Dr Caroline Archer
The Baskerville Club
L IS T O F S P E A K E R S
John Baskerville
art, industry and technology in
the Enlightenment
This conference explores the life, context
and significance of the eighteenth-century
typographer, printer, industrialist and
Enlightenment figure John Baskerville
[1706–75] from the perspective of different
subject disciplines
6–7 April 2013
Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre
This lecture will give an account of
The Baskerville Club [1903–31], which was
founded at Cambridge University for ‘the
encouragement of bibliographical studies by
publications and otherwise’, and which was
open to all members of the University. During
its lifetime the Club published a hand-list of
books printed in Baskerville types and a
bibliography of the works of John Donne, by
Geoffrey Keynes. It also kept a library of both
its own publications and those of John
Baskerville the printer and typefounder after
whom the club was named.
is Reader in Typography
and Director of the Typographic Hub at the
Birmingham Institute of Art & Design [B C U ], and is
the current Chairman of the Baskerville Society. With a
particular interest in printing and typographic history of
both the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, Caroline has
published widely; she is the author of four books, a
contributing author to numerous journals, and a regular
scribbler in the trade and academic press.
CAROLINE ARCHER
1046 Bristol Road
Birmingham B 2 9 6 L J
ORGANIZED BY
The Baskerville Society
In conjunction with
The Typographic Hub
BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY
Centre for West Midlands History
BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY
www.typographichub.org/diary
Frank E. Blokland
The regularization, standardization,
systematization, & unitization of roman type from
its Renaissance origins until Baskerville’s time.
Fifteenth-century punch cutters themselves
struck and justified matrices, and cast type.
Doing this by eye must have resulted in an
immense amount of work, with no control over
the consistency, especially when matrices were
distributed and third parties did the casting.
Using patterns to standardize the proportions
and widths of the letters made the production
easier and was a prerequisite for the spreading
of type all over Europe. Due to the changed
proportions of eighteenth-century type, casters
needed extra information, i.e. ‘set letters’. To
what extent did the production of type differ
in Baskerville’s time to that of earlier centuries?
FRANK E. BLOKLAND
is a type designer whose
work includes D T L Documenta and D T L
Haarlemmer; Senior Lecturer in type design at
the Royal Academy of Arts (K A B B K ) in The Hague
since 1987; and lecturer at the Plantin Society in
Antwerp since 1995. Blokland founded the Dutch Type
Library in 1990 and a couple of years later he initiated
and supervised the development of D T L FontMaster, a
set of professional font tools developed together with the
German company U R W + + . He is currently finishing
his P H D research studies at the University of Leiden on
standardizations and systematizations in roman type
since its Renaissance origins.
Anne Brady
Creating an impression: why choose Baskerville?
This paper examines the ongoing use of
Baskerville and whether or not this typeface is
still relevant? Why is Baskerville, an eighteenth
century design, still being specified by
practicing designers for digital and print
solutions in the twenty-first century? Are these
designers aware of its historical context and do
they care? Other questions are explored. For
example, how successful is this font when faced
with modern media demands (large format,
3D, digital, online and print)? Can it hold its
own when it is the main typeface in use? Why
convince clients to select it as a corporate face
or separately specify it (or one of its derivatives)
as a book face as opposed to choosing other
faces? Has Baskerville simply become a good
‘fall back’ typeface when you can’t find
anything else to beat its ‘je n’est c’est quoi’?
is Creative Director and founder of
Vermillion Design & Associated Editions. She
specialises in art direction and typographic design for
books, exhibitions and multimedia projects for an
international client base. Her research interests include
British anti-Napoleonic caricature; the private press
movement in 20th century Ireland and ‘texte et image’
in the work of Sophie Calle. Anne was awarded an
M P H I L in Visual & Textual Studies, Trinity College
Dublin/University of Paris 7; B A H O N S in
Typography & Graphic Communication, University of
Reading; Diploma in Design Communications, A I T
and a Diploma in Decorative and Fine Arts, I P V A ,
Ireland.
ANNE BRADY
Professor Ewan Clayton
Baskerville and the written roman letter
This talk will explore the significance of
Baskerville’s experience as a calligrapher, set in
the context of eighteenth century England. It
will present this context as a key to his later
work with type. Calligraphers and engravers,
both in Britain and on the continent, had been
exploring a ‘brightly’ written roman since the
fifteenth century. Lettering with ‘sharpness’
was a tradition that was never lost to those who
made letters by hand. It was lost only in certain
possibilities for a letter’s reproduction,
possibilities that Baskerville was uniquely
positioned to re-engineer.
is a calligrapher and professor
in Design at the University of Sunderland where he codirects the International Research Centre for
Calligraphy. He trained as a calligrapher with Ann
Camp at the Roehampton Institute and subsequently
assisted her with the teaching there. For sixteen years he
worked as a consultant for Xerox’s Palo Alto Research
Centre (P A R C ) where his interest lay in documents and
contemporary communications. Ewan runs his own
calligraphy studio from Ditchling in Sussex. His book,
on the history of writing, will be published by Atlantic
Books in the autumn of 2013.
EWAN CLAYTON
Dr. Andrea de Pasquale
Baskerville and Bodoni
Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813), following
his apprenticeship at the Vatican’s Propaganda
Fide printing works, left Rome to visit London.
However, whilst at home in Saluzzo, Bodoni
became ill and could not make the trip: nor
were there any further opportunities to travel
to England, because in 1768 he was called to
Parma to direct the Royal Printing of the
Duchy. Evidently Bodoni had seen the work of
John Baskerville, and used Baskerville’s
typeface as a model for his own. After his
initial infatuation, Bodoni changed his
judgment, but the influence of the Baskerville
remained, especially for Bodoni’s Greek
characters and in the quality of paper he used.
is currently Director of
the National Library of Braidense in Milan, Interim
ANDREA DE PASQUALE
Director of the National University Library in Turin
and Director of the Bodoni Museum Foundation. He
was director of the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma. He is
also a Professor of librarianship at the University of
Eastern Piedmont (Vercelli) and Professor of history of
the book and bibliography at the School of the Central
Institute for the restoration and preservation of the books
and the archives in Rome (ICPAL). He is also the
author of numerous publications and essays, particularly
as regards the history of books and libraries.
George Demidowicz
Baskerville’s buildings
This talk will consider Baskerville’s buildings:
those he was associated with, those he
constructed and also the estate he developed at
the head of Broad Street, Birmingham. This
paper will trace Baskerville’s buildings
including his monument workshop, the school
in which he taught and his pre-1747 premises
on Moor Street where, coincidentally, the
station now stands. The talk will describe his
leasing of land called Bingas where he built his
house and manufactory and from where he
continued his japanning business. But the
Baskerville Bingas, which John renamed Easy
Hill, was also from where he also started his
experiment as a printer and typefounder.
GEORGE DEMIDOWICZ’S
research interests
include the historical geography of the west midlands
and he is involved in the conservation, protection and
interpretation of the historic environment. In 1990
George was appointed City Conservation Officer to
Coventry Council, leading the Conservation and Urban
Design Team and later as head of the Conservation and
Archaeology Team, which he set up in the early 2000s
following the completion of Coventry’s Millennium
scheme, the Phoenix Initiative. This was the first city
centre regeneration project to have the conservation of
historic buildings and archaeology as a principle aim.
He retired in March 2011 when he was elected
Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History &
Cultures at the University of Birmingham.
Dr Malcolm Dick
The topographies of a typographer: interpreting
John Baskerville since the eighteenth century
This paper charts the different ways in which
Baskerville’s reputation has been represented
by writers since the eighteenth century. It
argues that printing and book historians, who
have dominated writing about Baskerville,
have concentrated on his expertise as a printer
and the quality of his publications and
bypassed his significance as a figure within the
Industrial Enlightenment. This is not
surprising; Baskerville’s publishing legacy is
contained in numerous libraries throughout
the world but we are less well-served by
surviving archival material which relates to
him directly. This paper suggests new ways of
investigating Baskerville, particularly through
his role as an eighteenth-century entrepreneur
and contributor to intellectual life.
is Director of the Centre for
West Midlands History in the School of History and
Cultures at the University of Birmingham and Editorin-Chief of History West Midlands, a magazine
and website devoted to the history of the English west
midlands region. He managed the creation of the
Revolutionary Players website, wrote a history of
Birmingham, edited books on Joseph Priestley and
Matthew Boulton and contributed to studies of the
history of ethnic minority communities. His latest book
is a co-edited publication Matthew Boulton:
Enterprising Industrialist of the Enlightenment
MALCOLM DICK
Joey Hannaford
Do you believe? an examination of typeface
effectiveness
The effectiveness and authority of the typeface
Baskerville is well established. Inspired by a
recent online New York Times survey originated
by Errol Morris intended to evaluate various
typefaces and the impact they may have on
communication credibility, a class of graphic
design students at the University of West
Georgia set out to investigate Morris’
hypothesis that Baskerville presents
information that is inherently more impactful.
The students conducted non-scientific research
based on observation and responses to Q R
codes to test how the same information
presented in different typefaces elicited
different responses in viewers. This
presentation describes the process the student’s
developed to test typeface effectiveness and
reflects on methods designers can use to
enhance credibility in their communications.
JOEY HANNAFORD’S
definition of design is
broad, comprehensive and inclusive. She holds a B F A in
graphic design and an M F A from the University of
Georgia in printmaking. Joey specializes in
incorporating elements of the handmade such as
calligraphy, custom typography, illustration and
letterpress printing into her design research while fully
embracing experiments in digital media. She has
presented papers and taught in the U S and Europe, and
currently teaches in the graphic design program at the
University of West Georgia in Carrollton, U S .
John Hemingway
John Baskerville and William Shenstone
Although the personalities of John Baskerville
and William Shenstone were opposites they
had a lot in common. They both rose to
importance in their fields despite their
background and both did not easily fit into the
society they lived in. Baskerville was a practical
man with some intellectual interests, Shenstone
was an intellectual with some practical ability
and they used each other’s skills for their own
advantages. One of the most important things
that Shenstone did for Baskerville was
introduce him to the London publisher Robert
Dodsley, which helped his fame as a printer to
spread out of the West Midlands.
was born in Bridlington,
Yorkshire in 1947, moving to Worcester when he
was five. After school he studied catering at college and
worked as a chef in a restaurant before joining the
Merchant Navy as a steward. After which he was
employed as an Assistant Buyer for a mail order firm
and then sold encyclopaedias in Germany. A number of
jobs followed until he enrolled on a three-year teaching
degree course. John taught at a prep school before
becoming an archaeological supervisor in Wiltshire.
Further archaeological jobs followed until his retirement
in 2011 as archaeologist for Dudley Metropolitan
Borough Council. He is now conducting research into
William Shenstone at the University of Birmingham.
JOHN HEMINGWAY
Dr John Hinks
Printing and the ‘English Urban Renaissance’
This paper explores the cultural and
commercial context within which John
Baskerville and other provincial printers
operated. The ‘English Urban Renaissance’
focuses on provincial towns as they begin to
break free from commercial and cultural
dependence on London. When the Printing
(Licensing) Act was allowed to lapse in 1695,
the way was clear for a steady and highly
significant growth of printing in English
provincial towns such as Birmingham.
Although London continued to dominate as a
centre of book production, printers now also
flourished in the provinces, often working in
co-operation with each other and with
London-based printers and booksellers.
is Chair of the Printing Historical
Society and a member of the Council of the
Bibliographical Society. A former public library
director, he has been since 2005 an Honorary Fellow at
the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester,
and an Honorary Research Fellow in English at the
University of Birmingham, where he edits the British
Book Trade Index website. His research focuses mainly
on ‘the long eighteenth century’, including London/
provincial/regional book-trade networks, the production
and distribution of chapbooks and other ‘street
literature’, and the book trade in English spa towns up
to the Regency period.
JOHN HINKS
Joanna Jarvis & Mary Collins
Baskerville and the Baroque stage
John Baskerville was not only esteemed as a
typographer and printer, he was also a notable
entrepreneur and a member of the Royal
Society of Arts. As an eminent member of
Birmingham society in the first half of the
eighteenth century, Baskerville witnessed the
strange phenomena created by the Theatre
Licensing Law, 1737. Ironically, whilst seeking
to protect the legacy of ‘serious’ drama, the
issuing of royal patents to the theatres at Drury
Lane and Covent Garden actually resulted in
the emergence of theatrical events and
practices which were anything but ‘serious’
and which contributed to the British traditions
of Music Hall and Variety. So what would
Baskerville have experienced when he visited
the theatre in Birmingham? This paper
examines the theatre-going experience of
Birmingham society as reported in the
eighteenth century press.
lectures on the Theatre
Performance & Event Design course at Birmingham
Institute of Art & Design, B C U , and is currently
studying for a P H D , looking at the relationship between
fashionable dress and costume for performance in the
eighteenth century. Joanna is also a freelance costume
designer and maker, specialising in period costume.
Her long association with Mary Collins has led to a
particular interest in period dance and how the cut of
clothes affects movement. Through a series of conference
papers, Joanna and Mary have been exploring the
history of dance in the eighteenth century and how
costume and choreography are intrinsically linked.
JOANNA JARVIS
is an early dance specialist of
international repute. She works with dance, theatre and
TV companies as an adviser, choreographer, dancer and
actress and tours regularly giving master-classes, lecturerecitals and workshops. Mary revives original
choreography and gesture for historical performance.
Credits include Purcell’s operas Dioclesian, Dido &
Aeneas, Gluck’s ballet Don Juan; Rebel’s Les Elemens
and Rameau’s Pygmalion. Mary teaches at the Royal
Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in
London and, at Conservatoire of Music, B C U . Outside
the U K she has given courses for the Norwegian State
Ballet School and the Norwegian Music Conservatoire,
Seoul University in South Korea, The University of
Music, Bucharest and most recently at the University of
Sao Paolo, Brazil.
MARY COLLINS
Yvonne Jones
John Baskerville
‘Japanner of tea trays and other household goods’
By his own admission, Baskerville could not
have indulged his love of printing nor, indeed,
supported his extravagant lifestyle, had it not
been for his commercial success as a japanner,
yet until recently, this aspect of his work has
been largely overlooked. None of his japanned
ware is known to have survived, however,
contemporary records provide clear evidence
of how it would have looked. These, together
with engravings by artists who he is known to
have employed to decorate his japanned ware,
will demonstrate that John Baskerville was as
important to the history of japanning as he was
to printing.
has a degree in Fine Art and
taught in schools and colleges before joining the
museums profession. She became aware of the breadth
and importance of industrial japanning when first as
Keeper of Applied Art, and then as Head of Arts &
Museums in Wolverhampton, she researched,
documented, and extended the town’s rich collection of
papier mâché and tinware. She left her post in 1994 to
continue her research, and is now an internationally
regarded authority on the subject, and lectures both in
the U K and in the U S . Her book, Japanned Papier
Mâché and Tinware c1740–1940, was published
in 2012.
YVONNE JONES
Martin Killeen
The Baskerville Collection
at the Cadbury Research Library
The Baskerville books at the Cadbury
Research Library in the University of
Birmingham bequeathed in memory of Victor
Hely-Hutchinson (Professor of Music, 1934–
44) represent an almost complete collection.
This paper considers some of the many
noteworthy items, including multiple copies of
both the Birmingham and the Cambridge
Bibles and other titles including one that is
both uncut and unopened in blue paper
wrappers in the original state in which it would
have left Baskerville’s office. Some copies are
extremely scarce, including books printed by
Robert Martin with the firm’s types when
Baskerville temporarily withdrew from the
business and books printed after Baskerville’s
death by his wife Sarah and Robert Martin.
Finally, the University holds copies of
Continental imprints using the original
Baskerville types after they were sold by Sarah
to Beaumarchais in 1779.
is a qualified librarian
with a degree in Philosophy and English
Literature and an M A in Shakespeare Studies.
His professional career started in the Main
Library of the University of Birmingham,
where he managed public service departments
MARTIN KILLEEN
including the Language, Literature and
History Reading Room; in 1996 he joined
Special Collections where he is now Rare
Books Librarian at the Cadbury Research
Library. A major part of his role involves
exploiting the rich resources of the repository
to support teaching and research across the
University and beyond.
Persida Lazarević Di Giacomo
The Presence of John Baskerville in the
Southern Slavic Enlightenment
This paper is concerned with the presence of
John Baskerville in Southern Slavic
Enlightenment. The most important figure of
the Southern Slavic Enlightenment, Dositej
Obradović (1739/42–1811) experienced a sort
of cultural transformation in England and then
passed the English models to the Balkans. He
had the opportunity to stay in London thanks
to one of the authors whose works were printed
by John Baskerville. Obradović had nothing
but praise for the circle of friends who, when
he was leaving England, gave him some ‘nice’
and ‘useful’ English books. This paper will
analyze the books in question: some of these
books were published by John Baskerville and
are probably the first evidence of the presence
of the typographer Baskerville among
Southern Slavs.
is
Assistant Professor of Slavistics (Serbo-Croatian
Language and Literature) at the University ‘G.
d’Annunzio’ Chieti-Pescara, Italy. Her publications
reflect her research interests in Southern Slavic
Enlightenment, Italian-Southern Slavic relations
(eighteenth–nineteenth centuries), Southern Slavic oral
traditions. She is also an editorial board member of
Zbornik Matice srpske za književnost i jezik and
Serbian Studies Research, and a member of A I S
(Associazione Italiana degli Slavisti), A I S S E E
(Associazione Italiana di Studi del Sud-Est Europeo),
B S E C S (British Society for Eighteenth-Century
Studies), S I S S D (Società Italiana di Studi sul Secolo
X V I I I ).
PERSIDA LAZAREVIĆ DI GIACOMO
Gerry Leonidas
John 1, Victor 0
a reappraisal of Baskerville’s Greek types
Although Baskerville’s Greek typeface did not
follow the fate of its Latin counterpart and is
still around, it has suffered in comparison.
Used only in two editions of the New
Testament, it has been subjected to polite
compliments, faint praise, and even
straightforward dismissal. Victor Scholderer’s
uncomplimentary comments in particular
seem to have condemned the typeface. This
talk describes some of the influences in
Baskerville’s Greek, explains why the typeface
is not as bad as some commentators thought,
and suggests why Scholderer may have not
been entirely fair in his evaluation of the
Baskerville Greek.
is a Senior Lecturer in
Typography at the University of Reading, U K . His
work is biased towards taught postgraduate teaching
and supervision, course development, and enterprise /
knowledge transfer projects; he has specific interests in
Greek typography. He is frequently invited to speak on
typography, typeface design, and typographic education,
and review the work of others. He is the Programme
Director for the M A Typeface Design, a reference course
for practice-based teaching in an academic environment,
and is currently developing a new M A programme, to be
launched in 2014.
GERRY LEONIDAS
Dr Val Loggie
The Eginton family and the development of
printed images
Based in Birmingham and closely linked with
Boulton’s Soho Manufactory, the Eginton
family were key players in the development of
printing techniques. Francis Eginton (1737–
1805), a contemporary of Baskerville,
undertook experiments and entered into
discussion with other practitioners on the
aquatint process. He was also involved in the
production of ‘mechanical paintings’, making
copies of paintings. His brother John was a
skilled die maker and printer, and John’s son,
Francis junior created sophisticated prints for
publications such as Bisset’s Magnificent
Directory. This paper will look at some of the
images created by this talented family and
consider the links and shared skills with the
production of dies.
Barry McKay
is an independent scholar and former
curator of a number of museums including the former
homes of Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin and the
architect Joseph Pickford. She completed an A H R C funded Collaborative P H D at the University of
Birmingham and Birmingham Museum and Art
Gallery. Her research has centred on the midlands in
the eighteenth century, particularly the production and
use of printed images.
The use of decorated papers was an aspect of
the book arts that came relatively late to
England; This paper will seek to outline the
three major methods of production: printed,
paste, and marble papers, illustrated, largely
but not exclusively, from Barry’s own
collection of several hundred examples of
antique and modern decorated papers.
VAL LOGGIE
A pretty art:
decorated papers of the eighteenth-century
is a bookseller specialising in the
arts & history of the book and also a book historian
with particular interests in decorated paper and the
history of the book trades in the Northern Counties of
England. His publications include Patterns &
Pigments in English Marbled Papers (1988), A
Pretty Mysterious Art (1996) and An
Introduction to Chapbooks (2003). He gave the
Gryphon Lecture in Book History at the Thomas Fisher
Rare Book Library, Toronto, 2005. He is presently
engaged in writing a history of the shepherds guides of
Cumbria.
BARRY MCKAY
Simon Loxley
Franklin and Baskerville: how a typefounder
nearly saved the first British Empire
His pivotal role in the American Revolution
notwithstanding, for graphic designers and
printers Benjamin Franklin will always be the
friend and faithful supporter of John
Baskerville; proud of his working roots as a
printer, typesetter and editor, it is unsurprising
there was a meeting of minds. Franklin
admired Baskerville’s type, but did they share a
similar design aesthetic? How did Baskerville
respond to contemporary taste in design, and
was Franklin’s influence a contributing factor?
And did Baskerville, inadvertently, contribute
to a near tipping of the balance against the
Americans in the coming conflict?
is a freelance graphic designer.
He is the author of Type: the secret history of
letters and Printer’s Devil: the life and work of
Frederic Warde. He is the designer and founding
editor of Ultrabold, the journal of St Bride Library.
Simon has contributed articles on design and typography
to Baseline, Parenthesis, Design Week,
The Grolier Gazette, Printing History,
smashingmagazine.com and typeculture.com.
He is a visiting lecturer at Norwich University College
of the Arts and Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
SIMON LOXLEY
Sébastien Morlighem
The types of Claude Jacob, ‘élève de Baskerville’
(1784–9)
Claude Jacob worked as a punchcutter during
the 1780s in Birmingham, where he was
presumably trained by John Handy, John
Baskerville’s main punchcutter; in Kehl, where
he was employed by the Société typographique
et littéraire to repair and complete Baskerville’s
original punches and matrices; and in
Strasbourg, where he created his own
typefoundry and printing-office with Henri
Rolland in 1784. This lecture will attempt to
provide a better knowledge of the career of
Claude Jacob and of his types – possibly the
closest and sole adaptation of Baskerville’s
typeforms in France.
studied at the École
Supérieure Estienne, in Paris. He teaches the history of
graphic design and typography and is coordinator of the
post-graduate program ‘Typography and Language’ at
the École supérieure d’art et de design, Amiens. He has
curated several conferences and exhibitions, created the
SÉBASTIEN MORLIGHEM
Bibliothèque typographique collection for Ypsilon
Éditeur and co-authored books about French type
designers José Mendoza y Almeida and Roger
Excoffon. He collaborates frequently with Eye and
Étapes magazines and lectures in many countries.
He is currently finishing his P H D research in the
Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
at the University of Reading, U K .
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Professor James Mosley
Baskerville after Baskerville
John Baskerville realised an ambition to make
his name with the introduction of new printing
types and a new style of printing. Although his
works aroused hostility among members of a
printing and publishing trade based in
London, he gained an international reputation
as the pioneer of what is known as the neoclassical style in the making of books. The
influence of his work can be traced more
widely outside Great Britain than that of any of
his contemporaries. This paper surveys his
heritage in Britain and abroad, and adds a
note on the surviving materials of his
typefoundry.
is Visiting Professor in the
Department of Typography & Graphic
Communication, University of Reading. He
was librarian of the St Bride Library, London,
from 1958 to 2000. He writes and lectures on
the history of letterforms and printing types.
He contributed the article on John Baskerville
to the Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography. He worked at the Water Lane
Press of Philip Gaskell, King’s College
Cambridge, and briefly at Stevens, Shanks &
Sons Ltd, typefounders, London, before
joining the St Bride Library, to which he
added types and working printing presses,
typefounders’ punches and matrices and
designs for typefaces.
JAMES MOSLEY
Dr Diana Patterson
Baskerville: a man of parts
Baskerville’s many talents included marbling
paper, although he failed to win a competition
for marbled paper sponsored by the Society of
Arts Manufactures and Commerce in 1760.
Left with a considerable quantity of this paper,
he bound his own books with some of it so that
we can probably identify why he did not win.
Curiously, there is also one of Baskerville’s
Books of Common Prayer with marbling over
printer’s waste, which show a network of
connections between Baskerville, a London
decorated paper maker, a London bookseller, a
Scottish binder, and a specific owner.
is Associate Professor of
English at Mount Royal University in Calgary,
Alberta, Canada. She is a book historian, particularly
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in
Great Britain. She has published on Baskerville;
decorated wastepaper, particularly its connection with
dissenting religions; Laurence Sterne; and J.K.
Rowling. Her most recent book is Mount Royal
Conservatory’s First One Hundred Years: A
Social History of a Musical Institution (2011).
DIANA PATTERSON
Professor Nicholas Pickwoad
Books bound after what manner you please:
English bookbinding in the mid-eighteenth century
Baskerville’s work as a typographer, printer
and bookseller took place within a highly
developed booktrade with well-established
patterns of work, of which the bookbinding
trade formed an important part. Bindings were
made at all levels of cost to suit the different
needs of the booktrade and the full range of
customers, both institutional and private, who
bought books. Baskerville editions add a
further dimension to the value of bindings, as
the bindings chosen for them after Baskerville’s
death show a continuing interest in the
products of his press on the part of wealthy
collectors well into the nineteenth century. trained in bookbinding
and book conservation with Roger Powell, and ran his
own workshop from 1977 to 1989, and has been
Adviser on book conservation to the National Trust since
1978. He was Chief Conservator in the Harvard
University Library from 1992 to 1995 and is now
project leader of the St Catherine’s Monastery Library
Project based at the University of the Arts London where
he is director of the Ligatus Research Centre, which is
dedicated to the history of bookbinding.
NICHOLAS PICKWOAD
Jeff Pulaski
Laying the Groundwork for John Baskerville’s
innovations: the Star Chamber, the Stationers’
Company and William Caslon
When William Caslon I was born in 1692,
printing in England had reached its lowest
point. During the previous 200 years, the
government passed numerous laws trying to
control the industry, but in effect, created
many monopolies. With limited legal
competition, printers had little incentive to
improve their craft. In 1693 most of the laws
surrounding the art and craft of printing had
expired, opening up the trade. Caslon was a
beneficiary of this new trading atmosphere.
This paper will examine the environment that
existed with William Caslon I entered the
printing trade, look at the contributions he
made during his career, and consider how he
paved the way for the work of John Baskerville.
is Assistant Professor in
graphic design at Wichita State University,
Kansas, U S . He is a member and Past
President of the A I G A Wichita Chapter and a
member of the American Institute of Graphic
Arts. Jeff is an active letterpress printer, and
has spoken at conferences both in the U S and
Europe about letterpress past and present; and
has curated several international exhibitions of
his letterpress work. His publications include
The New Big Book of Layouts, 2010.
JEFF PULASKI
Ben Waddington
Loose ends
This paper collects the various threads of my
research on Baskerville. The drive to trace and
collect any associated story, fact or object is
born from the relative lack of details, relics and
locations from Baskerville's life. In so doing,
the story of how Birmingham viewed
Baskerville (and perhaps how he saw himself)
and the range of Baskerville’s interests is
revealed. The relics include: a carved wooden
fireplace from Baskerville’s birthplace in
Wolverley, a door case from his house in Easy
Hill, a lost statue of Baskerville created in his
lifetime, photographic evidence of Baskerville's
local pub ‘The Woolpack’ and a radio
playscript about Baskerville from 1947.
is an independent researcher
with a particular interest in Birmingham’s industrial
history. His preferred platform for sharing his research
is through guided tours. In 2012 he launched the Still
Walking Festival, a programme of guided tours
around the city, many of which sourced their material
from students and historical researchers. He continues to
develop the interface between education, research,
tourism and civic identity. The life and work of John
Baskerville has long been an inspiration for Ben’s work,
representing the overlap of industry, art, business and
ingenuity.
BEN WADDINGTON
Dr Susan E Whyman
Rough Diamonds:
John Baskerville & William Hutton
This paper considers Baskerville’s influence on
Birmingham’s print culture by analysing his
relationships with the producers, distributors,
and buyers of books. Baskerville held a special
place at the centre of Birmingham’s print
networks: he was a bridge between the town’s
booksellers, stationers, printers, and mechanics
and the Lunar society. Like others in the less
well-known group, Baskerville was a rough
diamond - an eccentric autodidact, who built a
career based on printing fine books. This paper
will focus on Baskerville’s ties to William
Hutton, bookseller, paper merchant, and
historian. Both men were immigrants who
tried several occupations, achieved success in
self-taught careers, and challenged
conventions. Their relationship shows how two
upstarts influenced Birmingham’s print culture.
is an independent historian,
formerly of Princeton University, where she received both
M A and P H D degrees. Whyman lectures and publishes
widely, both in the U K and the U S on letters, literacy,
self-education, and British culture. She is a fellow of the
Royal Historical Society and the author of The Pen
and the People: English Letter Writers, which
won the Modern Language Association prize in 2010;
Sociability and Power: The Cultural Worlds of
the Verneys, and Walking the Streets of
Eighteenth-Century London: John Gay’s
SUSAN WHYMAN
Trivia, co-edited with Clare Brant (all published by
Oxford University Press).
Jesvin Puay-Hwa Yeo
A modular typeface design inspired by John Baskerville
This paper reports on the implementation of a
typeface design assignment tribute to John
Baskerville. For a period of fourteen weeks,
students worked with modules derived from
their research on John Baskerville. The final
outcomes are sixteen sets of modular typefaces,
which include one weight of all twenty-six
letters of the Latin alphabet in both lowercase
and uppercase, as well as sixteen typographic
books. The purpose is to introduce students to
the renowned eighteenth-century typographer,
printer and industrialist – John Baskerville, as
well as to let them know the fact that anything
could be an inspirational tool for design.
is an Assistant Professor of Visual
Communication at Nanyang Technological University,
and graduated from Central Saint Martins College of
Art and Design in London. Her research interests are
focus on the historical and contemporary cultural
changes, in the areas of Asian material culture, Asian
studies and typography. She investigates the intersection
of culture elements, cultural identity and tradition, as
well as experiment with communication through visual,
typography and technology. Jesvin has presented and
published her works at several international conferences
and also exhibited her creative works internationally.
JESVIN YEO