Royal Quiet De Luxe — Vogue
A 1939 Royal Quiet De Luxe carrying Vogue — Royal’s own name for the typeface, and the reason this machine gets a page. Vogue is uncommon on any machine. On a Quiet De Luxe it is more uncommon still; where you normally find it is on a Royal Model P.
It types perfectly. There is nothing wrong with it.
| Manufacturer | Royal |
|---|---|
| Model | Quiet De Luxe |
| Year | 1939 |
| Serial No. | A-873792 |
| Size | Portable |
| Drive | Manual |
| Color | Black |
| Typeface | Royal Vogue |
| Pitch | 10 |
| Layout | QWERTY |
| Status | Cleaned, serviced and detailed, fully functional |
| Acquired | 14 March 2022 |
Vogue
Vogue is a geometric Art Deco face. My reading of its provenance is that it comes from Kabel — Rudolf Koch’s 1927 geometric sans — modified by Royal for use as a typewriter face, though I haven’t chased that to a primary source.
Identifying it
Vogue is identified from the printed type, or from the type slugs themselves. The slugs also carry a foundry mark, but you don’t need it — the face is distinctive enough to call from a sheet of typing.
That matters if you’re trying to work out what you have. A machine is not labelled “Vogue” anywhere on the outside; it is a typeface option, not a model.
Round shift keys, 1939 only
The body is an otherwise standard Quiet De Luxe, with one exception worth knowing: for 1939 alone, Royal used round shift keys instead of rectangular ones. One year, then back.
It’s a small thing that makes a 1939 machine identifiable across a room, and it’s half the reason I like this one — the typeface being the other half.
Type specimen
Finding it
It came off a local Craigslist listing, minutes from where I was living in Danville at the time. The seller had posted three machines and this one was barely pictured — a friend spotted the listing and sent it to me, and I would very likely have missed it otherwise.
A widow was selling her late husband’s machines, found in his office. My impression is that they had been on display rather than in use.
She asked less than I paid. I knew what the machine was and she didn’t, and I had only hundreds on me, so I told her to keep the difference. Even then it was far below what a Vogue-equipped machine is worth — which is the part that sits oddly. Knowing more than the person selling to you is an advantage you can choose not to take all of.
Condition
Cleaned, serviced and detailed by me, and fully functional. It came with its case.
Platen and feed rollers were recovered professionally by JJ Short. The feet I reprinted in TPU myself — an ordinary consumable rubber part, easier to print than to source, and nothing to do with type.
Gallery
A note on the Vogue Slug
The type element project includes a Vogue Slug, which is not a part for this machine and not a replacement for anything on it. It’s a standalone reference piece carrying the digitised Vogue face, made because Vogue is sought after enough to be worth having as an object in its own right.
Worth stating plainly, because the shared name invites exactly the wrong conclusion.