Rosewood
Rosewood
Year: 1994
Designers: Carl Crossgrove, Carol Twombley and Kim Buker Chansler
Foundry: Adobe
The letterpress printers of the 1800s had a problem on their hands: Chromolithography, with its prismatic coloration and elaborate letterforms was cutting into their business. Limited by their technology, letterpress printers began demanding that foundries produce more decorative typefaces and ornaments to compete with the flourish of their lithographic rivals.
This demand gave rise to a flood of typographic innovation. Fat faces, dimensional type, ornate Tuscan faces with bifurcated serifs and spurred stems, rose to meet the demand for more decoration. Another innovation was the development of polychromatic typefaces. These typefaces were comprised of two or three sorts (typically an outline and one or two fills) per letter that could be printed in alignment in different colors for a splashier presentation of headlines or other display type.
As many of these new typefaces were intended for use in creating large format poster and banners, the type sizes were quite large, often in excess of 3 inches in height. This made their manufacture in traditional metal problematic, as the type would be quite heavy and difficult to handle. Thus, these oversized letters were often fabricated out of hardwoods that could withstand the pressure of letterpress printing, but still be lightweight enough to handle with ease. Many typefaces that exhibit these rustic “wild west” qualities are often named in a manner (Birch, Blackoak, Ironwood, Willow, Cottonwood, etc.) that honors their wooden origins.
Rosewood, modeled on the sturdy Clarendon-esque typefaces that were a favorite of letterpress printers of the era, specifically references the chromatic typefaces of William Page, who specialized in designing wood type in the 19th century. When Page retired, he sold his business to the Hamilton Manufacturing Company, which still exists as the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum and is dedicated to the preservation and manufacture of wooden type.