The Theory of Nevolution: FT Wimble

April 27, 2008

FT Wimble

FT Wimble was one of Australia's main suppliers and producers of type. He was also an ink merchant, later on becoming a politician. The most interesting and disappointing aspects of his career is the fact that his entire collection of type were rip offs of other faces. While it's rather amusing that he copied faces and named them after Australian places - this face is Perth Engravers Gothic, it's rather sad from a historical perspective that nothing new was created.

Australia could have some semblance of a typographic history, but unfortunately, no culture was created. Instead, punchcutters were employed solely to copy well known faces. I've wailed about this before regarding the Citizenship Test, but felt it important to bring up again as I finally found some historical evidence of FT Wimble at the Printing Museum the other week. So, while it's great that this man fostered a printing culture, and contributed greatly to it, it's a great loss to Australian history that his creativity wasn't further than his ledger books.

Despite all that, it was a great find, especially his trademark. As usual, larger versions are on flickr.

Posted at 10:03 PM in A Pressing Issue | Permalink

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