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Recent Specimens.

Sir Charles Reed & Sons, Of the Fann-street Foundry, London, are still producing tasteful and beautiful novelties. Their agents, Baber and Rawlings, send us a neatly-displayed sheet showing eighteen varieties of Japanese corners, a groundwork to correspond, and four quaint and pretty vase ornaments. We regret to see that this house is bringing out novelties on such obsolescent bodies as english and double pica. Reed and Caslon are the only English founders who give the colonial buyers a chance of selecting from their new styles. The other foundries may be bringing out new and attractive faces; but if so, they neglect the colonial market, where the 'cute Yankee and ambitious German are fast occupying the field.

From Mr A. Sauvé, London, we have specimens of a series of national ornaments and portraits of the Queen, appropriate to the Jubilee year; also a sheet of well-designed sporting emblems, for cricket, football, tennis, &c.

No. 41 of Caslon's Circular—a back number, specially sent to make up a deficiency in our file, contains the finest pica roman (No. 26) we have yet seen anywhere. Bold, clear, legible, and harmonious, it is more gratifying to the eye than any fancy letter ever devised. Yet this is precisely the kind of type that « aesthetic » and « artistic » printers neglect. It passes our comprehension how publishers and readers have so long tolerated the wretched affectation of sham « old-style » work when modern faces have been brought to such perfection. Germany may excel in combinations, and America in fancy letter; but in body-founts England leads the world.

By the San Francisco mail we have Brace's Fifth Supplement, which contains four series of ornamental letter, comprising in all nineteen founts, none of which are provided with lower-case. Style 1085 is a neat condensed ornamented, light and pretty. No. 1086 is another condensed, lined, and being a mixed style, difficult to classify. The M and N are simply sanserif; the O is a hexagon; the E and T are provided with serifs—the latter differing from every other character in the fount in having one at the foot. 1087 is an old-fashioned copperplate engravers' letter—a tuscan, blocked and shaded, and adorned with a « rupert's drop » at the side. 1088 is another old friend —a sanserif, with a very broad blocking, running from the top and right-hand side, giving the letter the appearance of tilting forward. The double-pica of this face (under the title of « Perspective ») has been in the specimen-books for a good many years; Messrs Bruce have now completed the series in five sizes, from pica to 4-line pica.

Farmer, Little, & Co. have produced a bold and peculiar letter, with lower-case, under the title of « Bowl. » It is a striking and very effective style.

Marder, Luse, & Co. send us the Chicago Specimen, No, 1, vol. xxi, in which we find a flattering notice of our own paper. We note a page of specimens of pica figures for the new style of railroad table work; « star dashes » (* ** *** ***) in four sizes, for separating paragraphs in book-and job-work, and two neat sets of U.S. weather signals.—By the mail to hand this week, we have specimens of some original and very peculiar borders, suitable for old-style work, by the same firm.

Messrs Schneidewend & Lee, printers' furnishers, Chicago, were burnt out on 25th April. On the 30th they had a new machine-shop equipped, and were hard at work filling orders.