The manufacture of the Baskerville typographic punches: the versatile chaîne opératoire of an 18th-century printing workshop.

Abstract

The 'material turn' within the humanities has provided new possibilities for investigating historical technologies, and the chaîne opératoire offers a powerful framework for such research. Taking the history of printing as research arena, we present the first science-based study of typographic punches, focusing on the 18th-century collection manufactured by John Baskerville in Birmingham. By combining typology, microscopy, µCT, radiography and FTIR, with craftspeople's knowledge and historical sources, we reverse engineer the chaîne opératoire deployed to produce these tools. We characterise the technological tradition followed in Baskerville's workshop and compare it to 19th/20th-century punch-making. Baskerville's workshop was very versatile, and technological choices took into account performance factors and high craftsmanship standards. Many of the recorded choices are not described in 16th- and 17th-century punch-making texts. This reference study presents a chapter of the history of printing previously unexplored through material culture, and provides the method and theoretical framework for others.