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S. M. Weatherly

McGrew writes about this turn of the century American designer who made the blackletter typeface Washington Text: Washington Text was patented in 1904 by S. M. Weatherly, probably the designer, and introduced by Keystone Type Foundry in 1905. It is distinguished by the long starting strokes on many of the capitals, described by Theodore L. De Vinne as graceful as an ox of one horn. The Monotype adaptation in keyboard sizes, up to 12-point, shortens the opening strokes considerably to fit predetermined character widths and changes other proportions. The lowercase is a round modification of Old English, and is said to have been influenced by Bradley (q.v). The typeface is named for George Washington, at a time of heightened interest in historic persons. In Washington Text Shaded, shown about 1908, the lowercase is essentially the same, but some caps are substantially different and none except A have the exaggerated opening strokes of the solid version. The California private press operator who furnished this shaded specimen, Gordon L. Sullivan, says that about half the caseful of type has the Keystone foundry pinmark, but the other half has no pinmark; while the two lots have different nicks, although the typeface appears to be identical. This is not unusual, as Keystone was taken over by ATF in 1919. Some Keystone typefaces were continued in production, using the same matrices but quite likely with different molds on different casting machines. Gordon also comments that the proof was difficult because the type is used-some very much. This is typical of how specimens of a number of the rarer typefaces in this book were obtained, and this is a particularly delicate face, so the difficulty is not surprising.

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