John Baskerville

English printer and designer

• Born: January 28, 1706
• Birthplace: Wolverly, Worcestershire, England
• Died: January 8, 1775
• Place of death: Birmingham, England

Baskerville designed and produced printing type, or fonts, and crafted and printed meticulously designed books that set new standards for fine printing.

Early Life

John Baskerville was born in a rural district in England. Very little is known about his parents, family, and early life. He evidently was the last of many children, most of whom died young. The first notice of his activities comes in 1723, when he was taken on as a footman in the rectory of King’s Norton, near Birmingham. The clergyman noticed that his young servant had some education, talent, and interest in writing and made him the writing master for the parish.

In 1726, Baskerville moved into Birmingham proper and established himself as a writing master. At about the same time, his interest in writing and letters led him to learn the trade of stone carving, with special attention to gravestone engraving. The one surviving example of his work, a small slab used as a shop-window display, illustrates his considerable talent as a designer of letters. Nevertheless, Baskerville seems to have barely eked out a living as writing master and stone engraver.

Eighteenth century Birmingham was a flourishing town, a magnet for many industrious individuals eager to exploit the town’s location and resources to participate in England’s expanding economy. One such person was John Taylor. In the mid-1730’s, Taylor established a japanning business in Birmingham. Japanning, a technique for painting metal or wood surfaces, had been introduced into England from Asia. The procedure involved applying several layers of a special varnish to produce a deep, luxurious appearance. A variety of colors and ornamental figures and scenes could be painted on the more expensive items. Japanned goods were in great demand by England’s style-conscious middle class. Taylor, and others, became wealthy supplying this growing demand for attractive domestic goods.

Baskerville followed in his footsteps, possibly literally. One story about Baskerville, probably apocryphal but nevertheless interesting, has it that he followed Taylor from shop to shop buying identical amounts of the same ingredients for the varnish. In this manner, he supposedly learned both the contents and their proportions in the varnish. Whether the story is true, Baskerville managed to set up a successful japanning business by 1740, employing many workers in his shop. In 1742, he obtained a patent for a process for grinding and shaping thin metal plates before japanning.

Life’s Work

John Baskerville continued with his japanning enterprise for the rest of his life. In the 1740’s, he rose rapidly to a position of wealth and looked the part of the eighteenth century English bourgeois: full-faced and jowly, with a prominent nose and slightly bushy eyebrows. He was notorious for his fondness for rich, bright clothing and was pictured wearing a powdered wig, green coat, scarlet waistcoat, and gold lace. He had a specially made chariot with lavishly japanned door panels and in 1748 built a fine house just outside town. He was considered vain, highly sensitive, and pedantic. Also, he endured a certain amount of antipathy because he lived for years with a woman who remained married to her exiled husband, although Baskerville eventually married her, after her first husband died.

Nevertheless, Baskerville became a man of substance in the community: He was a member of the Lunar Society, a famous Birmingham society of men interested in science and Enlightenment thought. His reputation as a writing master and connoisseur of fine penmanship coincided with his position as an entrepreneur and maker of fine metalwares. At about this time, he became interested in combining his interest in letters and metalworking by producing a printing type of his own design. Convinced that his letters would appear favorably only if he controlled their use, he set up a print shop along with his typefoundry. Designing and casting type and printing books was almost a hobby for him, and never his primary source of income. Still, his influence on the book trades was substantial.

Producing type first required a design for the typeface, and it was here that Baskerville made his real contribution. He developed a style of type in various sizes that drew upon his experiences as a writing master. His typefaces had a particular cant and a strong delineation between thick and thin strokes, much like handwriting. After drawing the individual letters, each one had to be cut in relief onto the end of a steel shank. This shank, or punch, was hardened and then driven into a piece of copper, creating a mold, or matrix, for the letter. The matrix was fitted into a wooden mold and molten metal was poured into it. Type was cast by skilled workers in Baskerville’s own foundry. Baskerville was primarily assisted by John Handy, who was evidently responsible for cutting the punches and ensuring that the individually cast type was flawless.

Creating font types of his own design and manufacture was only the beginning for Baskerville. His goal was to produce books of great typographical art and distinction. He carefully laid out the margins and spacing of each page. He acquired a knowledge of printing presses and made some minor adjustments to his. Baskerville paid special attention to the quality of ink and paper used. Indeed, he developed his own procedure for making ink and experimented with making small quantities of paper. He was the first book printer to use “wove” paper, that is, paper made from molds in which the wire is interlaced to produce a strong, fine paper. Perhaps what gave each page its distinctive sheen was that each sheet passed through heated copper rollers or plates immediately after printing. This process, akin to calendaring paper and also to the process Baskerville had developed for metal plates, set the ink as well as compressing the paper fibers themselves. His attention to these details and his innovations produced books that had a look unlike any others of the eighteenth century.

Baskerville chose to publish books on the basis of their stature in literature rather than their money-making potential. His goal was to provide models of fine typography and printing. He printed his first book, Vergil’s Bucolica, Georgica et Aeneis, in 1757, some eight or nine years after beginning his typographical efforts. Over the next eighteen years, he printed only about fifty-four more books, but they included some of the most innovative, aesthetically pleasing, and talked-about volumes of his own and subsequent times. He produced notable volumes of John Milton, Horace, Joseph Addison, William Congreve, and the earl of Shaftesbury. In 1758, he was appointed printer at Cambridge. There he produced an edition of the Book of Common Prayer and, in 1763, a folio edition of the Bible. Soon afterward he ended his association with the university.

Baskerville’s type design and printed works were controversial. Many people believed that his highly contrasting typefaces and bright pages were difficult and tiring to read. In fact, his aesthetic was more influential in Europe, especially France, than in his homeland. After his death, in 1775, his widow—to whom, in the absence of progeny, he had left his estate—sold most of his foundry equipment, including the punches, to Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais in France. For the next twenty years, his type designs were more common there than in his homeland. In 1953, however, the remaining punches and matrices were presented to Cambridge University as a gift from the French printing firm of Deberny Peignot.

Significance

John Baskerville exemplifies an important social trend in eighteenth century England: the opening of society to persons of talent and ambition. From humble beginnings, he managed to become a wealthy, influential, and respectable member of an international community, counting Matthew Boulton, Benjamin Franklin, and Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais among his admirers.

His contributions to the book trades include some of the most distinguished examples of fine printing ever produced. He provided a model of type and book design that altered the standards of typography during the last half of the eighteenth century. He demonstrated that typeface, layout, presswork, and material all played a significant role in the art of the book. Baskerville’s typefaces, which were revived in the early twentieth century, found a popular reception and have been adapted to machine typesetting.

Bibliography

Benton, Josiah H. John Baskerville: Type-founder and Printer, 1706-1775. 1914. Reprint. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968. An early and important biography full of opinions about Baskerville’s works.

Dreyfus, John. The Survival of Baskerville’s Punches. Cambridge, England: Private printing, 1949. A careful history of the uses and fate of the punches for Baskerville types.

Gaskell, Philip. John Baskerville: A Bibliography. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973. A short introduction to Baskerville’s work and a full bibliographic description of his publications.

Legros, Lucien A., and J. C. Grant. Typographical Printing-Surfaces: The Technology and Mechanism of Their Production. London: Longmans, Green, 1916. A magisterial work covering nearly all aspects of typefounding.

Pardoe, Frank E. John Baskerville of Birmingham: Letter-Founder and Printer. London: Frederick Muller, 1975. A modern biography that exceeds all previous Baskerville biographies in scholarship and objectivity.

Reed, Talbot B. A History of the Old English Letter Foundries. Edited by A. F. Johnson. London: Faber and Faber, 1952. A seminal work on the history of typefounding in England with a substantial section on Baskerville, placing his types in the context of English typography.

Straus, Ralph, and Robert K. Dent. John Baskerville: A Memoir. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1907. A biography that made use of local research materials and personal items and is the source of much personal information about Baskerville. A standard source.

Uglow, Jenny. The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. The book focuses on five Birmingham scientists and inventors who organized a society to share their knowledge. One of the five, Matthew Boulton, was a friend of Baskerville, and the book describes the friendship. It also discusses Baskerville’s work and personality.

Updike, Daniel B. Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use. 4th ed. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2001. A seminal work on every aspect of typography, with some special attention to the aesthetic properties of Baskerville’s type. Expanded edition.