Village typeface

Frederic W. Goudy (1865-1947) was an American printer and type designer of more than 120 typefaces. Frederic's wife Bertha M. Goudy (1869-1935) worked closely with him and was a graphic designer in her own right. Both Frederic and Bertha were self-taught.

The Goudys established their Village Press in 1903 in Park Ridge, Illinois and later moved operations to Hingham, Massachusetts, and then New York City. In 1923, they moved their residence and Press to Marlborough, New York, to a property which included an old flourmill. Frederic’s goal was to expand his workshop’s footprint, so he could not only design type and print books, but also cast his own type at what he called the Village Press Letter Foundery. He and Bertha named the compound “Deepdene” after their former street in Forest Hills, Queens, New York.

Since 1911, Goudy employed Robert Weibking (1870–1927) to engrave his designs into matrices for casting metal type. However, Goudy decided to learn the craft himself. Ever the tinkerer, at Deepdene Goudy put together his own matrix-engraving machine and assembled all the tools to begin production of his own typefaces from design to finished product. The Deepdene working conditions enhanced his productivity and from 1925 to 1938 he created some fifty typefaces himself.

On January 26, 1939 the mill at Deepdene burned down. All of his equipment—patterns, matrices, engravers, casting machines, and presses—was lost. The fire was hugely publicized, as Goudy was the most famous type designer in America. However, the terrible loss did not deter Goudy and he continued to work for another ten good years.

Howard Wheeler Coggeshall (1878-1949) began his printing career at a newspaper in Otego, New York. After working as a reporter in Oneonta, New York, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he moved in 1905 to Whitesboro, New York and opened a print shop there. He later settled in Utica, New York, and operated his printing company in the Savage Arms Building. Coggeshall was a close friend of Frederic W. Goudy and often printed projects for Goudy with type cast at Goudy’s Village Letter Foundery. As a result Coggeshall was in possession of eleven different Goudy fonts in January 1939 when Goudy's foundry burned. The fonts, dating between 1921 and 1937, became known as the "lost" Goudy types, some of the last of Village Letter Foundery-cast types in large quantities.