pigot & Co’s national, London, &
provincial commercial directory for 1832–3–4
in around 1806. This left William’s widow, Mary Gye, to run
(London: Pigot & Co., 1832–34) p. 2 of a the business in Bath with the help of Frederick’s younger
section of advertisements at the back of the brother Henry, who later had a second printing office in
directory.
Bristol.22 The Gracechurch Street outfit was sizeable – Giles
24 Thorowgood’s new specimen of printing Balne’s testimony for the Columbian Press states that he had
types, 1821 [St Bride Library].
‘nine of them in constant use’.23 The buying power of such a
25 Bath Journal, 5 December 1808. large concern may explain Thorowgood’s decision to use the
words ‘GRACECHURCH STREET MESSRS. £1234567890’
and ‘BATH & BRISTOL MAIL COACH Mrs £20,000’ for the
two-line English ornamented and two-line pica ornamented
in his specimen of 1821.24 There is no evidence that Gye
& Balne bought either of these designs but their office
was well stocked with types purchased from Caslon &
Catherwood (later Caslon & Livermore), Figgins, Fry, and
Thorowgood.
Shortly after moving to Gracechurch Street, Gye &
Balne issued a trade card showing a view of their premises
and an engraving of a common press [fig. 26]. It boasts that
‘Posting bills, and public amusements, coach and waggon [sic]
offices &c.’ were ‘Printed with the largest type in England’.
In Bath, Mary Gye made a similar claim in a newspaper
advertisement of 1808: ‘founts of the largest Type in England,
with which Bills of any dimensions are printed at a few
hours notice.’25 No other printer appears to have made a
similar claim so presumably the type in question is wood
lettering that was produced in house, possibly cut by Giles
Balne: ‘Mr. Balne was eminent in his profession, and was

26
Figure 26 Gye & Balne trade card

(c.1808) 274 x 168 mm. [British Museum:
Heal Collection 99.56]
ROB BANHAM 17
26 The Northern Star and Leeds General the original projector and introducer of the large type and
Advertiser, 11 August
blocks cut from wood, his ingenuity in which for so many
27 Blades, W., ‘William Gye, Printer of Bath’, years enriched the coffers of the lottery contractors’.26 There
The Printers’ Register, 18 (6 January 1879)
p. 131.
is certainly some connection between the firm and the
development of wood lettering: according to William Blades,
28 Specimen of modern cut printing types
Frederick Gye was, ‘noted in our typographical annals as the
by Robert Thorne, 1814 [Type Archive: SB/
TS/04]. first printer who adopted large wooden types, and shocked
the eyes of the old stagers by four-sheet broadsides and
29 Kelly, R.R., American wood type
1828–1900, p.75.
thirty-line Egyptian.’27
Exactly what ‘the largest type in England’ was is not clear.
It may have referred to the woodcut lettering that featured
on a poster printed in Bath sometime around 1806 [fig. 27].
The capital letters are approximately 24-line pica (100 mm)
which was bigger than any foundry type that was available
until Thorne released a 24-line type in 1814.28 It is certainly
conceivable that this wood lettering was the largest ‘type’
in England at the time, though it was not the largest in the
world – B. Vinçard illustrated three sizes of wood lettering
in his manual L’Art du typographe in 1806 [fig. 28], the
largest of which measures approximately 29-line pica (120
mm). Giles Balne was a master of this kind of wood lettering
and later used it to great effect in posters for Vauxhall
Gardens. He even printed with three-colour wood lettering
almost a decade before the first chromatic wood types were
advertised in the USA in 1838 [figs. 29–30].29
In these large posters the lettering is more like type in the
sense that they are separate, movable letters, which can
Figure 27 27. Packet boat poster. [Mary]

Gye (c.1806) 450 x 640 mm. [Bodleian
Library; John Johnson Collection: Canals and
Rivers Folder] 27

29
28a 28b
Figure 28 a,b. Vinçard’s wood letter

(1806) 13-, 19- and 29-line pica. [Vinçard,
B., L’art du typographe (Paris: Chez Vinçard,
1806) pp. 111–112]
Figure 29 Vauxhall Gardens posters.

Giles Balne (1830) 100 x 78 cm. [Bodleian
Library: John Johnson Collection; Posters:
Vauxhall Gardens]
Figure 30 Vauxhall Gardens poster.

Giles Balne (1830) 50 x 78 cm. This
very crude looking lettering is actually
remarkably advanced. In addition to being
30 possibly the first example of three-colour
lettering it was produced before any of
the typefounders published a shaded sans
serif design. Balne was also beginning to
explore the idea of related widths of the
same size and design; types cut in ‘series’,
with condensed and expanded versions,
did not become common in typefounders’
specimens until the 1840s. [Bodleian
Library: John Johnson Collection; Posters:
Vauxhall Gardens]
ROB BANHAM 19
30 Dickens, C., ‘Bill-sticking’, pp. 603–605. be ‘dissed’ and used again for other jobs, but they are clearly
31 Brobdingnagia was the land of giants in individually cut, not produced using a router. For smaller
Gulliver’s travels. designs Balne often used lettering that was custom designed
32 Pyne, W.H., The costume of Great for single use, usually with the lettering reversed out of a
Britain, designed, engraved, and written by coloured background [fig. 31].
W.H. Pyne (London: William Miller, 1808) text
The largest surviving posters from the period are
facing pl. 43.
two-sheet double crown posters printed by Giles Balne
33 Presumably Pyne gives diameter rather (they measure approximately 100 × 76 cm, a double crown
than height because of the proliferation of
zeros in the ‘£20,000’ and ‘£30,000’ prizes
sheet being 30 × 20 inches or 76.2 × 50.8 cm). However, there
common in lottery advertising. is evidence that much larger posters were printed. Charles
34 Sheet from a Vauxhall Gardens poster
Dickens’s article on bill-sticking mentions the increase in
[Harvard Theatre poster sizes during the early nineteenth century from two-
sheet double crown to four-sheet posters that required two
bill-stickers working together, and he claims that the largest
poster ever printed was thirty-six sheets.30 W.H. Pyne also
recorded the large posters that were displayed around the
capital:
‘The exertions that characterise the dashing spirit of the times, is

visible in the printing of bills; every day some new mode of catching
the attention of the passing multitude is resorted to; witness
the bills six or eight feet long stuck upon the walls to announce
the exhibitions at our Amphitheatres, Circus’s [sic], Schools of
Bucephalus, &c. &c. Surely the printers of the nineteenth century
have proved, that “those who run may read.”
But it is to the managers of the lotteries that we owe the

merit of the Brobdingnagian31 style of printing; for under
their patronage, the letter founders have reached the ne plus
ultra of their art, in type of twelve inches in diameter; and
we have lived to see a £30,000 prize, printed thirty thousand
times as large as small pica!’32
While Dickens’s 36-sheet poster may seem unlikely, it
would have been necessary to print on something like that
scale if the type was twelve inches (approximately 30 cm) in
diameter.33 Given that Mary Gye claimed to print ‘Bills of any
dimensions’, it seems reasonable to assume that the Gye’s in
Bath, and Gye & Balne in London, produced such multi-sheet
posters. This theory is supported by a single surviving sheet
from a Vauxhall Gardens poster in the Theatre Collection at
Harvard University Library that features no text and only
part of a woodcut illustration and thus is likely to be part
of a much larger poster.34 There is also one extant poster

printed by Giles Balne which shows wood lettering even 35 Hansard, T.C., Typographia, (London:
Baldwin, Craddock & Joy, 1825) p. 359.
larger than that observed by Pyne: a single letter J which
is 73 cm tall (approximately 172-line pica) [fig. 32]. It may
have been a one-off but Hansard mentions a similar poster
produced for the lotteries: ‘What would these [eighteenth-
century] founders think of posters of the present day, when
a single letter, Q, is made to fill a whole broadsheet for a
lottery-puff?’35 The evidence is slim, and we will never know
whether this Q was of the same design as Balne’s letter J, but
31
Figure 31 Vauxhall Gardens bill.

Giles Balne (1830) 222 x 140 mm. [Private
collection]
Figure 32 Vauxhall Gardens poster.

Giles Balne (1830) 78 x 50 cm. [John Johnson
32 Collection; Posters: Vauxhall Gardens]
ROB BANHAM 21
it is tempting to think that Gye & Balne had a whole fount
of these letters and that this was what they claimed as ‘the
largest type in England’.
English printers continued to produce their own wood
lettering into the 1830s but the practice waned thereafter.
In the second half of the nineteenth century wood type
became easily available in a huge range of sizes and styles
from both the established typefoundries and specialist firms
such as Bonnewell and Delittle. The kind of decorative work
in which custom lettering continued to flourish became
the preserve of chromolithography, which was much better
suited to the production of highly intricate multi-colour
designs [fig. 33].
33b
Figure 33 a, b. Broadsheet Lord’s Prayer,

printed in around 18 colours from ink-drawn
stones by Hangard-Maugé, Paris (c.1870).
Sheet 610 x 508 mm; detail 148 x 223 mm.
Letterpress could not realistically hope to
compete with the detail and complexity
of such letterforms given the relative ease
with which they could be produced using
chromolithography. [Twyman, M., A history
of chromolithography: printed colour for all
(London: The British Library, 2013) p. 212] 33a

Eric Kindel
Stencil dies:
new tools for an old trade
Foreword 1 Eric Kindel, ‘Futura Black, c. 1860’,

congress of the Association Typographique
Internationale, Amsterdam, 10 October
This text is based on the paper ‘Futura Black, c. 1860’, 2013. See also Eric Kindel, ‘Stencil work in
delivered to the annual congress of the Association America, 1850-1900’, Baseline, 38, 2002,
pp. 5-12, and ‘Recollecting stencil letters’,
Typographique Internationale (ATypI) in October 2013.1 As Typography papers, 5 (Reading: Department
its title hints, the paper attempted to draw connections of Typography & Graphic Communication,
between the typeface Futura Black (and other stencil-like 2003) pp. 82–6, where elements of the
present essay were first discussed and
precursor letterforms and alphabets of the 1910s and 1920s) illustrated.
and the work of stencil die makers who were active in
the north-eastern United States in the middle decades of
the nineteenth century. While I was unable to detect any
direct historical links (and given the distance of time and
geography, I was perhaps not really expecting to find any),
I did explore morphological similarities—indeed these had
prompted the paper, and had supplied its rather glib title. But
again, the occurrence of similar forms in different eras was,
it seems, unconnected—historically or conceptually. So for
the present text I will focus only on the invention of stencil
dies in the nineteenth century, and leave aside any further
attempts to associate their forms with those devised by
twentieth-century modernists.
2 In North America, in the nineteenth Precursors: stencil letters and stencil dies
century, the tools discussed in this article
were almost invariably referred to as ‘dies’,
rather than ‘punches’ (with at least one Around 1850, in Boston in the north-eastern United States,
important exception, discussed below). a new tool was introduced to the work of cutting metal
Broadly speaking, dies perform the work of
cutting through, while punches are used to stencils. This tool was the stencil die, or punch, and with it
strike into. would come important changes to stencil letterforms and to
3 In 1837, in volumes reporting on
the stencil cutting trade.2
the exhibition and fair of the Charitable At present relatively little is known about stencil cutting
Mechanic Association in Boston, four in the USA prior to the middle of the nineteenth century.
individuals are variously commended for
stencil work, stencil cutting, and stencil
In Boston, it appears to have been practiced on a relatively
plates: T. O. Brackett, Nathaniel Dearborn, modest scale and not infrequently as an extension of or
S. W. Gill, and James Hall; of these, Dearborn adjunct to engraving.3 Stencil cutting methods, however,
is also commended for engraving work.
However, in the Directory of Boston for
were adapted to cutting through metal rather than only
1845, no individuals are listed under ‘stencil incising its surface, and would have involved the use of
cutters’, while in 1850, only one is listed gravers, knives, chisels, or acid (for etching). While the use
(though both listings may be incomplete).
In The Massachusetts State Directory for
of dies among engravers was well established, whether for
1850–1, four Boston stencil cutters are die sinking and seal engraving, or as the end-product of
listed. In the Directory of Boston for 1855, punchcutting (as applied to typefounding or bookbinding),
eight stencil cutters are listed. In major cities
elsewhere, stencil cutters who would later
dies had apparently not yet been used for cutting metal
gain prominence were starting in business stencils up to this time.
at around this time, including Silas H. Quint This last assertion, however, must be made reservedly.
(Philadelphia, 1849), James D. Matthews
(Pittsburgh, 1850), Shubael D. Childs
The reason: dies can be found in the vicinity of stencil
(Chicago, 1837; stencil work advertised from cutting considerably earlier than the mid-nineteenth
1851), Thomas N. Hickcox (New York, 1853). century, indicating that the combination of stencils and
4 For details and citations, see Kindel, dies would not have been entirely novel at this time. Several
‘Recollecting stencil letters’, p. 82 (n. 29). examples provide evidence. One is the use of emporte pièces
in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These
were either flat-faced dies, or hollow dies with sharp edges;
both were used for cutting out suit-signs from card, canvas,
or parchment to create stencils for printing playing cards
(fig. 1).4
24 STENCIL DIES
1
Figure 1 Emporte pièces, from

the article ‘Cartier’ (detail of plate 6),
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des
sciences, des arts, et des métiers, Diderot
and D’Alembert (eds.) (1751, etc.).
ERIC KINDEL 25
5 Set of brass stencils in walnut box, A second example is found in the work of Jean Gabriel Bery,
American Philosophical Society Museum,
Philadelphia. Apart from Bery’s maker’s mark, a maker of letters (faiseur de caractères) active in Paris in the
he may have employed a ring punch to cut 1780s. His maker’s marks, stamped into some of his stencil
dot elements in his decorated stencil letters plates, record a close proximity of dies and stencil letters,
and to cut inter-character spacing dots
after letters as an aid to spacing them. Dies even if the stencil letters themselves were not cut out in this
(‘punches’) are mentioned by a contemporary way (figure 2).5 A third example occurs in 1810, in England,
German observer, J. G. I. Breitkopf at around provided by George Cumberland who proposed stencils as a
the same time, when he praises the stencils
of Malo and son, faiseurs de caractères, Paris: handy way to print words and texts informally. The stencils,
‘I have been told that they [the stencils] are he claimed, could be made with dies (here termed punches):
pierced by hand, but the evenness of the “… let us suppose he were to make use of capital letters only,
letters and the[ir] modest price make one
suspect that they are struck with sharp steel acting as punches on paper, he would by this method have
punches.’ (‘Man hat mich zwar versichert, daß a paper stencil … common ingenuity might overcome the
sie aus freyer Hand ausgebrochen würden: difficulties of the O and other letters by ties.’6
aber sowohl die Gleichheit der Buchstaben,
als der geringe Preiß, lassen wahrscheinlich
vermuthen, daß sie durch scharfe stählerne
Stempel ausgeschlagen werden.’) Johann
Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf, Versuch, den
Ursprung der Spielkarten, die Einführung
des Leinenpapieres und den Anfang der
Holzschneidekunst in Europa zu erforschen,
zweyter Theil, aus des Verlassers Nachlasse
herausgegeben und mit einer Vorrede
begleitet von Johann Christian Friedrich Roch
(Leipzig: Roch und Compagnie, 1801), pp. 32–
3. Breitkopf died in 1794; his notes, collected
by Roch, therefore refer to observations made
before that date.
6 George Cumberland, ‘Hints on various

modes of printing from autographs’, A Journal
of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts,
January 1810 (collected in vol. 28, 1811), pp.
56–9. The model for Cumberland’s proposal
is not entirely clear, though it appears to be
printing type.
Figure 2 Stencil plate with maker’s

marks, etched brass with punched marks,
Jean Gabriel Bery, Paris, 1781. 77 × 53 mm.
American Philosophical Society Museum,
Philadelphia. 2
26 STENCIL DIES
Despite these intersections of dies and stencil cutting, there 7 [No author], Historical sketch of Boston,
containing a brief account of its settlement,
is no evidence of die-cut stencil letters in this early period. rise and progress, with a glance at its present
But knowledge of how dies performed in general gives an and prospective prosperity (Boston: Thom.
indication of their advantages: that shapes could be cut Adams and Edward L. Mitchell, 1861).8 8<?>
Historical sketch of Boston, p. 78. Marcus
with a single strike, which in turn produced the same cut- A. Metcalf (b. 1809); Mason Jerome Metcalf
out shape repeatedly—a considerable advantage when, for (1807–1883).
example, making stencils with arrays of suit-signs. This 8 A device sold as ‘Moore’s Marking
was also work of a kind that could be executed by someone Types’, consisting of (short) metal type and
possessing less skill than was needed to handle a graver, a cast metal case, in which up to nine (or
more) lines of type could be assembled
knife, or chisel expertly, or to undertake etching. These and clamped, was patented in England by
methods would require more time to perform than die the Bristol typefounder Isaac Moore and
cutting, and the form-making done with them would need to the printer William Pine in 1771 (patent no.
999). See Eric Kindel, ‘Patents progress: the
be done uniquely, as each job required; with dies, the forms Adjustable Stencil’, Journal of the Printing
themselves (if not their arrangement) were predetermined. It Historical Society, new series, no. 9, 2006,
seems likely that some of these reasons must have prompted p. 69, n. 4–5, where this device is discussed
as a precursor to the Adjustable Stencil; a
or encouraged the application of die-cutting to stencil letters contemporary advertisement is also quoted,
when this finally occurred. giving intended uses for marking linen
and books. Marking types were a spin-off
invention of printing and typefounding, in
which movable type was configured not
Invention: the stencil dies of M. J. Metcalf for specialists (i.e. printers) but for a general
clientele to use informally.
In 1861, a modest paper-covered book, Historical sketch 9 Maine state census, 1850: ‘Schedule
of Boston, was published in that city.7 The publication 5. – Products of industry in Monmouth in the
retailed the history of Boston, described prominent civic county of Kennebec, state of Maine during
the year ending June 1, 1850 …’.
and religious institutions, and presented brief accounts
of the city’s principal businesses, which in effect served
as advertisements. One such account was of the brothers
Marcus A. and Mason J. Metcalf, manufacturers of marking
equipment.
Hand stamps, for marking clothing. In 1834, M. A.
& M. J. Metcalf, established the business in Boston, of
manufacturing Hand Stamps and Indelible Ink for marking
clothing; and in 1851, M. J. Metcalf invented and put into
execution, in Boston, the plan of making Stencil Plates with
steel dies, for marking clothing, and Indelible Ink for the
same, which has taken the place and surpassed the former
plan of using type and hand stamps.8
The account of the Metcalf business in Historical sketch
of Boston is of undoubted value in locating and ascribing the
invention of stencil dies, and in providing a date for when
it took place. It is also valuable in describing the technical
basis from which the invention evolved, namely from
‘marking types’. These were movable metal types that were
fixed together and used as a hand stamp for marking.9 The
ERIC KINDEL 27
10 Simeon M. Metcalf (1818–c. 1858/9). account thus confirms links between typefounding, marking
11 Biographical details for Mason Metcalf types, and stencil cutting. The Metcalf brothers possessed
are drawn from Appleton’s cyclopedia of these skills collectively: Mason (figure 3) as stencil cutter,10
American biography, James Grant Wilson,
John Fiske, Stanley L. Klos (eds) (New York:
Marcus as typefounder (listed in the Directory of Boston
D. Appleton and Company, 1887–9) vol. 4, for 1845), and a third Metcalf brother, Simeon, as die-sinker
p. 311; see also John Howard Brown (ed.), (listed in the same directory for 1850)11 Their skills brought
Lamb’s biographical dictionary of the United
States (Boston: Federal Book Company of
together precisely the right expertise needed to carry out the
Boston, 1900–3, vol. 7), p. 100. Harry H. manufacture of stencil dies.
Cochrane, History of Monmouth and Wales Although the account in Historical sketch of Boston
(East Winthrop, ME: Banner Co., 1897, pp.
691–3) describes Metcalf as a resident of
states that the plan to make stencil plates with dies was ‘put
Monmouth, with business interests in Boston. into execution’ in Boston, the invention of stencil dies itself
He does not appear in Boston business may have taken place in Monmouth, Maine, a town about
directories in the 1840s or 1850s; he does
so only in 1860, after moving to Boston for a
150 miles (245 km) north of Boston, where Mason Metcalf
period of years (discussed below). had his permanent residence.12 Monmouth was a prosperous
farming and mill community; here, Metcalf was a farmer
12 The dies survive, together with other
Metcalf artefacts and documents, at the while pursuing other commercial activities, including stencil
Monmouth Museum. Among the artefacts cutting (figures 4, 5). It is here that what appears to be an
relating to Mason Metcalf’s stencil work
early possibly — trial — set of stencil dies survives.13
are stencil tools, including several sets of
dies, and numerous stencil plates, some
apparently tests of small-size dies; this
material is housed in Metcalf’s original 10 ×
10 foot stencil shop (interior plastering dated
1854). Also preserved are samples of Mason
Metcalf’s stencil work stencilled on paper
and cloth, and later circulars, catalogues,
and posters from the Metcalfs’ Boston
business (discussed below).
13 It seems clear that small-size dies were

the first to be devised, perhaps because
small stencil letters were otherwise difficult
or impossible to cut with chisels or gravers. It
was possible to etch them, though it seems
that stencil cutters in North America were
not as well acquainted with this technique as
their European counterparts.
Figure 3 Mason Jerome Metcalf, date

not known. 3
28 STENCIL DIES
14 Addresses are in Monmouth, elsewhere
in Maine (Augusta, Bath, Gardiner),
Massachusetts (Boston, Charlestown,
Lowell, Newburyport, Randolph, Salem),
and Connecticut (Wallingford). Names
and associated addresses were traced for
businesses in Boston using the Directory of
Boston for 1845, 1850, 1855, and 1860.
4
5
The dies, comprising incomplete alphabets of capital and

small letters, appear crudely cut, but to a purpose (figure 6).
The ends of the steel bars have been sawn and filed to form
simple geometric elements comprising only the thick parts
of conventional letters; no thin parts or serifs are present.
Given the size of the letters (about 3 mm, capital height) Figure 4 Stencil shop of Mason
and the cutting tools used, it seems that no other result was Jerome Metcalf, Momnouth, Maine, interior
possible. The results are stark and unconventional, and may plastered in 1852. Monmouth Museum,
Monmouth, Maine.
represent a first phase of inventing in which Mason Metcalf
felt unconstrained by convention, but instead was guided Figure 5 Stencil shop interior with
surviving tools, stencils, cutting blocks,
only by the forms his tools could generate at this small scale. and workbench. Monmouth Museum,
Equally, perhaps, he was anticipating the work the dies Monmouth, Maine.
would eventually perform, namely, being struck repeatedly Figure 6 Stencil dies (and detail), steel,
through brass into a hard support. For this, suitably robust probably cut by Mason Jerome Metcalf,
letterforms were a necessity (figure 7).14 c. early 1850s. Monmouth Museum,
Monmouth, Maine.
ERIC KINDEL 29
15 Metcalf advertisements up to 1860 offer Astonishing though it is that Mason Metcalf’s apparently
several glimpses of their operations. In 1853,
S. M. Metcalf advertised ‘Stencil plates and early dies survive, so too do various items of stencilled
indelible ink, for marking clothing, books, commercial ephemera made at around this time with dies
cards, &c. … Agents supplied in any part of of the same or similar design, and which Metcalf apparently
the United States and Canada’, suggesting
that orders from agents would be filled, preserved as records of work. While the items are not dated,
but not that agents would be equipped they fall roughly into the period 1850–55, based on the
with stencil cutting tools; Windham County evidence of when named individuals or businesses occupied
Democrat (Brattleboro, Vermont; October
12, 1853). In 1855, Metcalf advertisements the addresses shown.15 Items are variously composed with
announce a ‘new style of stencil plates’ capital and small letters in upright and backslanting roman
with names cut in ‘writing letters’, that styles, in several sizes, indicating that Metcalf had soon
is, in a cursive script cut with dies. While
advertisements from 1855 onwards offer equipped himself with a considerable range of dies. Some
‘stencil stock’, wholesale and retail, the represent attempts to cut more conventional letters with
earliest offering of stencil dies is not found serifs, while others follow the style of the surviving dies,
until 1861, that is to say, the same year the
Historical sketch of Boston was published. shorn of all detail, producing highly coherent and again quite
unconventional — indeed startling — sets of letterforms
16 Mason Metcalf never secured a patent
for stencil dies, perhaps concluding that
(figures 8–12). The use of small-size dies no doubt increased
because dies were not a new tool they were the speed at which stencils could be cut, and in addition to
not patentable, even if their application to name plates for marking clothing, they allowed certain kinds
stencil letter cutting was apparently novel.
A later source giving biographical details
of commercial ephemera (business cards, receipts, labels) to
about Metcalf mentions both his invention be produced at this (small) scale.
of stencil dies and his failure to patent them. Important though the Monmouth artefacts and documents
‘His most important invention was a method
of producing letter-stencils by means of
are for illustrating the early design and use of dies, there is
dies, which he was the first to practise and at present little evidence of the arrangements the Metcalfs
bring into use. Up to that time such stencils subsequently adopted for die manufacturing. The testimony
had been made entirely with chisels. …
None of his inventions were ever patented.’
provided by the Historical sketch of Boston only states that
Appleton’s cyclopedia of American ‘the plan of making stencil plates with steel dies’ was put
biography, vol. 4, p. 311. into execution in Boston. It is known that during these years,
Mason Metcalf moved between Monmouth and Boston,
presumably supporting the Metcalf stencil business there.
Notably, Metcalf advertisements from this time appear
under the name ‘S. M. Metcalf’, indicating that it was Simeon,
a full-time resident of Boston, who ran the business. But
the advertisements make no reference to dies or other
stencil tools, only stencil cutting services. This raises the
7 question of whether the Metcalfs manufactured dies only for
themselves, or if they were also sold to others in the trade or
to the general public.16
Figure 7 Stencil plate for R. N. B.

Cunningham, die-cut brass with zinc frame,
probably cut by M. J. Metcalf, c. 1850–55.
Monmouth Museum, Monmouth, Maine.
30 STENCIL DIES
8
Figure 8 Die-cut letters, numbers,

sorts, brass, probably cut by Mason Jerome
10 Metcalf, date not known. Approx. 30 ×
100mm. Monmouth Museum, Monmouth,
Maine. This appears to be a trial design for
a ‘plain roman’ or ‘coarse roman’, as later
named in Metcalf commercial ephemera.
Figure 9 Stencilled receipt, Geo. H.

Mitchell, Boston, c. early 1850s. Monmouth
Museum, Monmouth, Maine.
Figure 10 Stencilled business card for

T. Eaton Jr, c. 1850s. Monmouth Museum,
Monmouth, Maine.
ERIC KINDEL 31
17 Adoniram Judson Fullam (1835–1900).
18 Geo. P. Rowell & Co., The men

who advertise: an account of successful
advertisers together with hints on the
method of advertising (New York: Nelson
Chesman, 1870) p. 108.
11
12
Commercialization: A. J. Fullam’s American Stencil
Tool Works
The 1861 account of Mason Metcalf’s invention of stencil

dies in the Historical sketch of Boston occurs at a time other
13 manufacturers in the north-eastern United States had begun
making dies as well. Perhaps the Metcalfs wanted to remind
the public about who had invented them17; or they felt that
they were missing a commercial opportunity they were
well-placed to exploit. They may have noticed the growing
volume of advertisements for stencil dies, which when
purchased would give their buyers a ready means to practise
stencil cutting; or they were disconcerted by a patent granted
in April 1860 for the manufacture of stencil dies. Both these
latter developments could be traced to an enterprising
stencil die maker located to the west, in Springfield, Vermont:
A. J. Fullam.
How Adoniram Judson Fullam18 (figure 14) entered the
business of stencil die manufacture is recorded in a book
Figure 11 Stencilled business card for
published by the New York advertising agency, Geo. P. Rowell
R. T and J. I. Bosworth, c. 1850s. Monmouth
Museum, Monmouth, Maine. & Co., which profiled many of its clients. There, Fullam’s early
efforts to establish himself in business are described — with
Figure 12 Stencilled paper label for
Howard, c. 1850s. Monmouth Museum,
a touch of romance:
Monmouth, Maine.
This gentleman [A. J. Fullam] commenced as a poor farmer’s boy
Figure 13 Advertising stencil for when he made his start in life. He made his first set of stencil
M[ason]. J[erome]. Metcalf, chisel-cut
tools in 1856, without pattern, or without ever having seen any
brass, c. 1850s. 143 × 215 mm. Monmouth
Museum, Monmouth, Maine. before. This was at the shop of Briggs & Hodgman, blacksmiths, at
32 STENCIL DIES
Saratoga Springs, and the undertaking occupied him six weeks. In 19 Geo. P. Rowell & Co., The men who
advertise, p. 108. The profile also states that
the meantime he struck and blew at the anvil and bellows one hour Fullam bought the property of the Black
each day in order to pay for the use of blacksmith’s tools, not tasting River Company for three thousand dollars;
a morsel of anything but common baker’s bread during the time, this company was located in Springfield,
Vermont, and it apparently became the site
and sleeping under the broad canopy of heaven, with the root of a of Fullam’s stencil business. Patent details:
friendly oak for his pillow.19 Adoniram J. Fullam, ‘Punch’, letters patent
no. 27,793, April 10, 1860, Washington D. C.:
United States Patent Office (discussed
Fullam no doubt supplied these details himself and they below). This is an exceptional occurrence
flatter, not least in their tale of hard-won effort and ex nihilo of the term ‘punch’ (rather than ‘die’),
creation. The profile continues: though its use was possibly dictated by
USPO terminology. Fullam also patented a
‘[a]s soon as his tools were completed he commenced cutting and stencilling device: ‘Stencil-printing machine’,
letters patent no. 30,216, October 2, 1860.
selling stencil plates’, that he made ‘a little money by this’, and that
he ‘secured a patent on his tools, and commenced advertising.’20 20 Burlington Free Press (Burlington,
Vermont; September 24, 1858). This
Advertisements for Fullam’s stencil tools are, in fact, found advertisement gives Fullam’s address as
as early as 1858 (and possibly earlier), for example in the Springfield, Vermont. The advertisement
does not mention the sale of stencil dies
Burlington Free Press: ‘The Golden Secret: $100 per month explicitly, except when Fullam notes the
can be cleared at cutting and selling [stencil] name plates for diploma he was awarded for the ‘best
marking clothing. One hour’s practice will make you perfect stencil tools on exhibition’ at the Vermont
State Agricultural Society; but their supply
master of the art.… Material to make plates of, and every is clearly implied. A later advertisement in
thing connected with the business furnished.’21 the same newspaper (November 12, 1858)
records awards Fullam received at the
Connecticut River Valley Fair and the New
York State Fair.
21 The American Stencil Tool Works

was still located in Springfield, Vermont,
with Fullam named as proprietor. An
advertisement in July, in Scientific American
(July 3, 1860), makes no mention of the
new company, while in August it is named
in advertisements in the Nashville Union
and American (Nashville, Tennessee; August
3, 1860) and in the Vermont Watchman
and State Journal (Montpelier, Vermont;
August 10 and 24, 1860); Fullam also listed
offices at 13 Merchants’ Exchange, Boston
(‘Eastern Office’) and 212 Broadway, New
York (‘Principal Office’). The advertisement
in the Nashville newspaper additionally lists
Springfield businessmen certifying Fullam as
responsible and honourable. One of those
listed, Geo[rge]. W. Porter, treasurer of the
Springfield Savings Bank, had also served as
a witness to Fullam’s ‘Punch’ patent.
Figure 14 Adoniram Judson Fullam,

14 date not known.
ERIC KINDEL 33
22 See advertisements in the Nashville At this time, Fullam offered dies in only a single size, supplied
Union and American and Vermont
Watchman and State Journal, cited in with instructions, for ten dollars. In 1860, his advertisements
previous note. begin to appear frequently, coinciding it seems with at least
23 See, for example, advertisements in the
two developments in his business. One was the patent he
New-York Daily Tribune (September 29 and had secured in April; the second, probably related to the first,
October 17, 1860): ‘Large and small steel was the establishment of a new company that summer, the
dies, whole letters, two alphabets, figures
and border tools, with sixteen chisels and
American Stencil Tool Works.22
gouges for large work, with a quantity of Advertisements from the latter half of 1860 give prominent
stock sufficient to retail for $150. Square, mention to Fullam’s patented tools and to him as patentee.23
compass, finishing plate, polishing brush,
framer, shears, smoothing stone, die-case,
In August 1860, his ten-dollar outfit was still on offer,
curve pattern, sample designs, hammer advertised for cutting small name plates and business
and block, with recipe for indelible ink cards; dies for cutting large work were newly offered for
and mercantile stencil ink; all necessary
instruction for cutting stencil frames, making
$25. By September, Fullam was advertising a stencil outfit
stencil brushes, and in short the whole fully equipped for anyone wanting to get into the stencil
system of carrying on the stencil business business, still priced at only ten dollars; he also boasted of the
at wholesale, with sufficient stock and tools
of every description, warranted perfect,
substantial capital investment he had made in his company.24
or exchanged at any time free for new. In the years that followed, Fullam continued to promote
This whole outfit, entire and complete, is his patented tools in advertisements and circulars. His patent
furnished for $10. Dies all patented.’ The
advertisement continues: ‘The American
no doubt gave him a means to warn off competitors, even if
Stencil Tool Works, at Springfield, Vermont, in practice he could only claim a particular manufacturing
have a cash fund of $20,000 invested technique, not stencil dies themselves (figure 15).25
exclusively in the manufacture of stencil
tools, having the largest and most valuable
Newspaper reports provide periodic glimpses of Fullam’s
waterpower in the state, with a wheel commercial fortunes: one, in particular, records a severe
of seventy-five horse power, affording injury sustained by one of Fullam’s workmen in October 1860,
customers infinite advantages.’
caught in rotary machinery very likely associated with the
24 The technique involved cutting away kind of die manufacture described in Fullam’s patent.26 And
the sides of the punch (die) with a grinding
in an advertisement of February 1862, some ten months after
wheel; the claim was that this produced a
punch capable of cutting through metal the start of the American Civil War, Fullam directed himself
while leaving little or no underside bur. to a new group of customers — soldiers:
It was also claimed that the technique
A. J. Fullam’s stencil cutting tools, for the use of any
produced a more durable punch by leaving
more metal intact to support the face. soldier who wishes to clear a few hundred dollars extra by
furnishing his comrades with plates to mark their clothing,
25 See advertisements in the Nashville
Union and American and Vermont
equipments, &c. Circular, samples, and ‘view of headquarters,’
Watchman and State Journal, cited in sent free by mail.27 And whether through sales to soldiers, or
previous note. to civilians joining the stencil-cutting trade during the war,
26 See, for example, advertisements in the Fullam probably benefitted from the conflict, as it appears
New-York Daily Tribune (September 29 and that name plates were much in demand from soldiers to
October 17, 1860): ‘Large and small steel
dies, whole letters, two alphabets, figures
mark their weapons, equipment, and other belongings. For
and border tools, with sixteen chisels and those who became casualties, such marks or the stencil plate
gouges for large work, with a quantity of itself would also serve to identify them.28
stock sufficient to retail for $150. Square,
compass, finishing plate, polishing brush,
framer, shears, smoothing stone, die-case,
curve pattern, sample designs, hammer
and block, with recipe for indelible ink
and mercantile stencil ink; all necessary
34 STENCIL DIES
instruction for cutting stencil frames, making
stencil brushes, and in short the whole
system of carrying on the stencil business
at wholesale, with sufficient stock and tools
of every description, warranted perfect,
or exchanged at any time free for new.
This whole outfit, entire and complete, is
furnished for $10. Dies all patented.’ The
advertisement continues: ‘The American
Stencil Tool Works, at Springfield, Vermont,
have a cash fund of $20,000 invested
exclusively in the manufacture of stencil
tools, having the largest and most valuable
waterpower in the state, with a wheel
of seventy-five horse power, affording
customers infinite advantages.’
27 The technique involved cutting away

the sides of the punch (die) with a grinding
wheel; the claim was that this produced a
punch capable of cutting through metal
while leaving little or no underside bur.
It was also claimed that the technique
produced a more durable punch by leaving
more metal intact to support the face.
28 ‘Serious accident. A correspondent

informs us that a young man from Alstead,
N[ew]. H[ampshire]., named Grimes, in the
employ of Mr. Fullam stencil manufacturer,
Springfield, Vt., received a probably fatal
injury on the 12th. He was adjusting a belt
when his clothes were caught by a shaft,
revolving 150 times per minute, and he was
carried over it about 50 times, breaking both
legs, one three times above the knee, the
other once, one arm was also broken and
his head badly bruised. He was alive and
conscious on the 13th, but no effort is made
to relieve him, as his case seems hopeless.’
The Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, Vermont;
15 October 17, 1860). Two days later, a report in
the Burlington Free Press (October 19, 1860)
described the injuries as fatal.
Figure 15 Specification drawing for

‘Punch’, Adoniram J. Fullam, U. S. letters
patent no. 27,793, 10 April 1860.
ERIC KINDEL 35
29 27 The National Republican (February In 1865, Fullam issued a large-format circular whose
21, 1862). The ‘view of headquarters’
may have been ‘a beautiful photograph size and confident text suggests that his business was
of the American Stencil Tool Works and prospering.29 One side of the circular was given over entirely
surrounding scenery, on the Black River’, to a large wood engraving of the America Stencil Tool
which Fullam had offered in advertisements
of August, 1860 (cited in n. 22; see also figure Works (figure 16). On the reverse, the letters and numerals
16). of Fullam’s large (1-inch) dies are shown (figure 17) opposite
30 While many stencil names plates
a lengthy text announcing his dies and explaining the many
survive bearing the names, company, and benefits of stencil plates and stencil cutting.
regimental designations of soldiers serving He encouraged those who might take up the work to
in the war (overwhelmingly those on the
Union side), it is not clear whether these
seek orders from farmers, who Fullam claimed were at once
were made by established stencil cutters, ‘destitute’ of a way to mark their grain bags, buffalo robes,
by sutlers serving army encampments, or and horse blankets, and yet had never more able to afford
by soldiers.
stencils, since the past five years (presumably those of the
Civil War, 1861–5) had been prosperous ones, during which
their harvests had commanded high prices. Stencil-cutting
made economic sense, and everything needed was supplied
in Fullam’s outfit; weighing ‘only’ 25 pounds (11½ kg), it could
be ‘easily carried in one hand’ by the intrepid canvasser. After
further inducements to his readers to try stencil cutting,
Fullam concluded his text with the same list of Springfield
businessmen that had appeared in earlier advertisements,
attesting to their acquaintance with Fullam and to his honest
dealings.
Soon after Fullam issued his circular, his fortunes were
temporarily reversed when, in late 1865, the American
Stencil Tool Works were destroyed by a fire that additionally
damaged or destroyed the neighbouring Black River paper
mills, whose buildings Fullam also owned.30 Newspaper
reports that Fullam planned to build anew appear to be born
out by the eventual resumption of his business. At around
this time, a new ‘Western Office’ was opened in St. Louis,
Missouri, while newspapers advertisements continue to
appear, now in Texas, California, and even Mexico, as Fullam
sought out new markets for his stencil dies.
36 STENCIL DIES
16
Figure 16 View of the American Stencil

Tool Works, Springfield, Vermont, wood
engraving. 33 ´ 43 cm. From a circular of the
office of A. J. Fullam’s American Stencil Tool
Works, c. 1865. Special Collections, Bailey/
Howe Library, University of Vermont.
ERIC KINDEL 37
31 Circular, ‘Dear Sir:– I take pleasure in Consolidation: stencil outfits by S. M. Spencer
calling your attention to my recently invented
patent Stencil Dies …’, office of A. J. Fullam’s
American Stencil Tool Works, c. 1865. Special In April, 1866, Helen A. Cunningham, living in Granville,
Collections, Bailey/Howe Library, University Vermont, wrote to her brother Henry E. Blake, in Brattleboro,
of Vermont. While advertisements in The
Vermont Transcript (St. Albans, Vermont; July complaining about an order she had placed for a set of
28, 1865) and the Army and Navy Journal stencil dies.31 Two months earlier, having sent fifteen dollars
(September 30, 1865) make reference to for a set of stencil tools, she now despaired of ever receiving
this circular, an internal date of November
1865 found in the copy at the Bailey/Howe them. The manufacturer to whom she had sent her order
Library suggests that its text was periodically was A. J. Fullam. About two weeks after sending it, she
updated. received a reply from Fullam acknowledging the order, but
also informing her that he could not fill it because of a fire
at his factory. But he would, he assured her, fill the order just
as soon as his works were fitted out again. Not able to wait,
Cunningham asked for her money back, but instead received
only another Fullam circular advertising large dies (probably
the circular shown in figures 16, 17).
17
Figure 17 Specimen of 1-inch (approx. Confused, she wrote again to relay her ‘candid opinion of his
25 mm) letters and numbers. From a circular proceedings’, and in reply Fullam promised that he would
of the office of A. J. Fullam’s American
Stencil Tool Works, c. 1865. Special
send the tools as soon as possible, in three or four weeks.
Collections, Bailey/Howe Library, University She then heard nothing more. After proposing to her brother
of Vermont. The dies for these characters various means by which she might recover her money, she
were probably flat-faced since they are
linked to Fullam’s patent (see figure 15);
(not surprisingly) concluded that Fullam was not to be
nowhere in the circular is reference made trusted, and that his circular was ‘entirely too bombastic’.
to dies with a sharp raised edges, which She ended her account by saying that she had recently
feature in advertisements by other makers.
Fullam also offered small dies for cutting
seen an advertisement in The Agriculturalist for stencil
name plates, but they are neither shown in tools superior to those of Fullam, made by a company in
this circular nor is their size given; they were Brattleboro named Spencer & Co. Having sent for Spencer’s
supplied in an outfit sold for $15.
38 STENCIL DIES
circular, she discovered that she ‘liked the tone in which it is 32 ‘Fires. The Black River paper mills and
American Stencil Tools Works, at Springfield,
written much better than the other, as well as the specimens’, were burnt on the 20th. The buildings were
and thought she might order a set of these tools instead. owned by A. J. Fullam, who was insured for
S. M. Spencer & Co. was the stencil business established by $1000, his loss being four or five thousand.
… Mr. Fullam is building anew. …’ Vermont
Silas Metcalf Spencer.32 By the time the company came to the Watchman and State Journal (December 29,
notice of Helen Cunningham, Spencer had been in business 1865); the same item also appears on this
in Brattleboro for at least two years. He had apparently date in The Caledonian.
become acquainted with stencil die manufacturing in the 33 Letter Helen A. Cunningham to Henry E.
factory of his brother-in-law, in Brandon, Vermont.33 In Blake, April 17, 1866. Manuscript file, Special
Collections, Bailey/Howe Library, University
1863 and 1864 Spencer took a stake in, and then purchased of Vermont.
outright, the stencil die factory of D. L. Milliken, who had
himself been in business since at least 1859.34 Around the 34 Silas Metcalf Spencer (b. 1842). Spencer
was distantly related to the Metcalfs
time of the Cunningham letter, Spencer had taken a new through his mother, Louisa Metcalf.
partner into his business and was apparently doing well.35 Biographical details about Spencer are
In 1867–8, Spencer issued one of the most elaborate principally from Geo. P. Rowell & Co.,
The men who advertise, pp. 116–17; and
catalogues that any stencil die manufacturer would produce, John Hill Walbridge, Wilmington, Vermont
which describes stencil work with dies in considerable (Wilmington, VT: The Times Press, 1900)
detail (figure 18, a–f).36 Its text begins with a homily on the pp. 65–6.
happiness that comes with an occupation well chosen, 35 At present, the name of this
one that is honourable and independent. Stencil work manufacturer is not known, though he may
have been ‘Skeeles’, since Spencer married
was such an occupation, filling a universal need to mark Jennie Skeeles of Brandon in 1861 or 1862.
articles of all kinds: ‘clothing, hats, bonnets, gloves, boots, See Walbridge, Wilmington, Vermont, p. 66.
umbrellas, books, cards, envelopes, writing paper, blankets, 36 An advertisement for Milliken in the
boxes, barrels, merchandise, farm tools, robes, etc., etc., etc.’ Vermont Phoenix (Brattleboro, Vermont; July
Stencil marking prevented the loss or theft of belongings, 16, 1859) gives his location as Manchester,
expedited freight of every description, and enabled patented Vermont, about 30 miles (50 km) north-west
of Brattleboro. Milliken’s advertisement was a
articles to be designated as such, as required by law. Stencil call for agents ‘to sell stencil name plates, of
work brought profit, whether from cutting names plates rich and varied design, for marking clothing,
for individuals or business plates to service the incessant books, cards, etc.’. The advertisement went
on: ‘Persons desirous of travelling, and by
demands of commerce. A great advantage of the work was observation enrich their minds with a stock
the opportunity to canvass for orders. Canvassing was of varied and useful knowledge which
a healthful pursuit, allowing one to acquire knowledge cannot be obtained from books; and their
pockets with bank notes – which cannot
of human nature, cultivate the art of pleasing, exercise but ever be agreeable companions – will
ingenuity, and improve one’s artistic taste and genius. It do well to engage in this light and pleasant
offered the opportunity to travel, observe customs and employment …’.
manners in different places, and overcome one’s diffidence.

The work could be pursued full-time or part-time, and was
open to men and women. Indeed, considerable emphasis
was laid on the latter (which may explain why Helen
Cunningham liked Spencer’s tone):
Ladies can make stencil plates, often with better success than
gentlemen. Their quick perception enables them to judge more
correctly, and their refined taste renders important service in
adapting appropriate styles to different circumstances. They often
ERIC KINDEL 39
37 Geo. P. Rowell & Co., The men who read human nature better than men, the business is light and
advertise, p. 116, states that ‘on April 1, 1866,
Mr. Spencer received as equal partner in the pleasant, and a new field for usefulness is opened to them promising
concern Mr. O. B. Douglas … under the name ample remuneration.
and style of S. M. Spencer & Co.’ Spencer’s
own catalogue of 1867–8 (discussed below)
added that Lieutenant O. B. Douglas took
part in the ‘war for the Union’ and had been
wounded at the battle of Shiloh (Tennessee,
April 1862).
18a 18f
18b
18c
18d 18e
The catalogue’s presentation of its ‘improved’ dies is

impressive. They are introduced as ‘all of steel, each die being
separately and carefully finished by hand and properly
tempered and faced. Our improvement is in the style of
letter, the material and the finish of the die.’ Six styles of
Figure 18 Catalogue of improved stencil letter (Roman, Forwardslant, Backslant, Gothic Plain, Gothic
dies manufactured by S. M. Spencer & Co.,
Brattleboro, Vermont, 1867–8. Winterthur
Ornamented, Open Ionic) were available, distributed across
Museum Library. (a) Front and back covers a range of twenty sizes.37 Sizes larger than ¼-inch (i.e. 3/8-,
(b) pp. 6–7 (c) pp. 8–9 (d) pp. 10–11 (e) pp. ½-, ¾-, and 1-inch) were ‘hollow faced’ with sharp raised
12–13 (f) [becomes 18 a]
40 STENCIL DIES
edges, while smaller sizes (down to 3/32-inch) were flat faced.
Considerable emphasis was placed on Spencer’s ‘Twenty Five
Dollar Outfit’, which was complete with all the tools and
supplies a person needed ‘to begin and successfully carry on
stencil cutting in the name plate department’ (figures 19–21).
The outfit came with instructions, a Confidential pamphlet
with tips for how to find success as a canvasser, a license to
use Spencer’s copyrighted stencil designs, a notice (‘Stencil
Work!’) to advertise a canvassing stencil cutter’s arrival in
town, and a booklet for keeping accounts, in the back of
which were sample designs (shown on paper and cloth) and
a group of sample plates (figures 22–24). Equipped with this
panoply of tools, supplies, and documents, the work was
thereafter ‘almost as simple and easy as driving a nail into
a board.’ Filling four pages at the back of the catalogue are
testimonials from satisfied purchasers; correspondents
hailed from eighteen states in the north-east, middle-west,
south, and west of the country. Spencer also included a page
of character references from bankers, manufacturers, and
public officials.
19
Figure 19 ‘S. M. Spencer’s $25.00 dollar

outfit’, wood-engraving, c. 1870s.
Figure 20 S. M. Spencer & Co., $25.00

20 dollar outfit, unpacked, c. 1870.
ERIC KINDEL 41
21a 21b
21c 21d
Figure 21 (a)–(d). S. M. Spencer & Co.,

dies, steel, 1/8-inch (approx. 3 mm) capital
height, c. later 1860s / 1870s.
Figure 22 ‘S. M. Spencer’s stencil

designs. Assignment of copy-right’, 1870.
Figure 23 Advertising notice for

canvassing stenciller, S. M. Spencer, c. later
1860s/1870s. 22 23
42 STENCIL DIES
24b
24c
24a
24d
Figure 24 ‘Copyrighted stencil designs
24e and sample plates …’, canvasser’s booklet, S.
M. Spencer & Co., c. 1870.
(a) Front cover.
(b) Stencil designs on paper.
(c) Stencil designs on linen.
(d) Sample stencil name plates.
(e) Sample stencil name plate, shown actual
size.
ERIC KINDEL 43
38 Catalogue of improved stencil dies. Apart from the earnest sales pitch of Spencer’s catalogue,
Manufactured by S. M. Spencer & Co.
Brattleboro Vt. Entered accord’g to act of and its varied offering of stencil dies and supplies, it is
Congress in the year 1867 by S. M. Spencer instructive to look at the sample designs it displays in an
& Co. in the Clerk’s Office of the U. S. Court, attempt to identify and expand the references they appear to
Vt., 24 pp (including covers). Winterthur
Museum Library (Wilmington, DE), NK8650 make. One reference occurs in the sample ‘Jennie’, probably
S74 TC. In the foreword (‘a card’), the to S. M. Spencer’s wife (see n. 33). Another is the sample ‘Geo.
catalogue is described as revised; internal P. Rowell & Co.’, which appears to confirm that Spencer &
testimonials are dated 1866, 1867, and
1868. Quotations that follow are from this Co. employed the same advertising agency as A. J. Fullam.
catalogue. But most intriguing is the sample ‘Beware of insane stencil
39 All the dies are described as ‘whole’ (i.e.
makers’, followed by the text ‘… or rather Stencil Die maker.’
‘each die [is] complete in itself, and will make Both references appear to link up with others elsewhere in
a perfect stencil letter’) except the Open catalogue, such as ‘unscrupulous and insane competitors
Ionic style. Its design, which incorporated a
mid-stem dot motif, was apparently cut in
have besieged us’, and ‘cheap tools are a cheat, though they
two stages and probably required the use of may be “patented” and puffed by the biggest Gas bag in the
a second die for making the dots. country. We would sooner dispense with our dinner than
40 Mark Twain, The innocents abroad, offer or sell such’. Taken together, it is difficult to avoid the
1869. Twain’s early work as a typesetter and conclusion that Spencer is referring to A. J. Fullam, the
printer may have encouraged his notice of
only known holder of a stencil die patent. One possible
stencils and stencilling. He incorporated
them into his writing on at least two later explanation for these remarks – supported by yet another
occasions; see Kindel, ‘Stencil work in sample: ‘We still live, give us a trial, 1867’ – is that sometime
America, 1850–1900’, pp. 10, 12.
prior to the catalogue’s publication, Fullam sued Spencer for
patent infringement (or threatened to). Perhaps the outcome
of this putative legal action is given by another of the
catalogue’s samples: ‘W. E. BEATEM. 1867. S. M. S. & CO.’38
Progress and decline: the legacy of stencil dies

By the end of the Civil War, several manufacturers of stencil
dies and related tools were active supplying stencil cutting
businesses, tempting new stencil cutters into the trade (some
probably ex-soldiers39), and meeting the retail demand for
name plates that their tools had created. Name plates were
sufficiently popular in 1869 for Mark Twain to draw on them
as topical detail in a scene of pilgrims in the Holy Land:
We visited … a new chapel, in the midst of the town, which is built
around a boulder some twelve feet long by four feet thick; the priests
discovered, a few years ago, that the disciples had sat upon this
rock to rest, once, when they had walked up from Capernaum ….
Our pilgrims would have liked very well to get out their lampblack
and stencil-plates and paint their names on that rock, together with
the names of the villages they hail from in America, but the priests
permit nothing of that kind.40
44 STENCIL DIES
Advertising notices, circulars, and catalogues provide 41 Stencil guide and descriptive
catalogue of stencil materials, &c., Stafford
evidence of other stencil tool manufacturers besides Manufacturing Co., 66 Fulton Street, New
Metcalf, Fullam, and Spencer. Among them was the Stafford York, June, 1871.
Manufacturing Co. in New York City. Stafford’s catalogue of

1871 states that its principal trade was in stencil tools and
stock, and provides valuable testimony, by way of a preamble,
for the development of stencil dies and the (then) present
state of the business:
The stencil business was formerly confined to cutting with chisels,
acids or gravers, either process being slow, plates were expensive
and little used. Since the introduction of dies, the business has
been steadily increasing; with them ordinary workmen can cut the
majority of plates more rapidly than the most skillful are able to by
hand. …
Small dies were the first used to any extent. Although among the
first who had an assortment, ten years ago [i.e. 1861] we cut most of
our large plates with chisels. Their manufacture being imperfectly
understood, it was thought by many to be impossible to make
large dies satisfactorily. Time and experience have overcome the
difficulties, however. We worked gradually, until we had different
sizes and styles, from the smallest to two inches and cut nearly all
plates, except the fancy letters, with them. …
The plates are wanted everywhere to mark clothing, books, &c. The
demand is increasing, as they become more generally introduced.
… Many, not knowing where they can be obtained, will order when
called upon. They will not go out of fashion. Each plate has to be
made to order, and cannot be kept for sale. New names are required;
and old plates are wearing out, consequently the market can never
be overstocked. Many are making money at the business, and there is
room for more.41
The catalogue illustrates Stafford’s own innovations, such

as its patented ‘Stencil Gauge’ for positioning dies accurately
in a line. At the back are hints to canvassers on how best to
conduct themselves in their chosen trade.
Away from the north-eastern states, another
manufacturer of stencil dies, John C. Hilton, had started in
business in Chicago. His catalogue, also of 1871, lists three
styles of dies in a range of sizes, outfits for both stencil
cutting and making key checks, as well as an extensive
inventory of stencil supplies. Unusually, the samples in
his catalogue were all stencilled (i.e. not printed), as Hilton
ERIC KINDEL 45
42 Wholesale price list of John C. Hilton’s felt this offered a more direct and genuine representation
stencil tools and materials, John C. Hilton,
No. 1 Clark Street, Chicago, 1871. Emphasis of their qualities. Perhaps somewhat insecure about
in original. perceptions of manufacturing in the middle west, he was
43 Lorettus Metcalf (1837–1920).
also ready to throw barbs at competitors elsewhere, assuring
his customers that his dies were of the best quality, ‘the same
as are advertised by some Parties East as the best cast steel:
Which they are not.’42
As Spencer, Stafford, Hilton, and probably others were
looking to carry on or widen their activities, in the years
around 1870 the Metcalfs and A. J. Fullam brought their
involvement in the stencil business to an end. More than a
decade earlier, in the late 1850s, Mason Metcalf had moved
from Monmouth to Boston to run the stencil business that
had been trading under Simeon’s name, after Simeon’s death
in 1858 or 1859. Over the next six or so years, in partnership
with his son, Lorettus,43 Mason appears to have expanded
the business, trading as ‘M. J. Metcalf & Son’. In 1864, the
business moved to a conspicuous location at 101 Union Street
(figures 25, 26), at which time it appears that Mason, now in
his late 50s, retired and returned to Monmouth. Lorettus
continued the business as ‘L. S. Metcalf’ until the early 1870s,
when the business moved again, to 117 Hanover Street.
Throughout these years, the Metcalfs offered and
promoted stencil dies and outfits, trading on their history as
Figure 25 Metcalf’s Stencil Rooms, 101

Union Street, Boston, c. 1864–1871. 25
46 STENCIL DIES
44 Metcalf circulars and catalogues issued
during this period regularly offer stencil dies
and outfits. In a circular issued soon after
Mason Metcalf’s retirement, readers were
reminded that it was he who had invented
stencil dies, and that the Metcalf business
had the most experience manufacturing
and supplying them. A later Metcalf circular
dedicated to stencil dies (c. 1870) clearly
echoes the text of Spencer’s 1867–8
catalogue while insisting that the Metcalf
business had no connections with other
manufacturers.
45 Catalogue of improved stencil dies,

manufactured by S. M. Spencer, 117 Hanover
St., Boston, Mass.[,] formerly Brattleboro, Vt.,
1873. Brattleboro: Household Book and Job
Press. Spencer’s reference to ‘forty years’
roughly tallies with the Metcalfs’ account in
Historical sketch of Boston dating the start of
their business to 1834. It is not known if the
26 book mentioned by Spencer that records
the Metcalf’s experiments is extant.
the company that invented dies.44 But despite these efforts, 46 Kebabian states that the American
and seemingly good commercial prospects, Lorettus Metcalf’s Stencil Tool Works was in business until 1869.
interests turned elsewhere (to journalism), and in 1872, Paul B. Kebabian, ‘A. J. Fullam’s American
Stencil Tool Works’, The Chronicle, vol.
perhaps drawing partly on family connections, he sold the 31, no. 2, 1978, Early American Industries
Metcalf business to S. M. Spencer. Spencer announced the Association.
acquisition in his first Boston catalogue, in April 1873:

To gain a more accessible location, enlarged facilities for my
business and immediate access to the raw material used in it, and
direct communication by express to all parts of the country and
world, I have removed my Stencil Rooms from Brattleboro, Vt., to No.
117 Hanover Street, Boston, at which place I have purchased the old
and well known Metcalf Stencil establishment ….
With my improved facilities, and the full benefit of the many

thousand intelligent and costly experiments conducted by the
Metcalfs during their forty years practical experience, and which are
fully recorded in a book transferred to me, I shall be able to supply
promptly, every thing to be had anywhere in my line, and at the very
lowest prices.45
In Springfield, Vermont, Fullam was also getting out of

the stencil business. While it is not clear exactly when the
American Stencil Tool Works was wound up, the cessation of
Fullam advertisements in newspapers and elsewhere after
1868 suggest that he left the business at around this time.46
Fullam turned to piano manufacture, establishing in 1868 Figure 26 Poster for Metcalf’s [Stencil
Rooms], Boston, c. 1864–1871.
ERIC KINDEL 47
47 A. J. Fullam’s subsequent fortunes were the United States Piano Company. His works were initially
mixed. By 1880, the United States Piano
Company was in the hands of receivers, located in Springfield and possibly displaced his stencil tool
though press reports identify James M. works; in 1871, the piano business was relocated to New York
and Lucien W. Fullam as the defaulters. City.47
A. J. Fullam was apparently sustained by
real estate interests in New York City. In In a catalogue, circulars, and other commercial ephemera
1900, he features in newspaper and music issued by S. M. Spencer & Co. in the latter half of the 1870s,
trade reports (described as ‘wealthy and the prominence given to stencil dies and outfits show
eccentric’) after shooting a tenant he had
evicted. Fleeing to Ludlow, Vermont, he was that both remained an important part of the company’s
arrested and returned to New York where inventory, and that cutting name plates was still considered
he was tried and eventually acquitted on an attractive and profitable pursuit.48 But in an 1890
grounds of self-defence. He died soon after,
though further news reports indicate that his catalogue of the renamed ‘S. M. Spencer’s Stencil and Rubber
wife Margaret Fullam’s feuds with tenants Stamp Works’ (figure 27), neither small stencil dies nor outfits
continued, at times also prosecuted with are offered for sale, though name plates for marking linen
revolvers. The Fullams are buried together at
Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx, New York. with indelible ink were. Outfits that were available were
See The New York Times (July 7 and October equipped only with large-size ‘hollow faced’ dies.49 Used by
6, 1900); The Music Trade Review (vol. 31, no. stencil cutters for decades after, the letters cut by these large
2, July 14, 1900).
dies became so common in North American stencil work that
48 This conclusion is based on a Spencer to a large extent they defined its style.
stencil outfit recently acquired by the
Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton University,
If large-size stencil dies are the longer-term legacy of
accompanied by items of printed ephemera Mason Metcalf’s original invention, it is that invention’s
including Spencer’s Confidential pamphlet, original form – small-size dies for cutting small-scale work
advertising notices (‘Stencil Work!’), a price
listed dated November 1, 1876 (offering the
– that seems to carry the stronger historical resonance.
same sizes and styles of dies as Spencer’s Such dies made possible new kinds of work and new ways
1867–8 catalogue), a sheet of testimonials of working. When assembled into (relatively) lightweight
(internal dates from 1876 and 1877), and
a Catalogue of improved stencil dies
outfits containing all the necessary tools and supplies, and
(1880). See http://blogs.princeton.edu/ sold to enterprising individuals seeking a remunerative
graphicarts/2013/07/stencil_kit.html (26 pursuit, dies expanded the stencil-cutting trade through an
May 2014).
‘access to tools’. Stencil cutting was no longer confined to
49 Retail catalogue, S. M. Spencer’s Stencil fixed premises but could be taken on the road, whether to
and Rubber Stamp Works, 112 Washington
fairs and other public gatherings, or from house to house,
St., Boston, n.d. (c. 1890, based on internal
dated sample). Similar offerings are found homestead to farm. Such work surely helped popularise
in the New York Stencil Works’ ‘Illustrated stencil plates in particular, and the stencil style in general,
catalogue and price list’ (c. 1902, based on
which in North America is so much associated with the
internal dated sample). Other catalogues
from stencil businesses such as S. W. Reese second half of the nineteenth century. While no attempt
& Co. (New York, 1889) or Quint’s Stencil, has yet been made to establish the relative popularity of
Stamp, and Letter Works (Philadelphia, c.
this pursuit, the regular appearance of advertisements
1887–95) offer stencil name plates (still in the
styles of the 1860s and 1870s), but not dies. in newspapers and journals, the record of commercial
ephemera offering stencil dies and outfits, and the survival
of stencil outfits more or less intact, suggest that for two or
three decades at least, stencil dies and the canvassing stencil
cutter were a minor phenomenon in North America.
48 STENCIL DIES
27
Figure 27 Retail catalogue, S. M.

Spencer’s Stencil & Rubber Stamp Works,
Boston, c. 1890.
ERIC KINDEL 49
Acknowledgments
I would like to extend my gratitude to Ann Raymond,
curator at the Monmouth Museum, Monmouth, Maine,
for welcoming me into that community in August 2013, for
allowing me access to the materials of Mason J. Metcalf held
by the museum, and for sharing her genealogical research
relating to the Metcalf family in Maine. I must also thank
Kay Skeleton for enabling me to acquire from her a stencil
outfit which had passed down through her extended family
after its purchase from Spencer & Co. in 1870; this outfit is
shown in figures 20–27, above.
50 STENCIL DIES
ERIC KINDEL 51
- 1976)
Bibliography Sampson, H.
(1874) A history of advertising from the
Handover, P.M.
earliest times: illustrated by anecdotes,
Printing in London from 1476 to modern
Altick, R.D. curious specimens, and biographical
times (London, George Allen & Unwin
The English Common Reader (Chicago: notes (London: Chatto & Windus)
Ltd., 1960)
The University of Chicago Press, 1957) Stencil guide and descriptive catalogue
of stencil materials, &c., Stafford
André, J.,& Laucou C. Hansard, T.C. Manufacturing Co., 66 Fulton Street,
Histoire de l’ecriture typographique: Typographia (London: Baldwin, New York, June, 1871
le xixe siècle français (Méolans-Revel: Craddock & Joy, 1825)
Atelier Perrousseaux editeur, 2013)
Kelly, R.R. Stower, C.
American wood type 1828–1900: notes The printer’s grammar; or, introduction
Anonymous.
on the evolution of decorated and large to the art, with the improvements in
Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf,
types and comments on the related the practice of printing, for the last fifty
Versuch, den Ursprung der Spielkarten,
trades of the period (New York: Van years (London: B. Crosby & Co., 1808)
die Einführung des Leinenpapieres und
Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969)
den Anfang der Holzschneidekunst
in Europa zu erforschen, zweyter Thorne, R.
Theil, aus des Verlassers Nachlasse Specimen of modern cut printing types
herausgegeben und mit einer Vorrede Kindel, E.
by Robert Thorne, 1814 [Type Archive:
Stencil work in America, 1850-1900,
begleitet von Johann Christian SB/TS/04].
Baseline, 38, 2002, pp. 5-12
Friedrich Roch (Leipzig: Roch und
Compagnie, 1801)
Kindel, E. Thorowgood, W.
Recollecting stencil letters, Thorowgood’s new specimen of printing
Banham, R.
Typography papers, 5 (Reading: types, 1821 [St Bride Library]
Gye and Balne: printing families
Department of Typography & Graphic
Journal of the Printing Historical
Society, n.s. 5 (2003) pp.17-42. Communication, 2003) pp. 82–6 Twyman, M.
John Soulby, Printer, Ulverston
(Reading: University of Reading/
Banham, R., Lommen, M. Museum of English Rural Life, 1966)
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(2009) pages.17–60 Hudson, 2012 Twyman, M.
Printing 1770–1970 (London: Eyre &
Bath Journal, 5 December 1808.
Spottiswoode, 1970)
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British Historical Statistics (Cambridge:
Blades, W.
Cambridge University Press, 1988)
William Gye, Printer of Bath, The
Printers’ Register, 18 (6 January 1879)
Dickens, C., Bill-sticking, Household S. Morlighem.
The ‘modern face’ in France and Great
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ideal of progress, PhD thesis (Reading:
Cumberland, G., University of Reading, 2014)
‘Hints on various modes of printing
from autographs’, A Journal of Natural
Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, Mosley, J.
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January 1810 (collected in vol. 28, 1811),
alphabets from the foundry of Louis
pp. 56–9
John Pouchée (London: I. M. Imprimit,
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The Northern Star and Leeds General
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Advertiser, 11th August 1838
The English state lottery 1694–1826
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Society, n.s. 13 (2009) pp.xx-xx Pyne, W.H.
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engraved, and written by W.H. Pyne
Gray, N. (London: William Miller, 1808) text
Nineteenth-century ornamented types facing pl. 43.
and title pages (Faber & Faber – London

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Edited by Julia Blume, Pierre Pané-Farré, and Fred Smeijers

Published by the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, 2014

The explosion of new display types in Britain in the

2 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Figure 1 Theatre bill for New Theatre,

4 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

engravers of letters in wood, metal, or stone – had much

Figure 4 William Caslon IV’s ‘Two lines

The lottery-office keepers spent huge sums on publicity;

6 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

advertisements during this period, including use of direct

Figure 7 The ‘octagonal

Figure 8 Lottery bill for Bish. Anon.

8 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Figure 9 Lottery bill for Richardson,

Figure 10 Lottery bill for Bish. Anon

However, the typefounders did not always supply what

10 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Figure 13 Poster for Sadler’s Wells

Figure 14 Poster for Astley’s circus.

Figure 15 a–e. A selection of logotypes

Figure 16 Lottery bill for Bish. Anon

Figure 17 Lottery bill. Gye & Balne

Figure 18 Lottery bill for Richardson,

12 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Figure 19 Lottery bill for Bish. Anon.

Figure 20 Lottery bill for Bish. Evans

Figure 21 Vincent Figgins’s ‘Five Lines

Figure 22 Lottery bill for Sivewright 23

Figure 23 Lottery share featuring a slab

Figure 24 Lottery share featuring sans

14 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Figure 25 Poster for Astley’s circus. T.

16 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Figure 26 Gye & Balne trade card

Figure 27 27. Packet boat poster. [Mary]

18 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Figure 28 a,b. Vinçard’s wood letter

Figure 29 Vauxhall Gardens posters.

Figure 30 Vauxhall Gardens poster.

‘The exertions that characterise the dashing spirit of the times, is

But it is to the managers of the lotteries that we owe the

20 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Figure 31 Vauxhall Gardens bill.

Figure 32 Vauxhall Gardens poster.

Figure 33 a, b. Broadsheet Lord’s Prayer,

22 ‘THE LARGEST TYPE IN ENGLAND’

Foreword 1 Eric Kindel, ‘Futura Black, c. 1860’,

Figure 1 Emporte pièces, from

6 George Cumberland, ‘Hints on various

Figure 2 Stencil plate with maker’s

13 It seems clear that small-size dies were

Figure 3 Mason Jerome Metcalf, date

The dies, comprising incomplete alphabets of capital and

Figure 7 Stencil plate for R. N. B.

Figure 8 Die-cut letters, numbers,

Figure 9 Stencilled receipt, Geo. H.

Figure 10 Stencilled business card for

18 Geo. P. Rowell & Co., The men