Baskerville Punches are small, shiny and dark metal objects. The main body of the punch is known as the shank. The face of the punch is the side that contains the engraved design of the letter or character. This design is cut in reverse and in relief into the steel bar. For the project we […]
‘John Baskerville 1707–75 printer, publisher, typefounder, deist’ is a new public exhibition which presents the life, work and lasting legacy of Baskerville alongside some of the research that has been undertaken. The exhibition, which opened in the foyer at the Library of Birmingham on 8 March and runs until 22 May, coincides with the 250th anniversary of […]
An important part of the Small Performances programme is the design of digital revivals of Baskerville’s original type. These revivals are developed through intensive workshops held at type design masters courses across Europe. The first workshop was held at the Department of Typography of the University of Reading from 20 to 24 January 2025. It focused on […]
Hello Friends of Small Performances, We’d love to share some news about what we’ve been up to. We are into our second very busy year for the AHRC funded Small Performances interdisciplinary project. Colleagues in Birmingham have been working on an exhibition at the Library of Birmingham which went up last week, 6th March until 22nd May. Archive work on the peregrinations […]
Baskerville has been as active in death and he was in life. First interred under a conical building in the grounds of his own home in accordance with his deist beliefs, his corpse has since been moved on nine separate occasions. In 1829, after having been placed on display in an ironmongers shop, Baskerville’s remains […]
Today is Baskerville’s Baptismal day. We don’t know the exact date of John Baskerville’s birth, but the Wolverley parish register recording Baskerville’s baptism at Wolverley church in Worcestershire states: ‘1706 John ye Son of John Baskervile by Sara his wife, was baptized January ye 28’. Before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the […]
Today, 8 January, is the 250th anniversary of Baskerville’s death. When Aris’s Birmingham Gazette published notice of Baskerville’s death on Monday 23 January 1775 the announcement was concise: Died. On Monday last, at Easy Hill in this Town, Mr John Baskerville; whose Memory will be perpetuated, by the Beauty and Elegance of his Printing, which […]
Small Performances is concerned with Baskerville’s punches, but it is not the first time that a group of Cambridge academics have come together to consider the work of the famous printer. The Baskerville Club was established in Cambridge in 1903 by a small group of Cambridge librarians, bibliographers and bibliophiles brought together through a common […]
On the 22nd of November, Julia Montes-Landa presented the first analytical results from the Baskerville punches at the Historical Metallurgy Society Research in Progress Meeting. There, she shared with colleagues the initial results of the analyses carried out to study the composition of the punches and the tool marks still visible on their surfaces. These analyses […]
After Baskerville’s death, his punches and other typographic material were sold, by his widow, Sarah, to France and they passed from one French foundry to another until they were final acquired by the Parisian Fonderies Deberny et Peignot. Its director, Charles Peginot (1897–1983), generously offered to return them to Britain and presented them to the […]