At The Caslon Foundry In Chiswell St
22/23 Chiswell St
Chiswell St is a canyon lined with glass and steel buildings leading from Moorgate to the Barbican today, yet once this was the centre of printing in the City of London. The foundry established by William Caslon in 1737, Britain’s most celebrated type designer, stood here until 1937. For more than two centuries, Caslon was the default typeface for printing in the English language and when the Americans wanted to make their Declaration of Independence and publish their Constitution, they imported type from the Caslon Foundry in Chiswell St to do it.
These historic photographs from St Bride Printing Library, taken in 1902 upon the occasion of the opening of the new Caslon factory in Hackney Wick, record both the final decades of the unchanged work of traditional type-founding, as well as the mechanisation of the process that would eventually lead to the industry being swept away by the end of the century.
22/23 Chiswell St with Caslon’s delivery van outside the foundry
The Directors’ Room with portraits of William Caslon and Elizabeth Caslon
Sydney Caslon Smith in his office
Clerks’ office, 15th November 1902. A woman sits at her typewriter in the centre of the office.
Type store with fonts being made up in packets by women and boys working by candlelight
Another view of the type store with women making up packets of fonts
Another view of the type store
Another part of the type store
In the type store
A boy makes up a packet of fonts in the type store
Room of printers’ supplies including type cases, forme trolleys and electro cabinets
Another view of the printers’ supplies store
Printing office on an upper floor with pages of type specimens being set and printed on Albion and Imperial handpresses.
Packing department with crates labelled GER, GWR, LNWR, CALCUTTA, BOMBAY, and SYDNEY
New Caslon Letter Foundry at Rothbury Rd, Hackney Wick, 1902
Harold Arthur Caslon Smith at his rolltop desk in Hackney Wick with type specimens from 1780 on the wall, Friday 7th November, 1902
Machine shop with plane, lathes and overhead belting
Gas engines and man with oil can
Lathes in the Machine Shop
Hand forging in the Machine Shop
Another view of lathes in the Machine Shop
Type store with fonts being made up into packets
Type matrix and mould store
Metal store with boy hauling pigs upon a trolley
Casting Shop, with women breaking off excess metal and rubbing the type at the window
Another view of the Casting Shop.
Another view of the Casting Shop
Founting Shop, with women breaking up the type and a man dressing the type
Casting metal furniture
Boys at work in the Brass Rule Shop
Boys making packets of fonts in the Despatch Shop, with delivery van waiting outside the door
Machine shop on the top floor with a fly-press in the bottom left
Woodwork Shop
Brass Rule Shop, hand-planing the rules
Caretaker’s cottage with caretaker’s wife and the factory cat
Photographs courtesy St Bride Printing Library
You may also like to read about
William Caslon, Letter Founder
A priceless visit to a fascinating business. Am forwarding to a friend who works for Granta books. I know that she will enjoy it.
It is interesting that you use the word ‘Font’ rather than the earlier spelling ‘Fount’ which would have been used in Caslon’s time.
Also in the casting shop the girls were employed for breaking off the tangs or jets if the type, they rubbed off any flashing on the sides on a stone and then put the type onto a dressing stick, this was then taken and clamped into a dressing table, where the break at the bottom of the type is planed off, thus leaving a small nick in the bottom of the type.
These are fascinating, I could look at them for hours. Glimpses into the everyday lives of people at work from this era are extremely rare. It’s easy to forget that there was once a significant amount of light industry in central London, including the City.
The brass rules are presumably the ones screwed to tables and counters to measure cloth, obviously a sideline from the main business.
In the last photo you mention the factory cat. I went to the Docklands Museum a couple of weeks ago and on the label for the dead and mummified cat they say cats were allowed to run freely round warehouses to control rats and mice. Presumably this was the case in all industrial premises, possibly offices as well.
i remebr no 41 Chiswell street-Whitbreads Brewery where every Sunday night my dad would take his paerwork form the pub we lived in to the Brewery
Fascinating! I have been around the graphic arts long enough to wistfully recall a lot of now-arcane necessities. The inexact science of type-specing, getting several “repos” of typography since razor-cut “corrections” were inevitable, spraying the type with fixative, messengers coming and going for frantic deadlines, and more. Yes, that was back when dinosaurs walked the earth…..in
the Seventies.
For those of us who love typography, in all its fabulous variety, this posting reminds us of the
“behind the scenes” drama and toil that has to happen before a beautiful letter makes an imprint.
Just seeing the name “Caslon” made me sit up straight in my chair.
Wonderful photos!
Greetings from Boston,
GA, very interesting piece about Caslon’s Foundry. I enjoyed those pics of the offices – Sydney Caslon Smith’s that of Harold Arthur Caslon Smith sitting at his roll top desk. Interesting too to see so many women working at this trade. No doubt their manual dexterity and attention to detail was valued highly.
And to think that changing a font is as easy today as moving a mouse! The downside is that so many millions of workers have been displaced by our technology in recent years. This charming photo-essay proves the point…
Great photos! I believe the brass rules are composing rules used for setting type.
The brass rule is for creating lines in printing, these rules are the same height as the type, the rule came in various thicknesses, these rules were in point sizes that we still use today, i.e. 72 points to an inch, so the more points the thicker the line, the reason brass was used is that it was more durable than lead rule.
Wonderful photos! So much fun seeing the historic antecedents to the work I still do today in our little type foundry here in Arizona. I recognized so many of the tasks being done.
Thank you so much for these great photos! As Hugh already mentioned, the proper English word is ‘fount’, although nowadays ‘font’ is used, probably an American influence. The women and boys are thus ‘founting’… i.e. making packages containing the complete ‘founts’.