Justin Howes
Justin Howes died unexpectedly on Monday, 21 February 2005.
Justin was the founder and first Chairman of the Friends of St Bride, and a loyal supporter of the St Bride Printing Library. He will be greatly missed by both the Library and the Friends.
His typographic work included the ITC Founders Caslon series of typefaces that revived with great accuracy and sensitivity the works of the original Caslon family of typefaces. (www.hwcaslon.com)
A service of thanksgiving for Justin's life will be held in St Bride church on 9 May 2005 at 3pm.
Justin was one of the strongest supporters of the Friends and his untimely death will be keenly felt. He was responsible for re-establishing the Friends in 1998 and was our Chairman until 2003. Since then Justin has continued to support us, giving gifts to the library up to a few weeks ago. Without Justin the Friends would simply not exist and we will always be indebted to him. The Friends was not the only cause that Justin championed. It was largely thanks to his efforts that the archives of the Sheffield based typefounders Stephenson Blake were preserved in the Type Museum. Until recently Justin also worked in the Type Museum as part-time curator.
Always busy with many projects, Justin always found the time to share his knowledge with others and many of us will miss his help and advice as well as his friendship. Over the years he made many contributions in the field of printing history beginning with articles in Matrix and Isis while studying as an undergraduate at Christ Church College, Oxford. He then edited Edward Johnston's Lessons in formal writing with Heather Child, published by Lund Humphries in 1986. A year later he published a catalogue of the Edward Johnston Collection at the Crafts Study Centre at Bath University. He remained fascinated by Johnston and later wrote Johnston's underground type, published by Capital Transport in 2000. He also published in numerous journals and lectured across the country and abroad on a number of different subjects.
Justin was a typographer as well as a printing historian. He was responsible for designing many books, some quite sumptuous, but will be remembered in particular for his masterful digital version of the Caslon typeface.
Perhaps the saddest thing about Justin's death is that he left so many projects unfinished, some of which had been long-term ambitions that were soon to bear fruit—his six-month stay at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp and his PhD on the development of letterforms and concepts of lettering, 1680–1830 to name but two.
Our thoughts are with his parents at this time.
More Info :
W : The Times of London has published an obituary online.