John Baskerville (baptised 28 January 1707 – 8 January 1775) was an English businessman, in areas including

japanning Japanning is a type of finish that originated as a European imitation of East Asian lacquerwork. It was first used on furniture, but was later much used on small items in metal. The word originated in the 17th century. American work, with the ...

and

papier-mâché upright=1.3, Mardi Gras papier-mâché masks, Haiti upright=1.3, Papier-mâché Catrinas, traditional figures for day of the dead celebrations in Mexico Papier-mâché (, ; , literally "chewed paper") is a composite material consisting of p ...

, but he is best remembered as a printer and

type designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

. He was also responsible for inventing "wove paper", which was considerably smoother than "laid paper", allowing for sharper printing results.

Life

Baskerville was born in the village of

Wolverley Wolverley is a village; with nearby Cookley (1 mi northeast), it forms a civil parish in the Wyre Forest District of Worcestershire, England. It is 2 miles north of Kidderminster and lies on the River Stour and the Staffordshire and ...

, near

Kidderminster Kidderminster is a large market and historic minster town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, south-west of Birmingham and north of Worcester. Located north of the River Stour and east of the River Severn, in the 2011 census, it ha ...

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

and baptised on 28 January 1706 OS(1707 NS) at Wolverley church. Baskerville established an early career teaching handwriting and is known to have offered his services cutting gravestones (a demonstration slab by him survives in the Library of Birmingham) before making a considerable fortune from the manufacture of lacquerwork items (

). He practised as a printer in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

, England. Baskerville was a member of the Royal Society of Arts, and an associate of some of the members of the

Lunar Society The Lunar Society of Birmingham was a British dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures in the Midlands Enlightenment, including industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals, who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 ...

. Baskerville directed his

punchcutter Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould sh ...

, John Handy, in the design of many

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

s of broadly similar appearance. His typefaces were greatly admired by

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...

, a fellow printer, but were criticised by jealous competitors and soon fell out of favour. He also pioneered a completely new style of

typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), ...

, adding wide margins and leading between each line. In 1757, Baskerville published a remarkable quarto edition of

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

wove paper Wove paper is a type of paper first created centuries ago in the Orient, and subsequently introduced to England, Europe and the American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. Hand-made wove paper was first produced by using a wooden mould that ...

, using his own type. It took three years to complete, but it made such an impact that he was appointed printer to the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

the following year. An atheist, he nonetheless printed ''

The Book of Common Prayer The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign o ...

'' in 1762 and a splendid

folio The term "folio" (), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book ma ...

Bible in 1763. Baskerville innovated in printing, paper, and ink production. He worked with paper maker James Whatman to produce a smoother whiter paper, sometimes called "wove paper", which showcased his strong black type.

Death and interments

Baskerville died in January 1775 at his home, ''Easy Hill''. He requested that his body be placed However, in 1821 a canal was built through the land and his body was placed on show by the landowner until Baskerville's family and friends arranged to have it moved to the crypt of

Christ Church, Birmingham There was a building called Christ Church based in central Birmingham, in the Church of England on Colmore Row, Birmingham from 1805 to 1899. In 2021 a new church without a fixed building called Christ Church Birmingham opened and now serves ...

. Christ Church was demolished in 1897 so his remains were then moved, with other bodies from the crypt, to consecrated catacombs at

Warstone Lane Cemetery Warstone Lane Cemetery, (), also called Brookfields Cemetery, Church of England Cemetery, or Mint Cemetery (from the adjacent Birmingham Mint), is a cemetery dating from 1847 in Birmingham, England. It is one of two cemeteries in the city's J ...

. In 1963 a petition was presented to

Birmingham City Council Birmingham City Council is the local government body responsible for the governance of the City of Birmingham in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974. It is the most populated local council area in the United Kingdom ...

requesting that he be reburied in unconsecrated ground, according to his wishes.

Legacy

The 20th century renewed interest in and appreciation for Baskerville's typefaces. His most notable typeface,

Baskerville Baskerville is a serif typeface designed in the 1750s by John Baskerville (1706–1775) in Birmingham, England, and cut into metal by punchcutter John Handy. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, intended as a refinement of what ...

, is held to represent the peak of transitional type face and a bridge between Old Style and Modern type design. Since the 1920s, many

fonts In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a " sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

based on his work—mostly called '

'— have been released by Linotype,

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...

, and other

type foundries A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Mono ...

. In 1996, Emigre released a popular revival of this typeface called

Mrs Eaves Mrs Eaves is a transitional serif typeface designed by Zuzana Licko in 1996. It is a variant of Baskerville, which was designed in Birmingham, England, in the 1750s. Mrs Eaves adapts Baskerville for use in display contexts, such as headings and ...

after Baskerville's wife, Sarah Eaves.

Commemoration

In the 1930s, Baskerville House was built on the grounds of ''Easy Hill''. In 1947, BBC radio broadcast a radio play about his burial, named ''Hic Jacet: or The Corpse in the Crescent'' by Neville Brandon Watts. The original recording was not preserved but a performance was staged by students at the

Birmingham School of Acting Birmingham School of Acting (BSA), previously known as Birmingham School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art (BSSTDA) and then as Birmingham School of Speech and Drama (BSSD) was a drama school located in Birmingham, England. It was founded in 19 ...

in 2013 at the Typographic Hub Centre of

Birmingham City University , mottoeng = "Do what you are doing; attend to your business" , established = 1992—gained university status1971—City of Birmingham Polytechnic1843—Birmingham College of Art , type = Public , affiliation = ...

. A copy of the script is in the Norman Painting Archives at the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingha ...

A Portland stone sculpture of the Baskerville typeface, ''Industry and Genius'', in his honour stands in front of Baskerville House in

Centenary Square Centenary Square is a public square on the north side of Broad Street in Birmingham, England, named in 1989 to commemorate the centenary of Birmingham achieving city status. The area was an industrial area of small workshops and canal wharves ...

, Birmingham. It was created by local artist David Patten in 1990.

Gallery

Some examples of volumes published by Baskerville. Image:Publii Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Æneis by John Baskerville 1757.jpg, Title-page of the 1757

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

edition of the works of

Image:Milton Baskerville.jpg, John Milton's '' Paradise Lost'' (1758) Image:Work-baskerville.jpg, Volume One of ''The works of

Joseph Addison Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richar ...

'' (1761) Image:Baskerville bible.jpg, Title-page of Baskerville's 1763 Bible Image:BaskervilleVirgil.JPG, The 1766 translation of Virgil into English, by Robert Andrews

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * * * * * ARCHER-PARRÉ, Caroline & Malcom DICK (Editors), JOHN BASKERVILLE: Art and industry of the enlightenment. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017. 8vo, (240x160mm), xviii,269p

External links

*
Birmingham City Council page on ''Industry and Genius''
(includes picture)
Revolutionary Players websiteBaskerville the Animated MovieSome typographical studies
on the use of the Baskerville font (in French). {{DEFAULTSORT:Baskerville, John 1707 births 1775 deaths English printers English typographers and type designers English atheists People associated with the University of Cambridge Associates of the Lunar Society of Birmingham Artists from Birmingham, West Midlands