John James has never, to the author's knowledge, been associated with Williamsburg printing in the past. Many of the types in his 1773 estate inventory can be found in the early Virginia imprints of William Parks. James was a type founder and avid purchaser of the equipment used to make types.¹ He was particularly fond of Dutch type and made a tremendous purchase of 3,500 matrices (the moulds used to cast type) from Johannes Rolu in 1710. This collection was not exclusively made by Rolu, some evidently falling into his hands in Amsterdam from, among others, the businesses of Daniel Elzevier and Christoffel van Dijk, two prominent typefounders of the seventeenth century.²
James' proclivity to purchase more matrices than he produced was common practise in England up until the early eighteenth century. There was not enough constant work for English typefounders to keep them in practise at the skillful production of the moulds and punches. Thomas Marshall stated that it wasn't until the early 1700s that "... we English must learn to use our own hands at last to cut Letters" Some of the other matrices in James collection were imported into England before 1660.
James died in 1772 after having been outdone on the English typefounding scene by new founders like William Caslon, who was among the first domestic founders willing to make type from scratch as opposed to the old school philosophy of maintaining punches and matrices.³
Specifics:
William Parks brought James' type with him when he came to Virginia in 1730 as the colony's first legal printer. Two of Parks' successors, William Hunter and Joseph Royle, also used James' fonts and may have purchased them from the estates of their predecessors.
