For many designers and printers who work with letterpress printing and its analog elements, wood and metal type, and hand carved printing blocks, wood type is wonderful. The material is naturally appealing, the surface area it can cover on a piece of paper is an endless source of inspiration, using letterforms as abstract forms, or playing with scale and layers, and when used for its intended purpose, it ‘speaks’ boldly. Wood type is typically much bigger than metal type and that makes the messages easy to read – they’re ‘heard.’
Sometimes you can look at the type and see how it has lived, if it was cut to fit better into a case, or printed with a particular ink color for much of its life, or if it got into a tussle with a press, ooor, in the case of wood type “twofers,” served double duty.
A wood type “twofer” is basically a piece of wood type that sometime during the course of its lifetime has wound up with two faces, its original manufacturer-cut face and on the reverse, something carved after the piece of type left the manufacturer. Except when it’s not (more on that down below).
The origin of some twofers is practical: If a print shop was working on a job and ran out of a particular letter in the font of type they were using on press, they couldn’t just call it a day. One of the pieces of type from the font that was similar in size to the missing letter would get pulled from the typecase and flipped over so the letter could be carved into the backside of the piece of type. The printer knew the piece of wood was the right height and strength for printing, and especially if it was not a letter that was used very much (like X or Z), it likely would not be missed if it was needed on a future print job.
Other twofer letters may be created from type-high wood that had something else carved into the front, such as an image, or vice versa, an image is carved into the backside of a letter, perhaps because it was the perfect size and wood already prepared to work in a printing press (because it was the right height, type high, or .918 of an inch). These tend to become utter mysteries, their origins lost to time.
Most of the wood type was brand new when the shop’s founding brothers, Charles and Herbert, or Charles’ son, Will T., purchased it, starting in 1879 and going forward into the 20th century.
So, tracing the path of their twofers has created more questions!
These twofers live among type that is used quite regularly through the course of a workday in the shop.
Fascinating characters rather rudely cut out, that perhaps a young Will T. Hatch carved as he was growing up in the shop, in imitation of the craft his father and uncle, Charles and Herbert, practiced in the shop every day. Alas, Will T. cannot verify our theory!
Speaking of the founding brothers, not only did Charles and Herbert cut amazing wood blocks used for advertising, they cut their own type. We’ve got type that is about 40 inches high, shown below, as well as type that is about 78 inches high that was carved in the shop before 1885.
And, living in the magical wall o’wonder alongside this type there is a font of type that is mostly cut into the backs of poster or advertising printing blocks.
In this instance, the original manufactured side was the advertisement, and once they outlived their usefulness in that capacity (whatever they were advertising no longer existed, or the client requested fresh advertising art, which meant carving new blocks), the same “manufacturers,” Charles and Herbert, chopped them up to make another font of wood type for the shop to use.
While the shop did have access to type-high wood prepared to be carved into whatever printing blocks they designed or needed, reusing these blocks containing outdated advertising was economical. Though, the usual destiny for such blocks was to become a box, shelving, or some other shop furnishing.
Here is the entire font of type spread out on the floor, typeface side up, and then backside up:
The next time you’re in your print shop or out and about at a flea market or antiques store, take a few moments to flip some type over and see if you come across any twofer treasures!