Robert Thorne

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Robert Thorne English punchcutter and typefounder (1754-1820, North London), designer of the first fat typefaces, founder of the Fann Street Foundry in 1794 and active until his death in 1820, when his foundry was sold to William Thorowgood a few months after his death. Designer of one of the first fat didone typefaces, Thorowgood (1809), and of Thorne Shaded (1820; Thorne Shaded was part of the Reed foundry material, had defective matrices, so Stephenson&Blake had it recut by Karl Gomer in 1938-1940). iAs metal typeface, Thorowgood was featured in 1953 by Stephenson and Blake. Quoting from the typophile wiki: In 1794 Robert Thorne purchased the foundry of Thomas Cottrell, a former employee of the original William Caslon, which had been founded in 1757 when Cottrell and Joseph Jackson were fired in a wage dispute. By 1798 Thorne had replaced all of Cottrell's types with his own designs and in 1801 was the first type founder to begin showing the fat typeface types. He went on to design many popular display typefaces. He also moved the foundry to Fann St. renaming it the Fann Street Foundry. Upon Thorne's death in 1820 the foundry was purchased at auction by William Thorowgood using money he had won in a lottery though he was never involved in the type founding business. Subsequently many of the types identified as Thorowgood's are actually the designs of Robert Thorne. Author of Specimen of Printing types (1794, 1803, 1814). Digital revivals of his types: URW Thorowgood. Thorowgood SB (Scangraphic). Thorne Shaded was digitized and condensed by Nick Curtis as Shady Grove NF (2006). Dieter Steffmann released his free version, Thorne Shaded ca. 2001.	EXTERNAL LINKS Robert Thorne [Designer info] MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Nick Curtis ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ Caslon ⦿ Books on type design ⦿ Dieter Steffmann ⦿