Antique No 6

The slab serif first appeared in an 18151 Vincent Figgins specimen where four bold all-capitals styles were shown under the name Antique. Thorowgood’s later models used the alternative name Egyptian,2 as all things Egyptian were in vogue following Napoleon’s expedition in 1798. After the fat face, slabs were the second major typographic innovation of the nineteenth century. Considered a continuation of punchcutters’ experimentation with ways to make type darker, they reduced contrast even further and simplified serifs and terminals.

Slab faces offered new challenges: early variants often deferred to geometry in round characters, revealing where punchcutters struggled with the question of how much weight to add on thick versus thin strokes. Like most new designs of this period, the style originated in the world of lettering, and can be found on lottery bills dating back to 1810.3Nicolete Gray’s Nineteenth Century Ornamented Typefaces calls slab serifs “the most brilliant typographic invention of the century.”4

Immediately popular with printers for their eye-catching weight, founders increased production of slab serifs to meet the rising demand. Slabs are found in countless specimens of all the main protagonists: Caslon, Thorne and his successor Thorowgood, Fry, Wilson, Bower & Bacon, and Blake & Stephenson. Both exported and home-made variants swept continental Europe and the United States.

Although originally an all-capital style, the next major development, a lowercase, appeared by 1821. In the following decades, punchcutters wrestled with how to deal with terminals in the a, c, f, g, j, r, and y. Various approaches were attempted, including balls, flat ends to a vertical, flat ends to an angle, and rounded ends. The first italic slab in display size appears in the same year, with Caslon cutting a lowercase by 1825. Throughout the decade, the slab continued to gain weight like the fat face before it. Named Antique No. 2 by Figgins, the style’s maturity is marked by less reliance on geometry and greater variation in stroke weight.

By the beginning of the 1830s, slabs could be found in a regular width from 25-line pica (300pt) at its largest, down to a minuscule Diamond (4.5pt). Though it was cut at such small sizes, it was—for all intents and purposes—a display typeface and mostly only used in small sizes for single lines and emphasis.

As fashions moved towards bolder and denser letters, a reverse fashion appeared in the shape of lighter forms began to appear at the end of the 1830s. These manifested themselves at extremes, with almost skeletal letters, as shown in Blanchard, but most occupy a pleasing, medium-bold weight. The most brilliant of these were those Figgins produced in the later 1840s, and show confidence and assuredness in their cutting.

The slab remained a constant in founders’ specimens and printers’ repertoires into the next century, though often diminished in breadth. Those most came from the second half of the century, but some dated back to the first wave of slabs. Multiple reinventions happened in the 20th century; from geometric slabs, such as Beton and Memphis (both 1929), to slab variants of classic sans serifs, e.g. Serifa (1967) and Glypha (1977) by Adrian Frutiger, that structurally match his classic Univers. In the first wave of digital faces, revivals such as Giza (1992), by David Berlow, appeared. Faces such as PMN Cacelia (1990), by Peter Mattias Noordzij, and our own Guardian Egyptian (2005) and Stag (2009) show new approaches to the form, and the slab remain as popular as ever.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Figgins foundry produced a series of new slab designs. Sequentially numbered 2 to 6, they do not form an obvious family bar that they are slab serifs. Antique No. 6 first appears at some point in the 1870s, in a series of sizes 24pt and below. Bolder than Antique No. 2, its weight is closer to the slabs of the first half of the century, but departs structurally from its predecessors. The overall character is squarer and have thickening horizontal flat terminals . As the first slabs followed the skeleton of the modern style of this period, these later slabs reflect the modern of the time. The exaggerated tail of the a is similar to one you might find in a face such as Modern No. 20. The strokes turning inward in the a and r is also typical of many sans of this period, as seen in Caslon Doric.

The face remained in production even as the design was transferred to the successors of the Figgins foundry: first to R. H. Stevens, and then to Stevens, Shanks & Sons. The latter continued to produce the face into the 1970s, making it one of the last genuine nineteenth-century slabs casted. In twentieth-century Italy,5 the Nebolio foundry acquired and renamed it Egiziano. As Egiziano, it gained popularity in the United States in the 1970s, where it was adopted by art director Roger Black.

The original premise of remaking Antique No. 6 was as a bold companion to Caslon Ionic, much as nineteenth-century printers mixed and matched styles where emphasis was needed. To this end, the proportions were gently altered to match the Ionic, and an italic was added, as none was originally cut. Rather than being cut as a complement to every size of roman, italics appear sparingly, though a study of playbills suggest they enjoyed a degree of popularity in the British isles. In text, they are a rarity: only Thorowgood, Blake & Stephenson, and the small foundry of Hugh Hughes,6 showing them. Hughes work is little known and his italics show a refreshing approach to style with tails that are flat on the inside with little curvature on the outsides. Antique No. 6 italic is a cursive, rather than slanted but with a stiffness found in the roman, with flat upper serifs in the lowercase that contrast with the round lower tails. Other letters have been simplified such as the tailless f, the lack of terminals on the s, and the v and w.

With seven weights, Antique No. 6 offers a slab serif that has the authenticity and character of the historical model, while offering the variety of a modern workhorse face.