TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Thu Nov 28 19:01:09 EST 2024
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Hamilton Holly Wood Type Co. (or: Hamilton Manufacturing Company)
[James Hamilton]
Founded by Edward J. Hamilton as the J. E. Hamilton Hollywood Type Company after the introduction in 1880 of Hollywood type. Located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, this company was the successor firm to the William H. Page Wood Type Company, Morgans and Wilcox, and Vanderburgh, Wells&Company, and thus possessed most wood type in the USA in 1906. In 1906, they published a specimen book of all the wood-type designs in their possession, and, incredibly, destroyed all the original paper designs and patterns for the individual letters. This brought a heavy blow to the wood type industry. The lithograph dealt it another blow, and wood type became obsolete soon afterwards. Samples of their specimen books are starting to appear on the web. See here and here for samples of pointing hands from the 1901 catalog, and here for fists from their 1900 catalog. About their start: Just after 1880, Max Katz finances the business, and it becomes Hamilton&Katz for a few years. Katz sells out to William Baker, and the name of the firm becomes The Hamilton Co., or Hamilton&Baker. A bit later, Hamilton buys out Baker, to form the Hamilton Manufacturing Company. And then the takeovers start in earnest: in 1891, they buy the William H. Page Wood Type Company, then in 1898 Heber Wells, in 1899 Morgans and Wilcox Mfg Co., and in 1918 Tubbs Mfg Co. Amazingly, the company lasted until 1985, and enjoyed the lion share of the wood type business in the 20th century. Hamilton Wood Type Catalog #14 (1899) can now be viewed on-line. Ross Connard's PDF file of that same catalog. Scans from the 1899 catalog: Fist, Page 27, Page 30, Page 35, Page 36, Page 39, Page 65, Page 66, Page 68, DeVinne Condensed, Devinne Double Extra Condensed, Jenson Old Style, Bradley, The Inland, Page 106. Additional typefaces: Ben Franklin (1895, distressed edge font---other fonts in that style include Plymouth, Pabst and Blanchard), Bradley (1900, based on an ATF typeface by Will Bradley), Old Style (1900, after William Caslon IV's Caslon, ca. 1816), Cheltenham (1891, 1900), Cheltenham Black Expanded (1900), Clarendon Condensed (1899, after the original by Bill Stark & Co., 1853), Cooper Black (ca. 1900). DeVinne Condensed (1895), French Clarendon (1890), Antique No7 (1889), Antique Tuscan (1881, after Wells&Webb, 1854), Etruscan No4 (1895). A note on digitizations of the collection. There are two main sources, one commercial, and one free. The commercial revival project of Richard Kegler / P22 is called HWT, or Hamilton Wood Type. The free font project is by Dick Pape, who digitized many of Hamilton's typefaces in his American Wood Type collection. Download page for Dick Pape's fonts. Jeff Levine addded a few revivals of his own. These include Wood Clarendon JNL (2020: after Hamilton Clarendon Condensed, 1899), Wood Sans Narrow JNL (2017), West Fork JNL (2020: after Hamilton's Latin Extended from 1999) and County Clerk JNL (2020: after Gothic Special). References: Wood Type (Hamilton Manufacturing Co., Two Rivers, WI, 1938). |
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Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ https://luc.devroye.org ⦿ https://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html |