R. Watts
Richard Watts (died 24 March 1844) was an early nineteenth-century English printer, located in Crown Court, Temple Bar, London. His work is identified under the signature R. Watts was the printer for the University of Cambridge from 1802 until 1809, (a switch to stenotype was made by the school in 1804). He left Cambridge in 1809 and set up a printing workshop in Broxbourne, subsequently setting up the Oriental Type-Foundry on Temple Bar, London, in 1816.
R. Watts
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- engraver
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Richard Watts (died 24 March 1844) was an early nineteenth-century English printer, located in Crown Court, Temple Bar, London. His work is identified under the signature R. Watts was the printer for the University of Cambridge from 1802 until 1809, (a switch to stenotype was made by the school in 1804). He left Cambridge in 1809 and set up a printing workshop in Broxbourne, subsequently setting up the Oriental Type-Foundry on Temple Bar, London, in 1816.
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Apprentices to Richard Watts
Watts developed a reputation as "a cutter and founder of Oriental and foreign characters, of which he accumulated a considerable collection". His Oriental Type-Foundry was also the oriental printer for the Church Missionary Society, the Bible Society, the Prayer Book Society, and the Homily Society. Watts's son, William Mavor Watts (1797/98-1874), took over the printing business in Crown Court, Temple Bar.
• Richard Clay I (1789-1877), was apprenticed to Richard Watts in 1803. His son, Charles John Clay, was printer to the University of Cambridge between 1854–1882. • Mirza Salih was apprenticed to Watts in 1819. • Sullivan (Sulman) Law Hyder, was apprenticed to Watts for five years in the 1820s before going to work as a printer in Calcutta in 1931. • William Colenso was apprenticed to Watts in 1833.
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These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.T. Gillet. Reply of R. Watts to the Report of Dr. Milner and Mr. Wood relative to the University Press affairs. 1809.
- 2.R. Harraden & Son. History of the University of Cambridge. Illustrated by a series of engravings . from drawings by R. B. Harraden, Jun. 245. 1814.
- 3.Talbot Baines Reed, A History of the Old English Letter Foundries, 1887 (reprint Outlook Verlag, 2018.
- 4.Georg Lehner, Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa - entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), p. 214.
- 5.Michael Black, Cambridge University Press 1584-1984 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 152.
- 6.Nile Green, "Terrains of Exchange: Religious economies of global Islam" (Oxford University Press, 2014), Chapter 2: The Christian Origins of Muslim Printing.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 1
- Nile Green, Terrains of Exchange: Religious economies of global Islam (Oxford University Press, 2014), especially Chapter 2: The Christian Origins of Muslim Printing.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
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