Zion’s Watch Tower magazine (1880)

This is one of the first copies of Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, known today as The Watchtower. The logo appears to be custom drawn – the repeating letters W and T in “WATCH TOWER” aren’t identical. One wood type design that’s distantly related is Page’s No. 51, cut by Wells as Mansard No. 1, and digitized as Mansard. Solotype had a phototypeface named Delwin that’s likewise vaguely similar.

While “Herald of Christ’s Presence” is in caps from a generic oldstyle roman, the light italic used for the quote from Isaiah 21:11 can be identified as Lithographic Italic (Farmer, before 1867), which provided the inspiration to Club Lithographer (DJR, 2020). The line below with information about place, date and issue is set in a Celtic. A French Antique Extended, a French Clarendon, and Tendril (MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, 1878) are combined for the publication’s title in the left column. There’s also a slab serif and a grotesque. Body copy is set in a Modern/Scotch.