Noah The Bentons can be purchased directly from the publisher, Rochester Institute of Technology Press (RIT Press), as a print book or an e-book. It’s also available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Better World Books. Book details Title: The Bentons: How an American Father and Son Changed the Printing Industry Author: Patricia A. Cost Publisher:RIT Press (01/2011) ISBN-10:978-1-933360-42-3 Binding:Softcover … Read more
Rick von Holdt gave a talk in Phoenix June 2013 that set people talking. It was published in several printing journals as “Morris Fuller Benton, Type Designer: Fact or Fiction?” This short excerpt gives von Holdt’s argument in a nutshell: It has long been my contention that he was a brilliant engineer and organizer and headed … Read more
On Thursday, October 22, 2015, twenty participants from the American Printing History Association’s annual conference took a bus to Skaneateles, New York, to tour the Bixler Press & Letterfoundry. Some people decided to attend this year’s APHA conference because it would give them this opportunity. The Bixlers have the most extensive collection of classic English Monotype book faces … Read more
Getting ready for my talk on November 12th at Type Americana in Seattle. I’ll be speaking about Linn Boyd Benton at this conference, and Juliet Shen will talk about Morris Fuller Benton. Yesterday I went in to the Cary Collection at RIT to look through my Benton files once more. I found an old xerox copy of … Read more
Hobo (1912) is one of the starred typefaces on the partial list of Morris Benton type designs, compiled by him in 1936, and sent as an internal memo to ATF’s sales promotion department. Benton explained that, “The ones with a * could be selected for a shorter list if the whole list is considered too … Read more
This short clip of Morris Benton walking through the woods and sitting, looking at the camera, was probably filmed by his wife Katrina in the late 1930s in Beaver Lake, New Jersey, where they had a summer cottage. It testifies to Morris Benton’s whimsical side. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ODVW0QObLVw%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26fs%3D1%26hl%3Den%26autohide%3D2%26wmode%3Dtransparent Benton made home movies on 16 mm film in the 1930s and ’40s. His … Read more
My last post (4/23) explained that some digital type designers today are interested in the way Morris Benton’s fonts, and indeed all the metal types produced by the American Type Foundry in the early 1900s, were optically scaled. Optical scaling was easily accomplished at ATF by adjusting certain settings on Linn Boyd Benton’s matrix engraving … Read more
On February 10th, Matthew Carter is going to speak at RIT on “Genuine Imitations: A Type Designer’s View of Revivals.” It will be thrilling for me, and I’m sure for many RIT students. The event is meant to celebrate the publication of my new book, The Bentons: How an American Father and Son Changed the Printing Industry. (Carter graciously … Read more
How did Morris Benton’s reticent temperament and seemingly mundane personality affect his working life? I would venture to say that they were assets. On March 12, 2015, the RIT Cary Collection in Rochester, NY, will open a new exhibition on the gregarious and prolific type designer to whom Benton is often compared, entitled “Frederic W. Goudy: 150 Years … Read more
For the past couple months I’ve enjoyed preparing to give a talk on October 11, 2019 about the Bentons, at the University of Michigan’s Clark Library, for the Ann Arbor Wayzgoose and Printing Festival. Doing research is like detective work, like trying to put together a giant puzzle, but you have no idea what the final … Read more