Old Style (Miller & Richard)

Old Style, later referred to as modernised old style, is a series of serif typefaces cut from the mid-nineteenth century and sold by the type foundry Miller & Richard, of Edinburgh in Scotland. It was a standard typeface in Britain for literary and prestigious printing in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, with many derivatives and copies released.

The Old Style faces of Miller & Richard, reportedly cut by punchcutter Alexander Phemister, were made in imitation of earlier styles of typeface, particularly the Caslon typeface cut by William Caslon from the 1720s, but with a modernised design. It was immediately very successful: the 1880s Bibliography of Printing describes its popularity as "unsurpassed in the annals of type-founding".

The exact date of Old Style's release is apparently uncertain as Miller & Richard published specimens erratically, but according to James Mosley and Morris it first appears in an 1860 specimen.

Design

Like Caslon, Old Style has slanting top serifs and an avoidance of abrupt transitions of weight, but compared to Caslon it is much lighter in colour and the stress is vertical (the top of the round letters uniformly the thinnest part of the letter, rather than at a position of roughly eleven o'clock), reflecting changes in taste since the eighteenth century. The letters are rather wide and the italic is evenly, and rather strongly slanted. The two-way Q recalls the Baskerville type of the mid-eighteenth century. Hugh Williamson describes it as "large on the body, light and open, and rather wide".

The name "old style" is confusing, as it and "old face" have been used differently by different authors to refer to "true old-style" printing types from around 1480–1750 (and relatively authentic copies of them) and the new "Old Style" face of Miller & Richard and its imitations, which appear rather different.