Variations of the font such as italics with additional or no swashes and bold weights appeared throughout the 20th Century. John Baskerville would have not acknowledged his work as transitional, but rather a success of its own line.Ī revival of the original Baskerville typeface was done in 1917 for the Harvard University Press.
These letterforms paved the way to an emergence in modern typefaces such as Didot and Boldoni. Baskerville Legacyīaskerville increased the contrast between thin and thick strokes, resulting in sharper, more tapered serifs, and a change in the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. His typeface found little success inside Great Britain, but won respect in France and Italy after Baskerville’s widow sold his matrixes and punches to the French. Being a printer of specialist and elite versions of texts also did not help improve his standing. The resulting crispness in Baskerville’s work was not received positively then. He soon experimented on many printing technologies, from creating a printing ink to his own press that replaced the wooden platen of his time to brass.
This stoked his interest in calligraphy, and this was reflected in the strokes and embellishments seen on his typeface. John Baskerville of Birmingham started out as a servant in a clergyman’s house, until his penmanship was noticed by his employer.
Know why this is still one of the most sought-after and highly used fonts until today. Known for crisp edges, generous proportions, and high contrast, Baskerville was considered as a transitional typeface that was aimed to refine what is now known as old-style typefaces of the 1750s, especially those made by William Caslon.
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