Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/06/thames-new-roman-how-the-famed-doves-typeface-was-rescued-from-the-bottom-of-a-river.html
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Now that’s some high-end mudlarking!
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This is the Type of article I like
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We should press the authors for more.
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In any case, this sort of thing is a font of interesting information.
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I was kerncerned but glad they managed to revive this old press type.
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It’s extremely cool that they were able to locate some of the original sorts from the bottom of the river. But I assumed they’d have been able to recreate it pretty fully based on the 17 years worth of books that were printed in that font, and it sounds like Torbjörn Olsson did exactly that back in 1994.
It sounds like Green’s version is more refined and closer to exact, thanks in part to the recovered sorts. But it’s more of an incremental improvement than a full-on rediscovery.
That said, I love that there are people who love fonts so much that they’ll dig through mud in the Thames to recover one.
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" Mebinac is a recreation of it from scratch with contemporary technology, giving the letterforms a more modern and mechanical look. It’s available free of charge."
a more modern and mechanical look is not a recreation of a font that is famous for its humanistic delicacy.
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Arguably a recreation from printed text is more true to the original than one from the type, because a digital typeface tries to imitate the end product, which is a combination of the physical type, the ink’s viscosity and coverage, the pressure of the press and the paper’s physical properties.
That’s why Green himself used printed materials as the basis of his Doves typeface. The sorts mainly came into it in the creation of a sharper and thinner display typeface. Honestly, that sounds a bit like he realised he couldn’t really use the recovered sorts to improve his text typeface, so he came up with a use for them by making them a display typeface.
From Typespec:
Ever since Green began the project in 2010, he has collected an ever expanding range of Doves Press publications and other materials such as ‘overs’ sheets and proofs, in addition to the metal type he salvaged in 2014. Each new example highlighted another aspect of the typeface he hadn’t noticed or considered before. He eventually decided the type needed to be redrawn entirely.
The metal sorts were also used as sources for outlines and were drawn separately, then cross-referenced with drawings derived from the printed type. Before long, largely due to his involvement in the Thames Tideway project, Green realised that not one, but two versions of the revised Doves Type were taking shape; a Text version similar to previous iterations of the Doves Type, and a sharper Headline variant commissioned by Tideway, adapted specifically for use in challenging fabrication processes across multiple surfaces such as brick, granite, brass, wrought iron, and steel.
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I am not sure about the decision to use drifted (and tiny) tittles in the original (as they are in Jenson), and I suppose that goes some way to justify the decision to keep them, however I find them horribly distracting.
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Exactly the sort of quality font-nerdiness I hoped would surface in the comments. Thank you.
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It must be hard to find other type divers to talk to.
It’s interesting to note that the Doves Press, named after the nearby Doves pub, published the Doves Bible, so the Bible is also named after a pub.
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Man, I feel like with some under water metal detectors they could find more. Being in a river, I imagine a lot of it got washed down stream some?
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You are making my point. Mebinac has much less character and grace that the Doves above. I’ve designed my own fonts, and hope I have developed an eye for these things over years of work. Not saying it’s not ok, just not a real substitute for even the digitized Doves above. And I don’t mean at all to insult whomever designed Mebinac. It’s pretty good. My own text faces are no better. There are a lot of subtleties that go into making a top notch text face.
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A slider to overlay the two fonts so that you can see the differences would be great. It took me a few minutes of examination to spot the differences, and I have a letter press in my basement.
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BB is a font of wisdom.
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Reading history diaries → Mudlarking → restoring a typeface.
[Vince Mcmahon reaction meme faces, but with a non problematic person]
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Try a more diverse divers club perhaps?
One the face of it, I’m not clear if this was mudlarking or sub-mudlarking.
Lastly, I hope we see Doves Italic, Bold and 
(with purple ink)
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Strangely, I can see Doves working well for signage, while MEBINAC being easier to read as run-of-the-mill reading text. Each word seems to jump out with Doves, whereas Mebinac makes reading the sentence flow easier.
I’m biased towards serif fonts. So shoot me.
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