American Wood Type
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The nineteenth-century Old Style was derived from traditional serif types that date back to the 1540s. As a reaction to the Modern style letter so predominant at the time, the nineteenth-century revival of this style began in the 1840s with the Chiswick Press in England publishing books using Caslon’s Romans. The Old Style types appeared in the United States in the 1857 specimen of the Cortelyou & Giffing foundry, of New York, and later in Lawrence Johnson’s 1859 Typographic Advertiser. This style would enjoy a broad popularity as a text face into the twentieth century.
Traditional text faces began appearing as wood type with David Knox’s inclusion of a Modern style Roman Light Face in his 1858 Specimens of Wood Type. Shortly thereafter, J.G. Cooley showed an Old Style as wood type in his c.1859 Specimens of Wood Type. After the 1869 acquisition of Cooley’s wood type manufacturing company, William Page showed an Old Style as early as 1870. By the 1880s, Old Styles were consistently shown by all wood type manufacturers, and they would continue to be popular as a display face into the twentieth century.
Jenson Old Style