Deadly Quill Skills
Young John’s first job was as a servant to a clergyman. His master soon noticed that Baskerville was good with the quill and had him teach poor boys in the parish to write. I do wonder if some unrecorded experience in the house of this priest had something to do with Baskerville’s later strident Anti-clericalism. Always looking for an opportunity to advance he applied for the job as writing master at King Edward’s School in the town, got the job and taught writing and bookkeeping. He later turned his hand to calligraphy and became interested in transferring his penmanship to stone. It was this deep understanding of text that heavily influenced his later designs of type.
As always he was looking for a way to progress and make a few quid. I get the impression that if was around today he would have pleased Alan Sugar and got the job in the Apprentice. In 1736 John was thirty, the clock was ticking, life was speeding by: time for a bit of risk taking. In this year a man called John Taylor came to Birmingham and started a business making Japanned wares and soon created an enormously successful business.
Fancy stuff
Baskerville saw an opening and realised there was a huge market for Japanned products; the only problem he had was he didn’t know how to make the secret lacquer that was the key to making them. Baskerville needed Taylor’s secret varnish recipe if he was to start his own Japanning business so he realised that a little bit of industrial espionage was in order. He decided to follow Taylor as he went to his suppliers
“He went and ordering precisely the same species, kind and quality of articles that he had ordered he thus learned not only the ingredients of the varnish but their proportions”
So he combined the recipe with his own artistic talent and his business was a great success. He was obsessive about improving the design and how his products were made, as well as having the knack of employing good staff. By 1749 his business was booming and making candlesticks, stands, salvers, waiters, bread trays and other household goods.
John Baskerville 