University of Virginia Library

Type

From the scale of prices above, we see that before 1749, when almost all entries included the type face used, the faces most frequently mentioned were:

                           

1. Pica ...............................................	52
2. English ............................................	41
3. Small Pica .........................................	37
4. Long Primer ........................................	18
5. Great Primer .......................................	6
6. Brevier ............................................	5
7. Pica and Long Primer ...............................	2
8. Long Primer and Brevier ............................	2
9. Double Pica ........................................	1
10. Pica and Small Pica ................................	1
11. Bourgeois ..........................................	0
12. Small Letter .......................................	0
	__
	165

From this frequency list, we can arrive at the "standard" faces:

After 1749, when Strahan simplified his ledger entries, he eliminated mention of any faces except those used in an unusual or "extra" manner. This absence of mention provides us with one of the three kinds of evidence about type after 1749. We would expect that the "standard" faces, established above, would not appear often in the entries but that the smaller faces might appear as "extra charges." Such is exactly the case. I could find only forty-nine instances after 1749 in which type face was named, either in the standard entries or in the

"extra charges." These show just the reversal of frequency which we would expect:

• Instances
• 1. English ............................................... 0
• 2. "Large Letter" [Great Primer?] ...................................... 1
• 3. Pica and Small Pica ................................... 1
• 4. Small Pica with Brevier ............................... 1
• 5. "Large Pica" [Double Pica? or large sheet of Pica?] ...................................... 2
• 6. Bourgeois ............................................. 2
• 7. Small Pica ............................................ 3
• 8. Pica .................................................. 5
• 9. Brevier ............................................... 6
• 10. Long Primer ........................................... 9
• 11. Small Letter .......................................... 19

It is apparent that if Strahan only mentioned type faces forty-nine times after 1749, he must have been using his price scale (which has been reconstructed above) to set each unit charge; using the scale would eliminate the necessity for recording type faces in the ledgers. However, "small letter" was still recorded with some frequency — in the context of notes, indexes and appendixes rather than of text or body work.

When frequency is correlated with price in the scale, we find that Strahan's charges for standard and non-standard faces were completely consistent with the size appropriate for body or text work and notes or small work:

                   

Cheapest:	Double Pica
	Great Primer
Intermediate:	English
	Pica
	Small Pica
Extra Charge:	Bourgeois
	Long Primer
	Brevier
High Extra Charge:	Small Letter
	(Non Pareil or Pearl)

The other two kinds of evidence about type after 1749 are found in two ledgers which show (1) Strahan's purchases for the private business and (2) type on hand at the law house.

Purchases of Type for the
Private Business

Five pages in Ledger B show forty-one purchases of type from the firm of Alexander Wilson, typefounder in Glasgow, between 1754 and 1776, as well as four returns of unused or faulty type. Although these records do not show all of Strahan's purchases of type, they do show how much of each kind he purchased from one company over a period of years.

Since we do not know what type Strahan already had on hand, the only safe conclusion which can be drawn from this table is that he purchased more English type than any other kind from Wilson between 1754 and 1776; we cannot conclude, of course, that Strahan did not use Pica, etc., at all, for we know from the ledger entries that he did. Further, it is notorious that Scottish type height has always been different from London type height; some twentieth-century printing companies still keep old Scottish type separately cased. Therefore, Strahan probably bought his Pica, etc., from a Scottish founder rather than from his other regular supplier, William Caslon, whose type was used in the law house.

Type on Hand at the Law House

The amounts of type used in the law house seem to correlate more closely with the mention and lack of mention of type in the ledgers than do the type purchases from Wilson shown above. The following table shows the total poundage of old and new type on hand for the four presses of the law house when it was inventoried at the expiration

of the Law Patent in 1789. The relative proportions of type faces are close to the proportions one would expect to find in the private business except that the law house had no Double Pica or Bourgeois in 1789 and that the poundage is much less than would have been on hand at the private business, which was easily three times the size of the law house.