Of the excellence of the performance it is sufficient to say that the Specimen placed Caslon absolutely without rival at the head of his profession ‘and,’ as Nichols says, ‘for clearness and uniformity, for the use of the reader and student, it is doubtful whether it has been exceeded by any subsequent production.’ Of these, all, with three exceptions, are Caslon’s own handiwork, and represent the untiring industry of fourteen years. Greek: English, Pica, Long Primer, Brevier.Hebrew: English, English with points, Brevier.Gothic, Coptic, Armenian, Samaritan: Pica of each.Roman and Italic: French Canon, 2-line Great Primer, 2-line English, Double Pica, Great Primer, English, Pica, Small Pica (2), Long Primer (2), Brevier, Nonpareil, and Pearl.Titling: 5-line Pica, 4-line Pica, 2-line Great Primer, 2-line English, 2-line Pica, 2-line Long Primer, 2-line Brevier.The sheet is arranged in four columns, and displays 38 fonts: It is a well-documented historic artefact that Talbot Baines Reed (1887) described as follows: William Caslon I (1692 – 1766) reached the pinnacle of his creation when he published his specimen sheet in 1734 to advertise his foundry.

You can find the PDF version at the bottom of this post. Therefore, I made it my little side project to recreate the specimen sheet in Adobe Illustrator for high quality printing. And there is also the problem with optical distortion from the digitization process, as well as stains and inconsistent contrast. However, the resolution of the source file is too low for serious printing. I thought it would make a very decent and highly decorative poster.

A Specimen by William Caslon, Letter-founder in Chiswell Street, LondonĪ while ago, I saw the famous specimen sheet that William Caslon distributed in 1734 on the subreddit for typography. A piece of typographic history recreated.Ī recreated version of 1734.

Caslon font wikipedia