Hayley Campbell, Buzzfeed:
The history of London can be found in pieces on its riverbed. The old pipes and fossilised horse bones wash up on the shore, and with them come the lead letters that printed that history in the newspapers.
The letters ended up there mostly out of laziness, building up piece by piece over the years that Fleet Street served as the epicentre of British journalism. A typesetter’s job was time-consuming: A page of newspaper was laid out one character at a time, the pieces were put back in their boxes the same way. When the typesetters crossed Blackfriars Bridge on their way home from work they’d toss a pocketful of type over the side rather than bother.
They’re still there. There are thousands of letters slowly rearranging themselves over the years and moods of the mud, like alphabet soup.
This is the story of one of those sunken typefaces and a feud between two longtime friends. Beautifully written and a fascinating bit of design history.
UPDATE: Here’s a BBC video laying out the story (H/T James Stratford):
It’s not the first time I’ve seen this story, but the potential loss doesn’t hurt any less. I started out as a typesetter, and only missed metal type by a few years. Doves type might not necessarily be the “world’s most beautiful,” but it is a handsome Venetian Humanist face, and I’d very much like to see its italic version.
I love handling metal type and examining the mechanisms that use it. My wife and I used some for our New Year’s card this past January. And I felt very fortunate in October to have visited two museums in Belgium that carefully preserved previous-century printing presses that are still in operation. That’s sacred stuff for me.
I could see myself in an ink-stained apron right alongside those old guys, even if I barely understood what they were saying.
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