This selection of typefaces held at the Whittington Press was assembled during the 70’s and 80’s, a time when the comprehensive collections held by printers such as Butler and Tanner, Western Printing Services and William Clowes were being off-loaded at scrap value. When the Oxford University Press collection was added, the Press had acquired nearly every book face produced by Monotype before and during the leadership of Stanley Morison. A collection awash with all the outside sorts, terminal characters, ligatures and accents needed for OUP’s educational publishing requirements.
The Press has been fortunate to have had three exceptional Monotype craftsmen to set up and run all this fairly antique equipment over the years: George Wiggall (with Basil Wilks at the keyboard), Peter Sanderson, and for the last fifteen years, Neil Winter. Ellen Bills now assists Neil whilst continuing her apprenticeship at pace, and the hot-metal department is being eased into the 21st century with the addition of the Welliver system. This means we will now be able to bypass the time-consuming keyboarding process and set type directly from computer generated files.
We are happy to supply type from the list either as set copy or as full cases and/or galleys. We also stock spacing material (up to 72-point), leads and border units for which a separate catalogue is in progress. A full list of founts of type that is available here.
As time goes by the search for spare parts and spool paper has made the running of these machines something of a challenge, but there can be no doubting that the best way to keep Monotype and its unequalled typographical superiority alive is by keeping this machinery in daily use.