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ABOUT

Stephenson Blake [John Stephenson]

Founded in 1819 in Sheffield by toolmaker John Stephenson (died in 1864), silversmith William Garnett and financier James Blake, initially largely based on the purchase of the foundry of William Caslon III and IV in 1819. In 1829 Garnett left to become a farmer. The company was renamed Blake&Stephenson in 1830, but Blake died soon after. It became Stephenson, Blake&Co. in 1841. John Stephenson died in 1864, the year after he handed control to his son Henry. The company grew by acquiring most British typefoundries: Fann Street Foundry (1906); Fry's Type Street Letter Foundry; H.W. Caslon&Sons (1937); Miller&Richard (1952). The matrices and other old typographic equipment to Monotype and can be seen in the Type Museum of London. MyFonts provides this update: Members of both the Stephenson and Blake families still sit on the board of the present company. In 2001, according to managing director Tom Blake, the foundry was still producing some type in zinc, but by 2005 the company was wound up. There are plans to turn the former premises into an apartment complex.

In 1996, all remaining materials (punches, matrices, specimen books) were sold to Justin Howes' Type Museum. The information in The Ancestry of British Typefounding and the complete list of the Stephenson-Blake typefaces comes from Roy Millington's Stephenson Blake The Last of the Old English Typefounders, The British Library, London, 2002. Today, Stephenson Blake continues in manufacturing only.

Partial typeface list: Algerian (URW), Brittanic (Linotype), Baskerville Old Face (URW), Blackfriars (1920; a reversed-contrast Victorian typeface; digitally revied as a variable font by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich at Delve Fonts as Tuppence), Carlton (1910s, digitized by Letraset in 1983; some say the original is F.H. Ehmcke's Ehmcke Antiqua, 1909), Chisel (an engravers typeface done in 1939 by Robert Harling; digital version at URW), Consort [the Stephenson Blake version of Clarendon], Doric Bold (Adobe), Elongated Roman (1937: a revival of the Victorian condensed and elongated fat faces, in the genre of Slimback), Fry's Ornamented No. 2 (many digitizations exist, e.g., Beffle (1991, David Rakowski)), Grotesque No 9 (URW), Impact (Linotype, Adobe), Kingston (with almost square counters and eyes), Klang (by Will Carter), Latin (URW), Latin Wide (1940), Latin Antique (1880s; a woodish typeface revived by Nick Curtis in 2011 as Indubitably NF; Monotype also had a metal version of this), Old Town No 536 (Western face, see Linotype), Playbill (a 1939 western saloon typeface by Robert Harling; digital versions at Bitstream, Linotype, and URW), Sans Serif Shaded (revived by Dieter Steffmann in 2002), Tea Chest (1939, an all-caps stencil typeface revived in 2011 by Nick Curtis as East India Company NF; Sigrid Claessens and Günther Flake revived Tea Chest Stencil in 1999 for Apply Interactive), Thorowgood, Verona (1923), Vivaldi (now at Linotype), Windsor (Bitstream, URW, Linotype, after a 1903 original by Sir William Kirkwood at Stephenson Blake), Wood Indexes (fists), Marina Script (1936, a copperplate script), Parisian Ronde (acquired from the Inland Type Foundry in 1905), Imperial Script (late 1800s formal script not unlike Firmin Didot's Anglaise, 1809), Bologna (script face, 1946), Glenmoy (script face, 1932, digitized and expanded in 2005 by Alejandro Paul as Mousse Script (Sudtipos) and in 2007 by Nick Curtis as Glengary NF, and in 2012 by Vernon Adams as Norican at Google Web Fonts), Francesca Ronde (1948), Granby (1930, a humanist sans family based on Edward Johston's types; revivals include one by Steve Jackaman and Ashley Muir called Granby Elephant (2011), and the main digital revival, from 2011, by Elsner and Flake called Granby EF), Recherché (revived by Nick Curtis as Plus de Vagues NF (2006)), Youthline Script (1952, a copperplate script for the banking and insurance industry, digitized and extended into a 7-weight family in 2005 by Rebecca Alaccari and Patrick Griffin as Sterling Script (2005)).

Some type specimen, and a discussion of some typefaces, by yours truly.

Scans of some old typefaces: Britannic Italic (1906), Flemish (for a digital semi-revival, see Dan Solo's Brussels), Freehand Script, Olympian.

A few scans from Henry Taylor Wyse's book of 1911, showing types owned jointly by Stephenson Blake and Sir Charles Reed of Sheffield: AntiqueRoman, Athenian, Baskerville, Black No. 3, DeVinne, DeVinne Italic, Hallamshire Old Italic, Italian Old Style, Italian Old Style, Italian Old Style Italic, Lining Modern No. 20, Lining Old Style No. 5, Lining Westminster Old Style, Winchester Bold, Winchester Old Style, Winchester Old Style Italic.

View digital typefaces that descend from the Stephenson Blake collection.

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INTERNAL LINKS
Foundries of the 19th century ⦿ Extinct 20th century foundries ⦿ Western fonts ⦿ Nick Curtis ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ Copperplate ⦿ Ronde (Rondo, Rundschrift): Upright scripts ⦿ Fists, pointing hands ⦿ Caslon ⦿ Clarendon ⦿ Baskerville ⦿ Dieter Steffmann ⦿