Goudy Elements of Lettering page 11 (cropped)

Kennerley Old Style is a

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

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 list of type ...

Frederic Goudy Frederic William Goudy (, March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and ...

. Kennerley is an " old-style" serif design, loosely influenced by Italian and Dutch printing traditions of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

and early modern period. It was named for New York publisher

Mitchell Kennerley Mitchell Kennerley (August 14, 1878 – February 22, 1950) was an English born American publisher, editor, and gallery owner. Life He was born at Burslem, England. He was the manager of the New York branch of John Lane, the London publisher, f ...

, who advanced Goudy money to complete the design. While Goudy had already designed 18 other typefaces, it was one of Goudy's most successful early designs in his own style. The regular or roman style was designed in 1911, the italic in 1918; bold styles followed in 1924. Kennerley Old Style Swashes cropped

Goudy was a fine art printer and later a prolific typeface designer. He designed Kennerley out of dissatisfaction with the

Caslon Caslon is the name given to serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (c. 1692–1766) in London, or inspired by his work. Caslon worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp the moulds or matrices used to cast metal ty ...

typefaces then in use in fine art printing; he felt these had an uneven

colour Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

on the page due to the thickness of the

capital letter Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

s being much greater than that of the lower case. Goudy described the design as very loosely based on the 'Fell Types', a set of type in the Dutch style collected by Bishop John Fell of

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

for the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, although he conceded that "comparison of my type with the Fell letter will disclose little more than an identity of spirit" and

Walter Tracy Walter Valentine Tracy RDI (14 February 1914 – 28 April 1995) was an English type designer, typographer and writer. Biography Walter Tracy was born in Islington, London and attended Shoreditch Secondary school. At the age of fourteen he wa ...

found the claim of influence implausible. It has also been compared in some details, notably the tilted understroke on the 'e', to the type of late 15th century Venetian printer

Nicolas Jenson Nicholas Jenson (c. 1420 – 1480) was a French engraver, pioneer, printer and type designer who carried out most of his work in Venice, Italy. Jenson acted as Master of the French Royal Mint at Tours and is credited with being the creator of on ...

and others;

American Type Founders American Type Founders (ATF) Co. was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Comp ...

' historian

Henry Lewis Bullen Henry Lewis Bullen (1857 – April 27, 1938) was an American printer and typographic archivist. Early life Henry Lewis Bullen was born in 1857 in Ballarat, Australia to American-Scotch parentage. He left school at 14 to become a printers appr ...

somewhat cruelly described it as "a spoilt Jenson". The italic is somewhat florid, with swashes on some letters, and additional swashes were available for other capitals. Initially cast privately in metal type, Kennerley was later made available on sale in metal type and for Monotype's

hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mol ...

system. During the 1910s and 1920s it was licensed in Britain by the

Caslon foundry The Caslon type foundry was a type foundry in London which cast and sold metal type. It was founded by the punchcutter and typefounder William Caslon I, probably in 1720. For most of its history it was based at Chiswell Street, Islington, was t ...

, who marketed it extensively. It has also been digitised several times.

List of metal type issues

* ''Kennerley Old Style'' (1911, Village Letter Foundry + 1920,

Lanston Monotype Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...

+ 1927

Continental Continental may refer to: Places * Continent, the major landmasses of Earth * Continental, Arizona, a small community in Pima County, Arizona, US * Continental, Ohio, a small town in Putnam County, US Arts and entertainment * ''Continental'' (al ...

) * ''Kennerley Italic'' (1918, Village Letter Foundry + 1920,

+ 1927

) * ''Kennerley Bold + Bold Italic'' (1924,

)

References

{{reflist, 30em

External links

Caslon advertisement, 1922

H.W. Caslon & Co. Ltd, specimen book, 1915
Old style serif typefaces Letterpress typefaces Typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy Monotype typefaces