Wood type has a certain quality about it that is timeless and yet it looks beautifully dated. I love to use these kinds of fonts when the opportunity arises. Here is a collection at the University of Texas at Austin. It’s the Rob Roy Kelly Wood Type Collection. It is a comprehensive collection of wood type manufactured and used for printing in America during the nineteenth century. It is comprised of nearly 150 faces of various sizes and styles, including examples of the most popular printing types in use between 1828 and 1900, and represents a period of history marked by a rapid transition to new printing technologies. This change precipitated a radical shift away from traditional hand production—which involved creating type with soft calligraphic forms—to a completely industrialized manufacturing process—which produced type constructed with hard angular forms that reflect mechanical origins. More
