Perpetua (series 239) — Quarter strength jobbing

Once the Monotype programme of producing faces based on earlier models had proved a financial success, Stanley Morison was in a position to recommend the Corporation to risk something new : a book face commissioned from a living artist.

Suspecting what Beatrice Warde had once called 'the fatal facility of the pantographic punch-cutter', Morison did not look to calligraphers and draughtsmen as such for a contemporary roman type suitable for commercial book work. In Morison's view only cutters of letters in stone, wood or metal could produce the fine serif ('not in origin calligraphic but epigraphic; not written but sculptured') in which lay the distinction of the work of Griffo or Fournier. He realised that what he required was drawings by a calligrapher who was also an engraver- Eric Gill.

As early as November 1925 Gill produced several letters for Morison. From these, punches were cut by hand in Paris by Charles Malin, who modified Gill's designs in those slight respects necessary to interpret them adequately in metal. The punches were struck in 1926 and trial matrices were made and type was cast by Ribadeau-Dumas, the Paris typefounders. Gill made further corrections on the smoke-proofs, and the matrices were brought to London for the Monotype engineers to use in making the matrices for machine casting. Perpetua was then issued in 1929.

Felicity, the italic to accompany Perpetua, was intended as a sloped roman, but with three upper-case and three lower-case characters using those cursive forms traditional in an italic face. Stanley Morison said of Perpetua in the BBC radio portrait of Eric Gill in 1969: "They are creations. There was never anything of that kind before Gill did this, and never has been anything since. The capitals that he did, I think, will be immortal. They'll be used as long as the Roman alphabet is ever used anywhere. And probably those PERPETUA CAPITALS - the titling, so-called - I suppose are the finest capitals ever done since SIXTUS THE FIFTH - in 1589. They're far better than the classic Trajan and Augustus pattern - far better.'