Ninth Street Type  /  Mercer  /  Specimen 2.1

Mercer150

Handset, then scanned64

Forty-two cuts drawn from one 96pt master34

21The press on Ninth Street ran until 1974, and the last thing it printed was a menu for a diner that had already closed. We found four hundred of them in a drawer. The R sits a little low in every one, and we kept it.

Forty-two cuts

Drawn once at 96pt and pulled in four directions. Nothing was redrawn for the display sizes; the optical axis does that work, so the 9pt and the 150pt are the same letter under different pressure.

Mercer Hairline100
Mercer Hairline Italic100
Mercer Thin200
Mercer Thin Italic200
Mercer Display Light300
Mercer Display Book400
Mercer Display Italic400
Mercer Display Medium500
Mercer Display Bold700
Mercer Display Black900
Mercer Subhead Light300
Mercer Subhead Book400
Mercer Subhead Medium500
Mercer Subhead Medium Italic500
Mercer Subhead Bold700
Mercer Text Light300
Mercer Text Book400
Mercer Text Italic400
Mercer Text Medium500
Mercer Text Bold700
Mercer Micro Book400
Mercer Micro Bold700

Plus twenty more across the optical range. The full list ships with the trial.

Proofs, set at the size each cut was drawn for

Micro Book, 13/22

Composed on a Linotype in the basement at 921 Ninth Street until the machine was sold for scrap in 1981. The matrices went to a collector in Sedalia who still has them, still in order, still in the original case, and who let us take rubbings of the whole lower case over two Saturdays in 2023.

Text Book, 17/27

Composed on a Linotype in the basement at 921 Ninth Street until the machine was sold for scrap in 1981. The matrices went to a collector in Sedalia who still has them, still in order.

Subhead Light, 21/31

Composed on a Linotype in the basement at 921 Ninth Street until the machine was sold for scrap in 1981.

Subhead Italic, 21/31

Composed on a Linotype in the basement at 921 Ninth Street until the machine was sold for scrap in 1981.

Licence

Price$180, complete family
TermPerpetual, all media, no pageview metering
Cuts42 static instances and the variable file
Formatsotf, woff2, ttf
LanguagesLatin extended
TrialsUnlimited and unwatermarked
Free toStudents, libraries, public schools. Write and we will send it. This does not expire.