Noah

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

Today, August 3, 2012, Adobe introduced its first open source type family, called “Source Sans Pro.” The family is a set of sans serif text fonts based on Morris Fuller Benton’s gothic forms, especially Franklin Gothic, released by the American Type Founders Company (ATF) in 1902, and News Gothic, released in 1908. Adobe’s Paul Hunt wanted to “create … 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

Why would anyone today care about what the Bentons were doing with metal type more than 100 years ago? (These days I’m in the last stages of tweaking my book about them, and I must confess that sometimes this question still haunts me.) But in fact, I’ve found that plenty of people do care, especially … Read more

Linn Boyd Benton’s No. 55 matrix engraver, as described in the American Machinist for December 16, 1909, consists of “two housings between which swings a long pendulum or arm … delicately suspended in a compound yoke by means of gimbal screws which gives it a toggle-joint effect.” At the Dale Type Foundry last Saturday, the No. 55 … Read more

Next week the American Printing History Association (APHA) will hold its annual conference at RIT. This year’s theme is “Printing on the Handpress & Beyond,” and the lineup of speakers and workshops looks great. It will also be the perfect place to debut my new children’s book about letterpress printing, Amelia Prints a Greeting Card. With photographs and simple language, the book follows Amelia … Read more