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Author Alastair Johnston

3 articles

Alastair Johnston is a scholar, teacher and letterpress printer. He is the author of “Transitional faces,” a forthcoming biography of Richard Austin, cutter of the Bell and Scotch Roman types and his son Richard T. Austin, a wood engraver. He is co-editor of William E. Loy’s “Nineteenth-century American designers & engravers of type,” and most recently has produced “Typographical tourists: tales of the tramp printer,” from his Poltroon Press based in Berkeley, California.

Alastair Johnston wrote

Industrial-Strength Types

The Industrial Revolution gave us a new iron age, one of cast iron, which a devotee of Vulcan told me he thought was the highest achievement of man — or, as he put it, “the hairless ape.” In the 18th century, cast-iron bridges sprang across British rivers such as the Tay and … Read More…