Edward Catich (1906–79, USA), was a calligrapher and teacher and his seminal book The Origin of the Serif (1968) is a thesis on how the serif originated with Roman square capitals and the use of the flat brush, as typified on Trajan’s Column in Rome.
Representative of the Eurocentric position on typography and the teaching of typeface design.
“In the past several years we Westerners have acquired a high regard for typographic and related graphical expressions. We overlook, however, the fact that typefaces (lettering) owe their formal existence to writing, and that type is, in fact, the ‘frozen handwriting’ of the early Humanists.”
(Catich, 1968)
Catich, E. M. (1968) The Origin of the Serif. Davenport: Catfish Press