Letterpress Specimen French Audebaud

During the cold winter months I promised Matt Desmond of MADtype a Letterpress type specimen of my 12 line French Egyptian in return for the digitised version he designed, well I finally got round to it and discovered in the printing that someone had attempted to clean up the type so much (probably sanding) that I got this results...

So after lots of make-ready I finally achieved a half decent print, though I'm probably going to have to give the wood type a coat of shellac to seal it as it was soaking up the ink! For those who want to know what make ready is you add small amounts of tissue, in layers, to the back of sort (letters) a their weakest point, you can also try replacing individual letters. Their is a more in depth article on the Happy Dragon Press Website who also sell Make Ready tissue, I actually used ripped newsprint for mine as it was so bad. Here's Matt's print in black as requested

Here's Matt digitised version, pitty I don't have a lowercase! He's done a great job don't you think? I particularly like the lowercase "j" and "y" and the teardrop counter in the capital "A" makes me go weak at the knees :)

There's a makers mark on the wood type which is hard to see never mind photograph, which reads AUDEBAUD BRESSUIRE (2 SEVRES)

Matt did some sleuthing and found out that the person who created it was named Constant Audebaud. He worked as a wood type engraver in the 1880s in the Bressuire subprefecture of the département of Deux-Sèvres in France hence the name Audebaud, only fitting he named his type this don't you think?

Audebaud is available here