File talk:An old trade card (George Inn, Southwark).jpg

Dating

I’m interested in the history of printing and I have to say that this looks at least sixty years later than is claimed in the source.

The styles of font used in it - a "display" face on “R. Hammond” and a "slab-serif" on “stage waggon” - are reported in history books to have only really come in in the nineteenth century from around 1815 onwards. In addition, I’ve looked up the printer’s name on Google Books and I can find sources for them existing in 1828 and 1826 (both taking about them printing editions of a pamphlet about conjoined twins) but not any other dates. (If you compare with other trade cards on Wikimedia that are certainly dated to the eighteenth century, they’re of a very different design-often custom-engraved to replicate elegant handwriting or in the more "normal" lettering styles that were popular at the time.) This is a good primer on the topic, and this gives more context on other styles of nineteenth-century advertising printing in Britain. Nicolete Gray's Ornamented Typefaces is the best academic source.

Obviously you'd want to discuss with an expert if you wanted an authoritative opinion, and experts won't have seen every flyer out there, but these were "fad" fonts - once one printer got his hands on them they all would copy him. You wouldn't expect a local printer in Tenterden to be sixty years ahead of the curve. I think it would be very surprising for this to be any earlier than 1815 or so and the date of c. 1826-1830 when we know this printer was active looks reasonable based on its overall style. I want to be clear that this isn't intended as criticism of Billingshurst at all - a date of c. 1750 is what the source of the image claims, but it doesn't seem at all possible. Anyone who has access to business directories of the period could confirm this if they want to. Blythwood (talk) 20:17, 27 December 2016 (UTC)