Middelbaar Canon Onder

    ç  c  c  -  '     e      1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8 
kbcds|fgh90
klmniopqaeoe;:
z  quad
yvuspacespacear quad
xt

This Belgian lay is of the Middlebaar Canon lower case (VV 2,6,R 15-O) (undated, but probably pre 1876, and whose wood looks older than many of the other cases) on view in the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp in 1998. The companion Upper case is Middlebaar Canon Boven.

The | represents the long s. Its ligatures are all in the Boven case. Note that ç is in the Onder case, but j is in the Boven case, and note also the i box, where U.K./U.S. cases place h.

The case measures 33½ x 14 inches. Note that there are effectively 3 rows of large boxes, unlike U.K. and U.S. cases, which have 3½ rows. The empty case is Onder. There are several other styles of Onder Kasse on view in the Plantin Museum, eg Laagen Tekst, Klein Canon, Laagen Ascendonica, Kapitalen, Klein Romein. Although these are all paired (Upper and Lower) cases, Plantin also used Single cases. Voet: The Golden Compasses (1972) notes that Plantin's accounts of October 1563 give 81 pairs of cases and 30 single cases. Whilst the paired cases were used for latin (i.e. roman letter) composition, there were still some roman and italic founts in singles, in addition to the fraktur etc. founts.

Other empty cases
ie with the boxes left blank
Other type layouts
ie with characters assigned to boxes
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and Double Cases
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This page was written in 1998 by David Bolton and last updated 16 April 2009.