The Typeface Families, part i

The Morisons lived as if in times that were Roman – yet new. Stanley Morison embraced a Mediterranean fusion diet. His signature dish: a straight-up egg linguine drenched in olive oil from a bottle with girls in togas, and that would’ve been fine. But then he’d spray on this Thai fish sauce, an update, he said, of an ancient fermented fish recipe. Actually it wasn’t bad. But no one visited the Morisons a second time, not just because of Stanley’s rotting fish gut disquisition, but also because of the spray of serifs he’d leave hanging in the air as he talked.