Caxton's Case

d¸

m¸

n¸

ad¹

d¹

g¸

p¸

r¸

ffl

ñ¸

r¸¸

ffo

en¸

ffu

in¸

im¸

ll+

qp~

qp'

un¸

||i

||a

ffa

||u

||o

||e

ffe

en quad
and spaces

em quads

ffi

The layout is that reconstructed by William Blades in The Biography and Typography of William Caxton (1877) as being a possible scheme of Caxton's typecase (c1480). Blades shows all the characters as italic, but they are shown here as roman, for legibility. Note that the lay has a considerable number of ligatures.

Many of the accents and characters are not easily displayed here. Thus the boxes with n¸ and similar represent the terminal versions of n etc. and the r¸¸ is a double terminal flourish. The boxes with | are long s. The ye etc should have e as a superscript. The d¹ is a d with a swash ascender. The qp should be joined as one letter. The b~ etc should have the tilde above the letter. The b+ etc should have a straight cross stroke similar to a strikethrough. The J should be a swash J.

Other empty cases ie with the boxes left blank		Other type layouts ie with characters assigned to boxes
Full Index of layouts	Glossary of terms used	Sources of the layouts	Introduction
Quantities in a fount of type		Quantities in a case of type
Notes about Job and Double Cases	Notes about Upper cases	Notes about Lower cases	Alembic home page

This page was written in 1997 by David Bolton.