Type styles available at Portland Linotyping Company typographers. . . Linotype, Monotype, Hand Type, Ludlow.

Item Details

Portland, OR:, Portland Linotyping Company, 512 NW 17th Ave.,, [ca. 1960]., Hardcover Ring Binder

First Edition, thus, NF

Oblong folio. 14.25 x 10.25 in. iv, [2], 206 [i.e. 250 pp (added supplement pages in assorted sections).], printed throughout w/ peach-coloured border at lower fore-edge, type specimens included throughout, with each section divided by thick cardstock divider and thumb tab. Original publisher’s blue buckram 16-ring binder, gilt lettering stamped on front cover & spine (slight shelfwear), NF copy, from the library of David Kohl  (1946-2025), former art teacher at the Hong Kong International School, musician, artist, and historian.

First edition of this exceedingly scarce and massive type font specimen book issued by the Portland Linotyping Company who specialized in commercial trade typesetting for many local Pacific Northwest regional newspapers, magazines, and job printers. This particular type specimen catalogue was intended to be expanded, as per the additional 34 supplement pages, and note on colophon specifying “New type faces are being constantly added to our library and when they become available new insert sheets will be printed and distributed to the holders of our specimen books.” 

Their Linotype Composition faces encompassed Baskerville to Condensed Gothic, Garamond to Oldstyle Antique, as well as Spartan Book and Times Roman; Monotype Composition included Bodoni, Copperplate Gothic, Garamond, Modern, Rockwell Antique, and 20th-Century Medium; while the Handset Display typefaces ranged from Aurora Condensed to Bulmer Italic, Craw Modern to a series of Gothics, as well as Optima Italic, P.T. Barnum, and more. Through the 1960’s under Ray Sneddon (1926-2017), the company would evolve into Phototypesetting, and further into film, and computer-based advertising typefaces for PNW designers and ad agencies. Sneddon was recruited out of Canada, and in 1958 he became printer owner/operator of Portland Linotyping Company where he remained overseeing the operation until his retirement in 1989. No copies in Worldcat.