Searching for Morris Fuller Benton

Description

Searching for Morris Fuller Benton: Discovering the Designer Through His Typefaces

by Juliet Shen

with a foreword by Roger Black, frontispiece wood engraving by Carl Montford, and dozens of typographic specimens from Europe and North America

Morris Fuller Benton is the most prolific type designer of the hot metal era, but unlike Frederic Goudy, Bruce Rogers, or William Dwiggins–whose ideas about type design are well documented–Benton wrote nothing about his own work, nor was it the subject of analysis by others.

Juliet Shen has made a meticulous study of his work, including a new enumeration of designs appropriately attributed to him. She gained access to papers from the ATF library, now housed at Columbia University. Shen places Benton in the context of American life at the turn of the 20th Century, when branding, advertising, and marketing were first becoming major factors in the economy. She compares his typefaces to similar ones from the same period, discovering the elements which he found important. The book contains additional research not in Shen’s original masters dissertation version.

As Roger Black says in the introduction, “Benton’s lean, driving, consistent style took over American printing in the pre-war era, and remains the bedrock of American typography.”

The book is designed by Robert McCamant, set in Benton’s Cloister Oldstyle typeface cast by the Dale Guild Type Foundry from ATF matrices, and hand typeset by Art Larson and Rose Wisotzky at Horton Tank Graphics. It is printed on Mohawk Superfine, with letterpress by Michael Russem of Kat Ran Press, and offset illustrations and captions by Capitol Offset. Trisha Hammer has designed and executed the binding. 58 pp, 7½ x 10¼ inches. Edition of 75.

Published January 1, 2012.

From the book’s colophon:

… edition limited to 75. The body type is Cloister Oldstyle cast by the Dale Guild Type foundry from ATF matrices. Text subheads are Monootype Franklin Gothic 107, cast by Ed Rayher. The type was set at Horton Tank Graphics by Art Larson, assisted by Rose Wisotzky. Michael Russem of Kat Ran Press printed the text. Illustrations and captions were printed by Capitol Offset. The book was designed by Robert McCamant and bound by Trisha Hammer.

Copies are signed by Juliet Shen and Robert McCamant.