This was the book, self-published by Paul Lippman in 1992, that turned me into a maniac when I got hold of it in 1994. As soon as I saw the New Model Crandall on the cover, I was fascinated and hooked.
It took about a decade for me to get hold of a New Model Crandall myself. It's a rough specimen, not functional, but still wonderful.
In 2005, I got a notion that I could try to turn the typeface on its type cylinder into a digital font.
I pulled out the cylinder, inked it, and rolled it carefully over a piece of glossy cardboard. Then I made the best scan I could, and arranged the characters into alphabetical order:
I worked with a template provided by a website that can turn handwriting into a font. After various experiments and adjustments, I had this:
This was the basis of a digital font I dubbed Lucien, in honor of inventor Lucien S. Crandall. You can download that font from my website and type like this:
I went on to use Lucien in ETCetera when I started editing it in 2006.
And now, the story of this typeface has come full circle: from type to font to type.
Ben Davidson, a maker of metal and wood type living in the Pacific Northwest USA, wrote to me in February asking if he could use the Lucien font as a model for a set of bamboo type for letterpress printing. I agreed, of course.
Ben's wooden type is now ready! These are large letters, over an inch tall.
You can find the type on Ben's website, Columbia Gorge Book Arts.
Wherever he is, Lucien S. Crandall is smiling today—I'm sure of it.
You can read a lot about Crandall (and his four wives) on Robert Messenger's blog.
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