John Baskerville: Printer, Typographer and the Man Who Was Buried Standing Up
- David Salariya
- 13 hours ago
- 21 min read
Updated: 51 minutes ago
Biography and Legacy of John Baskerville
Why Fonts Matter
Every few years, the world briefly remembers that fonts exist. This week it was courtesy of Washington, where Marco Rubio announced that American diplomats must abandon Calibri and return to Times New Roman, a move he framed as a stand against “wasteful diversity”. The culture wars have found a new battleground: letterforms.
This is refreshing, in a bleakly comic way, to watch politicians perform typographic theatre, arguing about whether a serif is a symbol of civilisation or a threat to democracy. Yet behind the noise sits a truth designers have understood for centuries: fonts are never neutral. They carry history, emotion, authority, personality - and they reveal far more about us than we realise.
The psychologist Dr Rachael Molitor, specialising in human behaviour is quoted in The Telegraph - on what fonts say about us and what users mean to convey by their choice,
Calibri signals modern, efficient, "professional but not too formal".
Times New Roman conveys reliability, seriousness, the scent of libraries and tradition.
Gill Sans feels warm and stylish, if you can ignore its problematic creator.
Arial inspires universal disdain, a kind of Helvetica-in-disguise embarrassment.
Jokerman announces that someone wants to stand out, loudly, unwisely, and at a child’s birthday party.
Perpetua whispers literary refinement.
OpenDyslexic foregrounds accessibility over aesthetics.
In other words: your font is a confession. It tells people who you think you are, or who you want to be.
Which brings us to John Baskerville.
Long before Times New Roman was a diplomatic weapon and Calibri a political lightning rod, John Baskerville understood that typography shapes perception. He knew a page could look modern or archaic, formal or friendly, rational or emotional, simply by adjusting weight, contrast and spacing. In the 1750s, he engineered the visual equivalent of a clear speaking voice: poised, bright, articulate, utterly confident.
What Washington's Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state is rediscovering clumsily in press releases, Baskerville mastered in Birmingham with lampblack ink and hot-pressed paper.
This is why his story matters today.
Typography isn't mere decoration - it’s identity made visible. It speaks before the words do. It shapes how we trust, how we listen, how we feel. And when crafted by someone like
John Baskerville, it can reorder the world.
What follows is the story of the man who understood this better than anyone:the printer who made English look modern, and who still stands upright - literally and metaphorically - 250 years later.
Have you noticed how picturesque the letter Y is and how innumerable its meanings are. The tree is a Y, the junctions of two rivers form a Y, two converging roads, a donkey's head and that of an ox, the glass on its stem, the lily on its stalk and the beggar lifting his arms are a Y.
Carl Dair, Design with Type (1967)
Before Helvetica, before digital type foundries, there was John Baskerville – the Birmingham printer who understood these principles two centuries before the self-taught Canadian designer, teacher, and type-maker Carl Dair put them into words.
Where Dair theorised contrast, Baskerville practised it. He wasn't too particular about spelling his name, sometimes Baskervile. Occasionally Baskervill. On good days, Baskerville.
He kerned his surname as if revising a title page.
Baskerville's pages gleamed with light and shadow, thick and thin, black and white. He coaxed elegance out of efficiency.
In the 1750s, Baskerville’s smooth wove paper, soot black ink, and sharply cut letters embodied everything Dair would later teach: that type is language made visible, and that its beauty lies not in ornament but in precision. His transitional typefaces balanced grace with geometry, the visual equivalent of a clear speaking voice.
Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.
Harmony in typography is not achieved by sameness, but by the control of contrast.
The typographer’s task is to give language a body - not to dress it up.
Carl Dair, Design with Type (1967)
To Dair, typography was speech made visible; to Baskerville, it was speech made immortal.
Mr Baskerville Orders the World to Behave (and the Letters Follow)
John Baskerville was a man after my own heart: printer, typographer, maker of shiny objects, scourge of sloppy ink, and, we must not forget, the gentleman who elected to be interred in his coffin standing up.
Nothing says typographic discipline like refusing to recline.
John Baskerville emerges in the Midlands just as England begins to hum with invention. London has guilds, manners and the type founder William Caslon (1692/93 – 23 January 1766); Birmingham has steam, nerve and a scorn for gatekeepers. Baskerville looks at the woolly English page and decides to scrub it until it gleams. He turns printing into a high-gloss experience: blacker blacks, whiter whites, margins so generous the text lounges. It’s revolutionary, and the London trade, predictably, prefers its revolutions to happen elsewhere, after lunch.
Early Life
The Writing-Master Who Refused to Scribble
Born in Worcestershire (1706), Baskerville discovers that letters are not signs but architecture. He teaches penmanship, carves inscriptions, and treats the alphabet as Palladio treated columns, structure first, grace later as we know, kerns his own surname, removing and restoring its final “e” to suit his fortunes.
In 1726 he moves to Birmingham, a guild-free laboratory alive with Watt, Boulton, Priestley and Erasmus Darwin - men who could turn dinner conversation about ink viscosity into an experiment before pudding.
From Japanning to Printing - Profit First, Perfection Next
Before printing, Baskerville makes a fortune japanning: lacquered snuff-boxes and glossy trinkets.
Japanning was a European imitation of East Asian lacquerwork, characterised by the use of hard, glossy finishes (typically black, red, or green) on furniture and metal, embellished with gold or coloured designs. This technique had been popular since the 17th century. Unlike true Asian lacquer (urushi), japanning employed resin-based varnishes such as shellac instead of tree sap, resulting in a durable finish often found on antique metal items like toleware or furniture adorned with intricate gilded scenes.
This craft business taught Baskerville about surface, drying, and light, lessons that will resurface in ink and paper. With wealth secured, he builds Easy Hill, a home and a future press, then begins the costliest hobby of the century -
reinventing printing from the fonts and paper up.
Enter Sarah Eaves
Originally Baskerville's housekeeper and the mother of five, abandoned by her husband Richard Eaves, Sarah Eaves becomes Baskerville’s partner in life and work. She helps cast type, manages accounts, and runs the press - a hidden co-founder before women were allowed to sign the colophon, the story typesetters almost forgot. When Sarah's husband dies in 1764, she and John are free to marry; later typographers will honour Sarah by naming a revival font Mrs Eaves (1996).
Designing the Baskerville Typeface - Transitional, Not Timid
Caslon is port, leather and brass; Baskerville is glass, daylight and geometry.
Stroke contrast: finer thins, steady thicks - the page sparkles.
Vertical stress: round letters stand to attention; calligraphic wobble dismissed.
Serifs: sharpened, flattened, precise as a tailor’s chalk.
Italic: elegant, copperplate whisper rather than flourish.
Baskerville bridges eras - the indispensable step between Caslon’s warmth and Didot’s chill. He weans readers off the cosy diagonal and prepares them for the cool perfection of the Moderns.
How Baskerville Made a Letter: From Steel to Paper
If you want to understand Baskerville’s genius, forget the finished page for a moment and follow a single letter - let’s say a Baskerville a - from its birth in steel to its debut on hot-pressed paper. Type, in his workshop, wasn’t an idea; it was metallurgy, geometry, and relentless polishing.
1. Cutting the Punch - The Silversmith’s Art in Steel
Every letter began as a steel punch shaped by a type-cutter with the finesse of a jeweller.Armed with gravers, files, and a magnifying glass, he carved each character in reverse into the end of a steel rod. The curves, thins, bracketing, and serifs required a hand steadier than a surgeon’s - one slip and the whole punch was scrap.
Baskerville’s letters demanded even more discipline:
vertical stress,
crisp serifs,
refined contrast.
This wasn’t casual engraving. It was architectural drawing performed in metal.
When finished, the punch was hardened in fire and cooled - a tiny monument to Baskerville’s vision.
2. Striking the Matrix - Casting the Negative
The punch was then struck into a bar of softer copper to create a matrix, the mould for casting every future piece of type.This was the moment when the shape of the letter became fixed, permanent, reproducible.
A matrix that was even slightly off-centre meant unstable type; too shallow, and the ink would pool; too deep, and the impression bruised the paper. Baskerville rejected anything less than absolute precision.
3. Casting the Type - Molten Lead and Moving Hands
Next came the typefounder’s labour:molten type metal - an alloy of lead, antimony, and tin - was poured or injected into a hand mould that held the matrix at its base.
With a brisk, practised rhythm, the caster:
closed the mould,
poured the metal,
cooled it for a heartbeat,
snapped out the newly formed type,
and repeated the dance hundreds of times an hour.
Each piece emerged as a tiny lead pillar with the letter raised on top:the face, the beard, the shoulder, the nick (the little groove identifying orientation), the foot.
Baskerville demanded casts sharp enough to shave a moustache off an angel.
4. Dressing the Type - Filing, Rubbing, Perfection
Raw type was imperfect. Compositors needed clean, uniform blocks that sat evenly on the composing stick.
So each letter was dressed - trimmed, filed, rubbed, and inspected.A silversmith’s sensibility reappeared here: flatness, consistency, smooth sides, no burrs, no metal whiskers.
If a serif was even a whisper out of line, it was recast.Baskerville rejected more type than most printers ever produced.
5. Setting the Type - Galleys, Composing Sticks, and Quiet Fury
The pieces moved next to the compositor, who assembled the text by hand:
resting a composing stick in one hand,
selecting each letter from a typecase,
building words from left to right,
justifying lines with spaces and quads,
handing completed lines to long galleys.
A single page required thousands of decisions - spelling, spacing, hyphenation, alignment.A compositor working for Baskerville had to live with the terrifying knowledge that the master inspected every line with a jeweller’s loupe and the temperature of a disappointed father.
6. Locking Up the Forme - Making a Page Solid
When the galleys were complete, the compositor arranged them within a metal frame called a forme, locking them tightly with quoins so nothing shifted under pressure.
This was the page as sculpture: metal, tension, geometry.
7. Inking and Printing - Blacker Blacks on Porcelain Paper
Baskerville’s pressmen inked the type with hand-made leather ink balls, loaded with his varnish-rich, lampblack ink - darker and more opaque than anything in London.
The sheet of wove paper, smooth as china thanks to Whatman and Baskerville’s own hot-pressing methods, was laid carefully onto the tympan.
One pull of the press delivered what Baskerville famously called a kiss impression:no smash, no heavy bruise, just the perfect transfer of ink from metal to paper.
The sheet was then heat-set to give it that uncanny, glazed finish that dazzled admirers and irritated competitors.
Why This Process Matters to the Baskerville Story
Because it reveals the truth:Baskerville wasn’t just a typographer — he was the conductor of a metallurgical ballet in which every stage had to serve clarity, brightness, proportion, and grace.
He didn’t merely design a typeface.He engineered a world in which that typeface could shine.
Innovations in Printing - Paper, Ink and Press in Perfect Harmony
Baskerville treated printing as working with an orchestra, not a solo.
Paper : With James Whatman, he pioneered wove paper - smooth, line-free - then hot-pressed it to porcelain sheen.
Ink : Darker, faster-drying, varnished with japanner’s cunning; the page gleamed, the jealous squint.
Presswork : The kiss impression - ink transferred, paper unbruised. Heat again to glaze the print like pastry .
Layout : Wide leading, generous margins, titles stripped of ornament. Whitespace becomes the loudest voice.
The Cambridge Years - The Bible That Shimmered
Appointed University Printer to Cambridge (1758), Baskerville takes on the prestige project: the King James Bible(1763).He prints it as if auditioning for eternity- on the finest wove paper, in his new type, with ink that could out-black midnight.Franklin raves. London yawns. Financially ruinous, aesthetically flawless - the only respectable combination.
Business, Enemies and the Franklin Test
Franklin carries Baskerville sheets across the Atlantic like relics of progress.London printers grumble that his pages “fatigue the eye,” the standard complaint of any industry confronted by improvement.Baskerville publishes Virgil, Milton, the Book of Common Prayer - masterpieces that empty his purse but fill printing’s future with new expectations.
Mrs Eaves, Executors and the Continental Detour
When Baskerville dies in 1775, Sarah Eaves Baskerville becomes custodian of Baskerville's tools and legend. Britain refuses her price for the punches; the Continent recognises genius. Enter Beaumarchais, who buys the lot for Voltaire’s collected works at Kehl (1784–89).Thus the Baskerville types emigrate - as good ideas often must - before returning, over a century later, to Cambridge. Modern revivals follow: Monotype Baskerville, Linotype, and that affectionate modern wink, Mrs Eaves (above).
Baskerville vs Caslon and Didot - The Three Ages of Serif
Era | Designer | Style | Character |
18th c. Early | William Caslon | Old Style | Diagonal stress, bracketed serifs, warm and weighty - mahogany and pipe-smoke. |
Mid-century | John Baskerville | Transitional | Vertical stress, crisp contrast, poised geometry -Georgian light through tall windows. |
Late 18th c. | Didot / Bodoni | Modern (Didone) | Hairline serifs, high contrast, cool brilliance - the salon at midnight, every surface polished. |
For long reading, Baskerville is the golden mean: civilized sparkle without fatigue.
Caslon comforts, Didot dazzles; Baskerville convinces.
The Publishing World Baskerville Challenged - Copyrights, Charters and Provincial Nerve
Baskerville works in a world newly ruled by the Statute of Anne (1710) and still dominated by London’s Stationers’ Company. Birmingham gives him freedom from guilds; Cambridge lends its charter to print the Bible. He chooses public-domain classics - Virgil, Milton, the Scriptures - safe from royalties yet rich in prestige.Typefaces have no legal protection, so imitation becomes flattery and business model.His reward? Obscure profit, enduring influence.
The Statute of Anne (1710): The Law That Invented Modern Copyright
Before 1710, copyright didn’t belong to authors at all. It belonged to the Stationers’ Company, London’s powerful printers’ guild, which had enjoyed a royal monopoly over the printing trade since the 1550s. They controlled what could be printed, who could print it, and for how long - a convenient arrangement for publishers, less so for writers or readers.
By the early 18th century, the system was crumbling. The Licensing Act - which gave the Stationers censorship powers - expired in 1695, and Parliament refused to renew it. Suddenly, there was no legal mechanism to control copying, piracy, or foreign reprints. Booksellers panicked; authors had no rights; the trade became a print-everything free-for-all.
The industry needed a new framework, one anchored not in censorship, but in ownership.
Enter the Statute of Anne (1710)
Full title: “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning.”Effective from 10 April 1710.
Its radical idea? Authorship.
For the first time in British history, the author, not the printer, was recognised as the rightful owner of literary work.
Why It Was Introduced
The aims were threefold:
To break the Stationers’ monopoly Parliament disliked the idea of one guild controlling England’s intellectual life.
To give authors a financial stake in their creations. Writers could now license their work to publishers for a limited time and reclaim rights afterwards.
To stabilise the book trade and prevent piracy. Booksellers wanted clear rules; Parliament wanted order; authors wanted recognition.
What the Statute Actually Did
Gave authors a 14-year copyright, renewable for another 14 years if they were still alive.
Required books to be registered at Stationers’ Hall (ironically, the same guild losing power).
Limited copyright terms, preventing perpetual monopolies by printers.
Introduced penalties for piracy and unauthorised reprints.
Framed copyright as a public good - a reward for authors that ultimately benefited readers.
It is often called the world’s first modern copyright law because it shifted power from institutions to creators.
Why It Matters to Baskerville
When Baskerville began printing in the 1750s, the Statute of Anne was fully in force.It shaped his strategy:
He printed public-domain classics - Milton, Virgil, the Bible - because they were free of copyright fees.
Proprietary works were costly; his energies and finances were better spent on paper, ink, and type.
Meanwhile, typefaces received no legal protection, meaning anyone could copy Baskerville’s letters once printed.(And they did.)
The Statute gave authors rights, but left designers exposed.Baskerville worked in that gap: copyright for text, no copyright for the letterforms themselves.
Influence and Legacy - From Private Press to Public Taste
Baskerville’s achievement lies not only in the type that bears his name but in the expectation he created.He proved that materials could be moral - that clarity, proportion and restraint were forms of honesty.Every modern printer who chooses a readable serif, every designer who gives a page room to breathe, works in Baskerville’s shadow.
If Caslon won the market and Didot the salons, Baskerville won the argument.
The Interesting Death - Upright, Unconsecrated and Frequently Disturbed
And now, the final flourish.
Baskerville’s theology was cool, bordering on permafrost. He left instructions that he be buried upright on his Easy Hill estate, facing no church, under an epitaph that politely scolded superstition. Birmingham, expanding as ever, refused to leave him alone.
1820s :
Baskerville's
Coffin rediscovered during canal works - still upright, body remarkably preserved, to the horror and fascination of bystanders when it is put on display.
1830s : Re-interred in Christ Church, Birmingham - the atheist in the Anglican crypt.
1898 : Church demolished; coffin moved once more.
Today : Finally rests in Warstone Lane Cemetery, Jewellery Quarter - plaque, peace, posture intact.
The tale endures because it completes the metaphor.Typography, after all, is the management of posture - and Baskerville keeps his, even in death.
Baskerville in Birmingham: The Man Who Became a District
Long after Baskerville stopped terrifying his competitors with razor-sharp serifs, Birmingham quietly claimed him as its own. The area around Cambridge Street and Centenary Square - once part of the land that included Easy Hill, Baskerville’s home and printing works - is now known as the Baskerville Quarter.
It is one of the rare places in Britain where a typographer isn’t just remembered; he’s mapped.
The city, which once treated him as an eccentric tradesman with ink-stained ambitions, now anchors an entire civic landscape to his name. The irony would have pleased him: the printer who avoided London’s guilds is now a neighbourhood.
The Baskerville Typeface Sculpted in Steel
Birmingham honours him with David Patten’s sculpture on Broad Street: five giant cast-iron blocks, each bearing a letter in Baskerville type.
Typography becomes public art - and Baskerville becomes a landmark. Created as part of the 'Percentage For Art' scheme in 1990. The letters spell out Virgil, the name of the Roman poet whose works were printed by Baskerville, in his typeface, in 1757.
Industry: the city of Watt, Boulton, steam engines, japanning, metalwork, furnaces.
Genius: one man insisting that letters behave themselves.
It is perhaps the only public monument in Britain dedicated not to a writer, but to the shapes that make writing possible.
A Curious Final Twist: Baskerville’s Grave Lies Nearby
The Baskerville Quarter sits only a short walk from Warstone Lane Cemetery, where Baskerville now (finally) rests - upright, of course. You can stand in Centenary Square admiring giant iron Baskerville letters, then stroll to the Jewellery Quarter to find the man who made them possible.
Typography becomes topography.
Why Baskerville Still Matters (to Readers, Brands and Bookshops)
Because Baskerville stood for clarity and grace all at once. Because he proved that ink, paper and pressure can create a poetry of balance. Because he treated readers like adults: gave them a bright, perfectly printed page that they could read longer, better, and with the feeling that civilisation isn’t just a rumour.
Afterword If you must choose one Englishman to set your text and your standards, choose the one who stood up for both - even after the vicar (he didn't want) had gone home.
John Baskerville (1706 - 1775): Printer, Perfectionist, and Still Standing Up Straight.
John Baskerville in Birmingham, A Timeline
How a Worcestershire writing-master reshaped a city of steam, metal, and invention
1706 - Birth in Wolverley, Worcestershire
John Baskerville is born near Kidderminster — close enough to Birmingham to feel its gravitational pull, but far enough to avoid its smoke until later.
1726 - Arrival in Birmingham
At age 20, Baskerville moves to Birmingham, then a fast-growing industrial town unburdened by London guilds.It’s a place where you can reinvent anything — metallurgy, steam engines, or the English page.
He begins teaching writing and calligraphy, carving inscriptions, and quietly studying the anatomy of letters.
1730s - 1740s - The Japanning Years
Baskerville runs a successful business producing lacquered goods — snuffboxes, trays, decorative wares.This is where he develops his obsession with surface, sheen, and finish — obsessions destined to reshape printing.
His japanning profits finance the dream to build the perfect book.
1745 - 1750 - Building Easy Hill
Baskerville constructs Easy Hill, a grand house on high ground overlooking Birmingham.This becomes:
home
workshop
typefoundry
laboratory for paper, ink, and press experiments
and eventually his unconventional burial place.
Easy Hill is now buried beneath the modern
Baskerville Quarter.
1750 - 1757 - Reinventing Printing
Baskerville begins the monumental task of designing a new typeface and perfecting its materials:
wove paper with Whatman
deep black ink based on japanning varnishes
razor-cut punches and matrices
the kiss impression on a modified press
London thinks him mad. Birmingham looks on approvingly — this is exactly the sort of impossible engineering the town understands.
1757 - Virgil: The First Baskerville Book
His edition of Virgil shocks the printing trade.The margins!The contrast!The paper that gleams like porcelain!
Benjamin Franklin becomes a fan; London remains sceptical.
1758 - Baskerville Becomes Cambridge University Printer
Birmingham’s native innovator is recognised for quality, not quantity.He prints Milton, classics, and eventually the King James Bible — all from his Birmingham workshop.
1763 - The Baskerville Bible
The King James Bible appears in Baskerville type, printed at Easy Hill.It is hailed by Franklin, doubted by competitors, and ruinously expensive.
But it places Birmingham on the typographic map.
1775 - Baskerville Dies (Still Standing Up for Himself)
Baskerville dies at Easy Hill, requesting a standing burial in unconsecrated ground.Birmingham silently complies and quietly holds its breath.
1821 - Rediscovery of the Coffin
Construction of the Birmingham and Worcester Canal cuts through Easy Hill.Baskerville’s upright coffin is found, body preserved, and — in very Victorian fashion - displayed to fascinated onlookers.
His afterlife in Birmingham begins.
1833 - Reburied in Christ Church, Birmingham
The skeptic is finally placed in an Anglican crypt.One cannot imagine Baskerville approving.
1898 - Church Demolished; Another Move
Christ Church is demolished. Baskerville is moved once more to Warstone Lane Cemetery in the Jewellery Quarter.He rests there today — upright, no doubt still unimpressed.
1990 - “Industry and Genius” Sculpture Unveiled
1990 – “Industry and Genius” Sculpture Unveiled
Birmingham honours him with David Patten’s cast-iron “Industry and Genius” sculpture on Broad Street, spelling out VIRGIL in Baskerville type. Typography becomes public art - and Baskerville becomes a landmark.
2000s - The Baskerville Quarter Emerges
Urban redevelopment around Centenary Square formalises the district as the Baskerville Quarter, acknowledging the land where Easy Hill and his printing works once stood.
The man who refined the English page becomes part of Birmingham’s modern streetscape.
Today - Birmingham’s Upright Printer Endures
The city continues to celebrate its most meticulous citizen:in sculpture, street names, museum displays, and the quiet pride that a Midlands craftsman once challenged the London printing elite - and won.
His typeface lives in books around the world.His spirit lives beneath the pavements of Birmingham.
Modern revivals and interpretations of Fonts designed by
John Baskerville
None of these are exactly what came off Baskerville’s press - they’re homages, refinements, and expansions – but they all carry his DNA: vertical stress, crisp contrast, and that unmistakable Georgian poise.
Font Wars: From Washington to Microsoft
Just as American politicians are arguing about whether Calibri represented modern “accessibility” or dangerous “diversity”, another giant quietly moved its typographic pieces: Microsoft retired Calibri as the default font after 17 years and replaced it with Aptos, a crisp new sans-serif designed by Steve Matteson. It began rolling out in 2023 and became standard across Microsoft 365 in 2024.
The reasons reveal something Baskerville would have understood instinctively: fonts are technology shaped by culture, and every shift hides a philosophy.
Aptos is engineered for readability on high-resolution screens, with clearer letter distinctions, generous spacing, and a modern geometric structure that reduces visual fatigue. It is cooler and more neutral than Calibri, closer in spirit to Swiss mid-century typography - Helvetica with its collar loosened. And unlike Calibri, Aptos was designed as a full, versatile family: Display, Condensed, Semibold, Black, Light. It can handle everything from corporate emails to data-dense spreadsheets without breaking a sweat.
Initially called Bierstadt, (German for "Beer City") the font eventually became Aptos, after a seaside town in California that designer Matteson loves - a reminder that even the most modern fonts carry a small human secret somewhere inside them.
Every generation thinks its fonts are neutral. They aren’t.
Calibri once signalled freshness and approachability; now it reads as early-millennial nostalgia. Aptos signals clarity and modernity, today. In ten years, it will carry the smell of 2020s interfaces the way Times New Roman smells faintly of exam papers and 1990s Word documents.
Which is why Baskerville remains so compelling.
Baskerville understood better than anyone that typography is not just about legibility but about tone, trust, and cultural intent. His refinements were not cosmetic; they were philosophical. Where Aptos smooths the digital surface, Baskerville polished the physical page until it seemed to glow from within.
And whether the quarrel is between Calibri and Times New Roman, Arial and Helvetica, or the newest contender Aptos, the underlying truth is unchanged:
Fonts tell stories about their age - and about us.
Baskerville simply told it most beautifully.
The Makers Who Changed the Page
Design rebels, typographic obsessives and the quiet geniuses who shaped how we read today
After spending time with John Baskerville - a man who redesigned the English page with nothing more than courage, ink and a silversmith’s eye - you start to realise something: the history of printing is full of characters just as obsessive, ingenious and gloriously unreasonable. Baskerville wasn’t a lone comet; he was part of a long, unruly constellation of makers who believed that the shapes of letters, the weight of paper and the brightness of ink could change civilisation itself.
Here is a guide to the best of them.Think of this as a map of future blogs, a reading list of rebels - from Venetian paper alchemists to Victorian perfectionists, from punchcutters working with candlelit magnifiers to modern designers who accidentally created world-defining typefaces.
If Baskerville whetted your appetite, these are the figures who will keep it fed.
Typographic Titans With Drama
Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813)
The man who weaponised contrast. The Italian who made the page look like a ballroom - glittering whites, velvet blacks, and margins wide enough to park an orchestra.
Firmin Didot (1764–1836)
The engineer of elegance. Invented the point system, refined modern serif aesthetics, and treated the alphabet like machinery made of jewellery.
William Caslon (1692–1766)
The warm English voice that refused to fade. Set the American Declaration of Independence. Human, irregular, beloved - Baskerville’s steady Old Style foil.
Craftsmen Behind the Scenes
James Whatman (1702–1759, and son)
Pioneers of wove paper - the smooth, luminous stage Baskerville needed. Without Whatman, we’d still be reading on paper that looked like dirty laundry.
The Punchcutters (John Handy, the Sansoms, the unnamed heroes)
Men who carved entire alphabets into steel rods the size of knitting needles.Typography begins here: on a workbench, under candlelight, with a file and a prayer.
Louise Fili (modern, but spiritually allied)
Queen of elegant branding and Art Deco revivalism. Her restaurant menus do for New York what Baskerville did for Birmingham - give a city a typographic flavour.
Printing Oddballs, Innovators & Lunatics
Aldus Manutius (1449–1515)
Inventor of the paperback (pocket-sized books for Renaissance students and sailors).Italic type? His idea. Publishing as a lifestyle choice? Also his idea.
The Estiennes (Robert, Henri, and their dynasty)
Parisian scholar-printers who fought censorship armed only with dictionaries and a sense of destiny.
Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854–1899)
Invented the Linotype - the machine that turned molten lead into daily newspapers.Edison called it “the greatest invention since Gutenberg.”
Frederic Goudy (1865–1947)
Designed over a hundred typefaces .Lost several in catastrophic fires. Claimed the fires improved his thinking. Pure designer energy.
Book Designers & Illustrators With Character
Jan Tschichold (1902–1974)
Bauhaus radical turned Penguin Books traditionalist. His rulebooks were stricter than most monastic vows.
Beatrice Warde (1900–1969)
The “Crystal Goblet” prophet.Explained typography better than any man of her century — and wrote her finest work under a male pseudonym.
William Morris (1834–1896)
Socialist, craftsman, wallpaper visionary, and creator of the Kelmscott Chaucer.Printed the most beautiful book in English history — at prices only aristocrats could afford.
Stanley Morison (1889–1967)
Invented Times New Roman (almost reluctantly). A typographic reformer armed with a historian’s brain and a proofreader’s temper.
Cultural-History Makers
John Newbery (1713–1767)
Invented children’s books as we know them.Everything from Ladybird to Wimpy Kid traces back to this energetic London hustler.
George Baxter (1804–1867)
The man who put colour into commercial printing. Patented nearly everything, including ways to wipe ink.
Talwin Morris (1865–1911)
The Glasgow Style book designer who smuggled Art Nouveau into railway company bindings. Corporate design with soul.
The “One Astonishing Object” Files
The Caxton Indulgence (1476)
The first dated item printed in England.Printing in Britain begins as a method of raising money for forgiveness.
The Kelmscott Chaucer (1896)
A cathedral in paper form.Morris’s magnum opus — the book that made collectors cry and typesetters quit.
The Gutenberg Indulgence
Before the Bible, there was this humble slip.A reminder that world revolutions often start with paperwork.
The Modern Masters
Jonathan Hoefler (1970– )
Creator of Gotham - the typeface that helped elect Obama. A designer who made digital fonts feel handcrafted.
Zuzana Licko & Rudy VanderLans (Emigre)
Pixel pioneers of the early digital age.Vilified for “illegible” experiments… then celebrated for defining a graphic language.
What’s Next?
This list is the beginning of a larger project - a living anthology of people who shaped the visual world we read, from the Renaissance to right now.In future posts, I’ll explore their obsessions, innovations, petty feuds, bankruptcies, triumphs, and unintended consequences.
If Baskerville stood upright through death, these makers stood upright through everything else - censorship, rivals, fire, fortune, failure, and the occasional artistic tantrum.
Watch this space: more typographic mischief and maker-mythology coming soon.
Author
David Salariya is a designer, illustrator, writer, and publisher whose career in children’s books has spanned four decades, several imprints, and more than 35 languages. A lifelong evangelist for the power of good typography, he has produced everything from award-winning visual guides to anarchic non-fiction series that have shaped how millions of young readers meet history.
He explores the strange mechanics of culture – how ideas are printed, preserved, distorted, and occasionally erased - blending scholarship with a designer’s eye and a satirist’s impatience for mediocrity. He writes frequently about publishing, visual literacy, design heritage, and the hidden labour behind books, and champions the creators whose names have too often been misplaced in the margins.
David lives in Brighton, where he continues to fight for clarity in both type and life – a stance John Baskerville would hopefully have admired… standing up.
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