Slab Serifs

Article forwarded by Top-Up Tom P, about the history of the Slab Serif face - from Typography.com

Slab serifs, now two centuries old, were chaotic from the start. Opinions differ as to whether the style was an import from signwriting to typography or vice versa, but by the second decade of the nineteenth century there were both painted and printed slab serifs throughout metropolitan London. The poet Robert Southey first recorded the word “Egyptian” in connection with the style in 1807 (Napoleon had returned from Egypt in 1799, sparking a wave of Egyptomania throughout Europe), and by the following decade all of the major British foundries had produced slab serif typefaces under different names that evoked the ancient world. “Egyptian” survives as a term for slab serifs, along with “Ionic” (now chiefly associated with bracketed faces of the Century model); “Doric” was popular as well. But the very first slab serif printing type, made in 1815 by the master British typefounder Vincent Figgins, went by the name Antique.