BEATRICE WARDE (1900–69), in ‘The Baskerville types: a critique’ from The Monotype Recorderof 1927, implied that Baskerville's inspiration for his typeface stemmed from the writing masters and their engravers. Warde showed a plate from George Shelley's handwriting instruction manual Alphabets in all the handsand compared Shelley's lowercase roman hand with the 1754 Baskerville specimen. There are striking points of similarity in letterform proportion, detail and definition. Warde's suggestion, however, has been noted but remains undeveloped even though her remarks included an open invitation for further research: ‘it was a form that had been clamouring at the door for entry for the better part of a century’.

This chapter outlines the case Warde made and presents the evidence for Baskerville's relationship with the writing masters. It then examines the technical basis of penmanship in the eighteenth century, namely the cutting of quill pens and their use in letter formation. Extensive reference to manuals (illustration and text) from the period challenges the viewpoint promoted by scholars influenced by the English twentieth-century calligraphic revival who characterised the period as an era of the pointed pen. This characterisation overlooked a continuing tradition of sharply written and contrasted roman lowercase calligraphy that existed in Britain, France and Italy into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If Baskerville drew on this tradition, why not others? Could such a continuing calligraphic influence on type transform the traditional portrayal of the evolution of the modern high contrast typeface? This modern or neoclassical form, with high contrast and a vertical axis to curved letters such as ‘o’ and ‘e’, has been seen as representing a move away from the pen for the sake of a more rational modern geometry; could it in fact be the opposite? This chapter argues that the modern style might have a more complex evolution than is often portrayed.

THE ‘CRITIQUE’ OF BASKERVILLE TYPE

IN THE MID-1920S, under Stanley Morison's direction, the Monotype Corporation embarked on a programme of redesigning historical faces for use on its hot metal type casting and setting machines. A revival of Basker-ville's type was central to this programme.