The business was shortly afterwards removed to Worship Street, hard by the old premises; and here, in 1785, the first specimen-book of the foundry was issued. This volume exhibits the greater part of the new Caslon series of Romans, which the proprietors in their “Advertisement” frankly admit to have been cut in the closest possible imitation of that ingenious artist’s models.624 It includes also two pages of Hebrew type. Later in the same year appeared a large broadside sheet printed both sides, containing an epitome of the specimen-book, and displaying, besides the Arabic, Hebrews, Greek and Samaritan {304} recently acquired at James’s sale,one or two fresh Hebrew founts lately finished. Considerable variety is thrown into this and later specimens by showing each size not only on its own body, but upon the bodies next larger and next smaller,—short descending sorts being specially cut for the latter. The broadside also includes a Diamond Roman, the first in England, for which the founders claim that it is “the smallest letter in the world,” adding subsequently that it “gets in considerably more than the famous Dutch Diamond.”

Another Specimen followed in 1786, showing several more of the new founts, and including seven pages of Orientals. This volume is dedicated to the Prince of Wales, and is prefaced by an address to the public of the usual self-laudatory character, with a somewhat aggressive reference to the rival foundry at Chiswell Street.625

In the following year Mr. Joseph Fry retired from the business. Besides founding a chocolate business in his native city, and becoming a considerable {305} partner in the new Bristol Porcelain Works, he had added to his other enterprises that of a Chemical Works at Battersea, and later still had established some important Soap Works in partnership with Mr. Alderman Fripp of Bristol.

He did not long survive his retirement, and died, after a few days’ illness, on March 29, 1787, aged fifty-nine, greatly respected. He was buried in the Friends’ burial-ground at the Friars, Bristol. A silhouette portrait of him is to be seen in Mr. Hugh Owen’s Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol, where also many interesting details of his life are to be found.626

In 1787 was issued a Specimen of Printing Types by Edmund Fry and Co.—the first mention of the firm under its new title. This was followed in the next year by a full specimen of the foundry, with a preface and dedication similar to those of the 1786 edition, but showing several fresh additions, particularly among the Orientals, which occupy twelve pages. Of the latter, several founts had been cut by Dr. Fry himself.

The specimen of 1787 was included in the Printer’s Grammar627 published in that year—a work which makes considerable reference to the Frys’ foundry, whose specimens and standards are used in illustration of the various subjects dealt with. The introductory note to the specimen gives the following account of the then condition of the foundry. It “was begun in 1764 and has been continued with great perseverance and assiduity, at a very considerable expence. The plan on which they first sat out, was an improvement of the Types of the late Mr. Baskerville of Birmingham, eminent for his ingenuity in his line, as also for his curious Printing, many proofs of which are extant and much admired: But the shape of Mr. Caslon’s Type has since been copied by them with such accuracy as not to be distinguished from those of that celebrated Founder. They have at present Twenty-seven complete Founts in punches and matrices of Roman and Italic, besides many sizes of larger Letter cast in Sand; also an elegant assortment of Blacks, with Hebrews and Greeks, and many other Orientals: They have also a greater variety of Flowers than are to be met with in any other Foundery in this Kingdom.”

The premises at Worship Street becoming inadequate for the type and printing business combined, Dr. Fry took a plot of ground opposite Bunhill Fields in Chiswell Street—then open fields—and there built the foundry which gave its name to Type Street. To these premises the business was removed in 1788; and the Specimen of that year dates from the Type Street Foundry. {306}

Among many elegant works printed at this time in the types of this foundry was the Rev. Mr. Homer’s fine edition of the classics,628 printed by Millar Ritchie,629 in which the somewhat rare compliment was paid the founder, of adding his name to the list of typographers engaged on the work.

The printing business was about the same time dissociated from the type-founding, and remained at Worship Street under the management of Henry Fry, who styled his office the “Cicero Press.”630

In the year 1794 Dr. Fry took Mr. Isaac Steele into partnership, and the specimen of this year, under the title of Edmund Fry and Isaac Steele, Letter-Founders to the Prince of Wales, shows a marked advance on its predecessors. Besides the additional Romans, it includes the Irish fount originally cut by Moxon in 1680, and is further supplemented by a considerable display of “Metal Cast Ornaments, curiously adjusted to paper”, of which a specimen had already appeared in the preceding year. Rude as many of these cuts now appear, they were much affected at the time, while a few of their number bear evident testimony to the wholesome revolution then being effected in the art of engraving by Mr. Bewick. A distinct improvement in the same direction may be traced in the series of “Head and Fable Cuts” for Dilworth’s Spelling Book, a specimen of which was issued shortly afterwards.631

In 1798 Dr. Fry put forth proposals for publishing the important philological work on which he had for sixteen years been engaged, and which, in the following year, was issued under the title of Pantographia, with a dedication to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. {307}

This important work,632 which displays great learning and research, was favourably received. It exhibits upwards of 200 alphabets, amongst which are 18 varieties of the Chaldee and no less than 39 of the Greek. Many of the letters were cut by the author expressly for the work, under the direction or with the advice of some of the most eminent scholars of the day, and not a few subsequently found a place among the specimens of the foundry.

In 1799 Mr. George Knowles was admitted into partnership, and the firm became Fry, Steele and Co.

A new revolution in the public taste necessitated at this stage the abandonment of the Caslon Old Style faces, and the adoption of the modern cut Roman letter then coming into vogue; and the specimens between 1800 and 1808 are interesting as marking the gradual accomplishment of this task. The specimen of 1803 showed the first of the new Romans, and in 1808 Stower’s Printer’s Grammar contained the series almost complete.633

The new style may have been considered an improvement at the time, but a later judgment has endorsed the regret with which Dr. Fry and others witnessed the then entire abandonment of the time-honoured and graceful Elzevir-cut characters of the first Caslon.

Naturally conservative in most matters pertaining to his art, Dr. Fry viewed with the utmost displeasure another innovation of the same period, in the introduction of ornamental type; and to the end of his career he strenuously resisted the “pernicious fashion,” as he styled it; yielding only to the extent of one small series of flowered titling-letters, which crept into his later specimens. But, although opposed to ornaments in this form, the Type Street specimens show no lack of flowers, and Stower’s book includes a profuse specimen of these ornaments, arranged in fantastic designs by Mr. Hazard, the printer, of Bath.634

Both Mr. Steele and Mr. Knowles appear to have retired about the year 1808, when Dr. Fry assumed the sole management of the business. In the specimen of 1816 he styles himself Letter Founder to the King and Prince {308} Regent. Soon afterwards, his own health failing, he admitted his son, Mr. Windover Fry, into partnership, and the firm became Edmund Fry and Son.

The subsequent specimens of the foundry are not marked by any special feature of interest, if we except the introduction of M. Firmin Didot’s Great Primer Script in 1821, containing upwards of sixty lower-case sorts, in a system of ligatures and connectors so elaborate as to necessitate the printing of a scheme to facilitate their composition, and the manufacture of special cases to hold them.

Dr. Fry’s philological studies had not ceased with the publication of Pantographia, and he was constantly adding to the stock of punches and matrices of the “learned” languages, in which his foundry was already rich. His excellence as a cutter of Oriental punches led to his selection by the University of Cambridge635 to execute several founts for that learned body; in addition to which he was employed to produce types for the works of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and similar biblical publications.

His most important effort in this direction was an English Syriac for Bagster’s Polyglot, with the points cast on the body, the entire fount consisting of nearly 400 matrices.

The specimen of 1824, which was issued both in octavo and (more sumptuously) in quarto, for presentation, signalised the completion of his efforts in this department, and at the same time notified that the name of the foundry had been changed—not inappropriately—to the Polyglot Foundry.

It is to be regretted that Dr. Fry’s energy in one particular branch of his art, congenial as it was to his own tastes, did not turn out lucrative from a business point of view; and the last few years of his career as a type-founder were not prosperous. His latest specimen was a broadside sheet of Newspaper founts in 1827.

In the same year he produced a raised type for the blind, under the following circumstances:—The Scotch Society of Arts, anxious to promote the welfare of the blind, and desirous to determine, among the many systems at that time proposed, which was the most suitable method of printing for their instruction, offered a gold medal of the value of £20 for the best communication on the subject. Twenty designs were sent in in 1833, of which Dr. Fry’s was the only one retaining the ordinary alphabetical characters. His specimen consisted of large and small square “sanseriff” capitals working in combination, with no deviation from the regular form. The committee occupied four years in arriving at a decision; employing the time in corresponding with and eliciting {309} the opinion of all the chief persons interested and experienced in the education of the blind, in reference to the various designs. Amongst others they received a long communication from the Rev. W. Taylor of York, who commended Dr. Fry’s system, approving specially of the absence of a “lower-case” letter.636 The report was published May 31st, 1837, awarding the medal to Dr. Fry, who, however, was at that time no more, his death having occurred two years previously.

The following summary of the contents of the Polyglot Foundry, as far as its foreign and rare founts were concerned, is taken from the Specimen Book of 1824, and corresponds closely to the list given in Hansard’s Typographia in the following year. With the exception of the founts purchased at James’ sale in 1782 (which are distinguished by the initials), most of the characters were cut by, or under the direction of, Dr. Fry himself.