Type designer and punchcutter, b. Edinburgh, Scotland, 1827, d. Philadelphia, 1905. Born Alexander Thompson MacKaye, he apprenticed with a bookbinding tools manufacturer, and went to London in 1850, where he worked for punch-cutting expert John Skirving. He cut typefaces for English typefounders such as Henry Caslon, Vincent Figgins, and the Stephenson Blake company. After that, he joined L. Johnson&Co. in Philadelphia in 1854, where he changed his surname from MacKaye to Kay. He stayed with L. Johnson&Co (later Binny&Ronaldson, then MacKellar, Smith&Jordan) for 40 years, until he lost much of his sight to cataract. His most famous are Binny Old Style and Ronaldson Old Style (1884, MacKellar, Smith&Jordan). The latter family was digitized by Canada Type as Ronaldson (2008). The former was digitized by Monotype as Binny Old Style MT. Pic.

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Alexander Kay
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type in Scotland ⦿ History of type ⦿ Type scene in Pennsylvania ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿

Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html