Caslon House

Caslon House Publishing

Publishers of the American story.

Treated plate after John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence: the drafting committee presents the Declaration to Congress.

After John Trumbull, Declaration of Independence, 1818 · Plate from the forthcoming edition

The Name

The type of the founding.

In 1759, Benjamin Franklin brought William Caslon’s type to America. Seventeen years later, on the night of July 4, 1776, the Philadelphia printer John Dunlap set the first printed copies of the Declaration of Independence — in Caslon. The line at right is his. This house is named for that type: the letters the republic first read itself in. The house is new. The standard it answers to is not.

Detail of the Dunlap broadside: the line 'In Congress, July 4, 1776', printed in Caslon type.
The Dunlap broadside, printed in Philadelphia on the night of July 4–5, 1776. Set in Caslon. Library of Congress.
Treated plate after Gilbert Stuart's 1795 portrait of George Washington.
After Gilbert Stuart, George Washington, 1795 · The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The House

Built the way the record deserves.

  1. I

    Real artifacts

    Every plate begins as a genuine artifact — a painting, a map, a document — never an invention in period dress.

  2. II

    Museum provenance

    Sources are named on the page: the artist, the year, the institution that holds the original.

  3. III

    Verified

    Dates, names, and quotations are checked against the primary record before they are printed.

  4. IV

    Made to last

    Full-color plates, generous trim, type set with care — books meant to be kept and handed on.

Forthcoming

Coming for America’s 250th.

A premium, full-color illustrated American history — a museum tour in a book. The nation’s paintings, maps, and documents, reproduced at scale and told straight. In production now.

Beneath: John Mitchell, A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, 1755 · Library of Congress