Thorowgood Foundry

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Thorowgood Foundry [William Thorowgood] English punchcutter and typefounder who died in 1877. He worked at the Fann Street foundry in London and was active ca. 1820-1849. He is best known for one of the early sans serifs, Grotesque (1832) [note: that name is still in use today to refer to sans serif typefaces based on 19th century models], with a square M and equal width caps. Stephenson Blake and Monotype published a number of grotesques and numbered them as in Grotesque No. 33. It is generally accepted that Thorowgood released the first sanserif lowercase in 1834. He did several other types, including a Clarendon (1848). Quoting from the wiki: In 1794 Robert Thorne had purchased the foundry of Thomas Cottrell, a former employee of William Caslon, which had been founded in 1757 when Cottrell and Joseph Jackson were fired in a wage dispute. 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 before this Thorowgood made the foundry initially successful by publicizing Thorne's typefaces. Many of the types identified as Thorowgood's are actually the designs of Robert Thorne. Thorowgood went on to issue new specimens and added more typefaces including Frakturs, Greeks, and Russian types which he obtained from the Breitkopf and Härtel foundry of Leipzig, Germany. In 1828 he also purchased the Edmund Fry foundry which had a large collection of foreign language types as well. Robert Besley became a partner in the firm in 1828, and on Thorowgood's retirement in 1849, Besley took over the foundry. FontShop link. Linotype link. Modern digital revivals: A super-black, super-contrasted didone typeface simply called Thorowgood (Elsner&Flake, Scangraphic, and Linotype). In 2019, Commercial Type released the Thorowgood Grotesque collection by Paul Barnes and Greg Gazdowicz. It is accompanied by the subfamilies Thorowgood Grotesque Dimensional (beveled) and Thorowgood Grotesque Open, and the related Thorowgood Egyptian. Chamfer Engraved JNL (2020, Jeff Levine). A chamfered sans serif wood type design with a right side engraving line.	EXTERNAL LINKS Thorowgood Foundry [Designer info] MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ Caslon ⦿ Clarendon ⦿ Foundries of the 19th century ⦿ Wood Type ⦿