Central Saint Martins Double Case

[ ]aeoe( ) je  mid  '?!; 
 
fl1234567
&bcdisfg ff890£  
 
 
fflkfi     
  
  
ffilmnhoyp,w 
en
qd
 
em
qd
ABCDEFG
thinHIKLMNO
zvut 
thick
 spaces 
 
ar q:quadsPQRSTVW
x.-XYZÆŒUJ

This English case lay was used in the past by Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts, London), as provided by Hi-Artz Press in 2012. It is fairly similar to that given by Lawrence Wallis in A Short History of the English Case Lay, in Print in Britain (Nov 1959), however St Martins has k where Wallis has thins, has thins where Wallis has hairs, and has ( ) where Wallis has k. The ae and oe boxes move one to the right, to allow [ ] beside ae, whereas Wallis has [ ] below the box for 7. The row above A B C etc is empty, whereas Wallis has £ / $ %.

Although Saint Martins and Wallis use an Ordinary Double case, with seven rows of boxes in the upper case section, the actual lay is very similar to H.W.Caslon's Improved Double of 1897, although that case has one less upper case row. Apart from that, Saint Martins has ffi then thins whereas Caslon has hairs then ffi, and puts thins where Saint Martins has mids. The Southern College of Art (c1970) used an identical lay to Saint Martins, but again in an Improved Double case, and also including ct, st, Qu, QU and en dash in some of the empty boxes. Note that neither Southern College of Art nor Saint Martins allocate any box for hair spacing.

The — box is for em dashes. The case construction matches the Ordinary Double shown by Southward: Practical Printing(1882), Miller & Richard: Catalogue (1897), Stephenson, Blake & Co.: Printing Material & Machinery (1922) and Caslon: Printing Types & Materials (1925), etc. The style of case differs from the Improved Double cases of, for example, Southward with five upper case rows, or Sheffield with six rows.

Earlier layoutDouble Lay list(No later layout)
Other empty cases
ie with the boxes left blank
Other type layouts
ie with characters assigned to boxes
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This page was written in August 2012 by David Bolton and last updated 14 April 2015.