The style seems to have been more successful than the Italian, and it appears with regularity both as metal and wood type. This is the model for Caslon French Antique. Caslon would use the typeface for internal communications and it would remain in specimens until after 1919. In the 1880s Caslon would introduce a version for text sizes, from Great Primer (just under 18 point) to Nonpareil (around 6 point).

Besley shows it in his 1854 specimen for the Fann Street Foundry, and would eventually produce a wide range of sizes. Its name would suggest that the style originated in France before it appeared amongst the British foundries in the 1850s. Text sizes of Caslon French Antique cut in the 1880s. It is such a rarity, and it makes the existence of the Conner Italian Contra all the more surprising. Only one other British foundry followed the lead with Thorowgood producing a text variant in the 1830s. The contra form (a reverse angled italic) was pioneered by Figgins in 1817 in one large size (Seven-line Pica No. In the italic and contra, the base of the strokes tapers to balance the design out.

In the apex of the A, M, N, V, and W, weight has been added to balance the design, which creates an even horizontal emphasis in words. Emphasis is completely shifted to the top and bottom of letters, so A, K, M, N, U, V, W, and Y no longer have the weight in what would originally have been the thin strokes in a fat face. On closer inspection, Conner makes a subtle but decisive change to Caslon’s model. Though the form appears to fall out of favour in the British Isles, further variants of the style appear in the United States, namely an extended, italic, and contra, all shown in the specimens of James Conner & Sons of New York in 1855. Bower & Bacon’s Improved Specimen of Printing Types, 1830. The other foundry in Britain that produced Italians in any quantity was Bower & Bacon, from Sheffield. In Nineteenth century ornamented typefaces, Nicolete Gray pulls no punches calling the Italian, ‘a crude expression of the idea of perversity’. While we could agree that the idea is perverse in the sense of a clear intent to deviate from typographic norms, most of Caslon’s Italians are considered and well-cut (seven sizes of punches remain at St Bride) and not at all crude in their expression. In type, Caslon cut the style in many sizes from approximately 96 down to 10 point. But which came first, lettering or type, is not clear. In its basic skeleton, it follows the British style, as suggested by the tail of the R and the shapes of the figures.ĭespite the strangeness of the form, it can be found in lettering, particularly on gravestones in the nineteenth century. The E and F generate more complicated shapes: the end serifs go from thin to a flat-ended thickness the S has a light spine with weight moved to the top and bottom, and at the end of the curves reverse triangular serifs extend outwards. The I is similarly weighted at the top and bottom with the stem transformed into a thin vertical stroke connecting the much heavier serifs. In style, it is the reverse of a flat-seriffed modern or fat face, so weight is distributed at the top and bottom of the O with the thick horizontal parts connected by thin verticals.

Caslon font history