It came! It came! The poor UPS guy was confused because I received a box that didn’t say “Amazon.com” on it. I’m known around here as a black hole for Amazon products.

He had to wheel this stuff in. The Caslon stuff itself wasn’t too hefty, but the spaces and the leading–well, they are made out of heavy metal, see.

Caslon, upper and lower case, in 12-on-14pt and 18pt

I was a bit worried about finding leading. You need it to set type; it is non-optional. You may be familiar with it in your regular life from word processing or graphics program–the leading metaphor is still alive and kicking. But with letterpress, one has to deal with it concretely. Unfortunately, the gentleman responsible for the vast majority of leading and slugs for the entire country passed away last year. Supplies are tight. I have a friend who used to work for one of the larger letterpress supply companies in the country (if one can call any of them “large”), and he confesses that he “killed the machine” that produced their leading. So I’m glad to have this grip of leading because I’m not sure the next time I’ll be able to find any.

2pt. leading and 6pt. slugs

I also got what looks to be four lifetimes’ worth of 14- and 18-pt. spacing. I was worried there wouldn’t be enough spaces in the Caslon.

Spacing