Rusher's Patent Types

[2][1] Rusher's patent showed a design for the roman or upright style, and for an italic apparently never manufactured as metal type.

[22] A copy at the University of Oxford advertises that "since part of the book was printed, it will be seen that a material improvement has been made in the legibility of the new letters.

In the nineteenth century Charles Henry Timperley felt that the improved types were "any thing but what the preamble of the patent would have us believe"[24] and Bigmore and Wyman considered it "about as ugly a specimen of typography as can be conceived".

[25] Goudy thought that the design was hampered by bad execution: "little care had been taken to give to his new forms the same weight of stems as in the face into which they were interpolated".

The book advertised a forthcoming edition of The Deserted Village in the type, and the Cheney ledger suggested it was apparently printed,[4] but no copy has been found.

[25] According an 1894 article on the type in Caslon's Circular, the news magazine of the Caslon foundry, from when the punches were rediscovered, "whether this patent type gave rise to the practice or not, we cannot tell, but very many of the best fonts issued at the present day can be supplied on various bodies for which special ascending and descending sorts have been engraved, but to do away with descenders entirely...has never been since attempted".

[4][g] The punches were advertised for sale on eBay in February 2021; they had apparently ended up owned by Cheney & Sons, the firm which had printed the book, before it closed.