The Englishman John Baskervile is a fascinating character, and reading about him is like reading the biography of two men in one. Space doesn’t permit to list all of his achievements; suffice to say that he always strove to improve upon existing methods and materials, whether that be in his recipes for new inks, or his finer quality glossy papers.
[Baskerville] was not an inventor but a perfector….He concentrated on spacing. He achieved amplitude not merely by handsome measurement but by letting in the light.–Type, the Secret History of Letters, Simon Loxley, page 54 (quoting from English Printed Books)
“Baskerville has less calligraphic flow than most earlier typefaces”***, and this can be said of just about all the Transitional Style types. Whereas the earlier Humanist and Old Style types owed much to the handwritten letter form, the pen’s influence has all but disappeared in the Transitional types. The following is a detail from one of Baskerville’s type specimens:
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