Page:Historic printing types, a lecture read before the Grolier club of New York, January 25, 1885, with additions and new illustrations; by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914; Grolier Club.djvu/79

 STYLES OF OTHEK BRITISH TYPE-FOUNDERS. 75 success for fine printing on dry paper. A new standard of merit in presswork was established. A printed page was esteemed, not, as before, for its blackness, but for its lightness ; if the hair lines could be shown with the razor- Type-founders imitate style like sharpness of a copper-plate line, grayness or weakness of engravers, on the body-marks would be overlooked. Faces of type that showed extremely fine lines were admired : the nearer the imitation of copper-plate, the greater the merit. Type-founders did all they could to promote this false taste, for they were as much pleased as printers to discover that they could make fine lines. Before 1836 they could not have made them by the process of hand-casting from hand moulds. It was not until the type-casting machine Largely aided had been perfected that these delicate hair lines could be by new type- casting ma- made with unvarying uniformity. Neither printer nor type- dimes. founder could see any impropriety in sharp hair lines. They were regarded as evidences of skill, beyond the reach of old-fashioned or inferior workmen, and for that reason to be maintained.