Beautiful old type

 A few weeks ago we were alerted to an online auction that included a lot of old printing gear and some type.  As I do, I went for a wander online and was stopped in my tracks. Could it be? Was it possible?

Indeed it was!

One of our favourite typefaces is called Elongated Anglo Saxon.  I only know this because despite looking all over for it, poring through my type detective books and asking folk in Australia who might know about these things all to no avail, a fellow in the UK answered my cries for help on Instagram and now I know!

We don't have a huge amount of it (it come in type drawer we bought) yet we both love it.  Knowing how unfamiliar it is and how rare, I could not believe my eyes when I saw a photo of what I thought was it, as part of the auction.  

I printed out the photo and checked it against the samples in the studio and bingo!

We had a nervous wait until the auction began, and bidding was swift and a tad frenzied.  We won one pack of unrelated type and then lost the first pack of Elongated Anglo Saxon. Slight devastation.  Focussed really hard on the next two and were successful.  It was very exciting and stressful - my heart rate was WAY up!

After much faffing about trying to work out how to transport the type from Tasmania to QLD - with lots of help from the auction house - it landed last week and I waited until we were both home to open up the packs.

We were thrilled to discover a full set of Elongated Anglo Saxon...

Part of it rolled over into the second pack where there seemed to be some other things going on. So we had an alphabet, but also some type already set, using three typefaces all up. Quite the fascination.

It seems somehow as if the typeface had been set by the caster for the client and packaged up and sent.  

What came as a big surprise was the these two packs were not quite EAS, but rather EAS in a skeleton like form! Never seen such a thing but most excited. Have discovered just today, again via the amazing David Wakefield in the UK that it is called Elongated Open Anglo Saxon. Perfect.  And that the small one is likely to be 28pt which is the smallest they cast.

Here are a couple of other packs we were successful with. Once more I had never seen an italicised Gothic script and David let us know that it is called Sloping Back, patented in 1869. Apparently it was not commonly used, but it could be used very effectively in Law Blanks for any displayed phrase or word like "Indenture".

We are looking forward to using it to great effect (somehow).

Of course, my biggest dilemma is the packaging and the string.  They seem almost too beautiful to unwrap and use!

We will keep them tied up until such time as we use them; then they will become functional objects not just beautiful artefacts.