New Font: Rasael
We started work on the Rasael script font early last year, but because of the complexity and fine lines of the characters it took a long time to complete, with some breaks to work on easier projects. The end result is worth the wait, with an elegant combination of calligraphic and script elements which make it rather like a more refined cousin of our Pavane and Azariel fonts, which are part of the Script Fonts Package, which Rasael will eventually be added to. Like almost all of our script fonts, Rasael takes its name from the name of a minor angel.
You can download and try the demo version of Rasael in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

Script Fonts Package

Click any font to see a larger sample. |
Of all the different types of font, the one style which seems to be in constant demand is script fonts. Over the years we’ve produced a lot of different styles of script fonts, mostly based on historic calligraphy, but we’ve usually only made them available singly or as part of calligraphic bundles. In 1999 we finally put all our script fonts together into a single package, but we kept releasing more to meet demand, and now we’ve released a new, updated version with many additional fonts. ![]() Our script fonts package has just been expanded with the inclusion of many new script fonts released in the past year. It now includes two dozen different fonts, representing many styles, from the wild, rough swashes of Queensland to the elegance of Corabael and Belphebe. Many of these fonts are from our Master Fonts collection, with an expanded character set and other features. This package is a unique opportunity to get them at a substantial discount. The whole package costs less than the Master Fonts it includes would cost singly, plus you get many additional fonts. ![]() The new Third Edition of the Script Fonts Collection is available on CD or for delivery through email for $79. You can call to purchase the package by phone at 1-800-797-8973 (01-512-276-7352), or order it from our online ordering site. Just CLICK HERE ![]() If you have the earlier release of the package you can update to the new release for only $29 and get all the new fonts on a new CD. This offer is ONLY available if you have the previous release and are in our database. You can call to upgrade by phone at 1-800-797-8973 (01-512-276-7352), or order it from our online ordering site. Just CLICK HERE ![]() To get an idea of what our script fonts are like, try out the demo version of our latest one, Orphiel. It doesn’t have all of the punctuation and variant characters, but should give you a good idea of what one of our script fonts can look like on your computer. ![]() Orphiel from a sample of Edwardian period hand lettering, mainly because we wanted to offer an alternative to our Belphebe font for invitations, menus and wedding announcements. It’s an elegant font, with nice variations in weight and capital letters which are quite ornate. Orphiel is probably the last new script font we’ll do for a while. The amount of work which goes into properly kerning a script font and making sure that the letters connect and flow properly, is just phenomenal. Orphiel demanded even more attention than most, and our collection of script fonts is now pretty much unrivalled. Click here to download the working trial version of Orphiel for either WINDOWS or MacOS. Or you can purchase this font online and get it quickly by email, including all the alternate and additional characters - BUY IT NOW |
The Art of Howard David Johnson
Some years ago I had the pleasure of working on some publishing projects with Howard David Johnson a local Austin artist who I met through a mutual friend. He was a classically trained artist who was working as a studio photographer at the time and was interested in getting back into art. I was working as an editor and art director for a couple of different publishing ventures and his style was very compatible with my tastes, so I encouraged him to start doing some illustration work and threw a few small jobs his way. It was at a time when digital art was really coming into its own and I gave him a shove in the right direction with some suggestions of ways he could combine his traditional style and techniques with digital technology and got him started experimenting and discovering things on his own.
It’s now years later and I recently stopped by his website and discovered some impressive new works and really remarkable developments in his skills and technique. He’s living proof that in advanced middle age if the will and imagination are there you really can learn new things and grow creatively. David always had a remarkable facility for copying the style of other artists and illustrators, and was particularly influenced by the great illustrators of the late 19th century and the artists of the pre-raphaelite period. For example, you can see the influence of Millais and Waterhouse in the first and last images accompanying this article. As he began to explore digital media he began combining these classical styles with his interest in photography and digital art to produce mixed media images where elements were hand drawn, scanned and then finished as digital paintings incorporating photorealistic elements and figures based on live models, a technique which proved to be very powerful when combined with the themes of fantasy and mythology which he favors.
His online gallery is a remarkable resource and provides a history of the development of his technique, because many of his works are dated on the site. When I first worked with him there was an awkwardness in how he combined these elements, and sometimes the relative perspective wasn’t quite right or the different textures of hand-drawn elements and digital elements was jarring. By the time of our last collaborations his style had become more integrated, but you could still tell where he was working freehand and where he was working from photos or live models, and in works he did quickly like his illustrations like Reiner Knizia’s game Res Publica he still sometimes lapsed into a kind of two-dimentional cut-out style which was distinctive but less aesthetically pleasing. Then, sometime in 2006, several years after our last involvement he seems to have reached a creative tipping point. Works from that period on show a seamless integration of styles and a fully developed awareness of depth and proportion and lighting. You can tell that he’s still using the same combination of traditional techniques and photorealism, but the two styles have met in the middle, creating works which are realistic but clearly original and stylistically coherent. Many of these are just magnificent, like “Queen Cinderella” (above and left) and “Valkyrie Maiden” (to right), with subtle shading and use of light and a kind of altered realism which is very effective at making the fantastical seem real.
In his latest works he seems to have come full-circle, moving through digital art and returning to traditional media, but bringing his new techniques with him. Some of his most impressive new works like “Circe the Enchantress” (to the left) and “Athene” (top right) are done entirely without digital modification, in pencil and oils on canvas respectively. That he is able to work in both digital and traditional formats and produce such similar results is a truly remarkable commentary on how completely his skills have matured and what a great command he has over his tools. I find “Athene” to be particularly impressive, with the realism of the figure softened enough to fit with the more painterly background, and a really excellent recreation of the style of the pre-raphaelites with a result which reminds me a lot of the work of Sir William Russell Flint.
When browsing David’s art, be forewarned that he does take the occasional foray into the “chicks in chainmail” genre in the tradition of Frank Frazetta and he does have a fondness for beautiful and scantily clad women. The site even includes a section of erotic pin-up art, though he seems to have removed some of the most provocative images. There are also some disturbing religious themes if that kind of thing bothers you — both from a pagan and Christian perspective. He’s been very productive in the last few years and has managed to do detailed illustrations for the major themes of Greek, Celtic and Norse Mythology plus Arthurian legends and elements of other mythologies as well, all included on his website. He also has extensive samples of his fairy and fairytale illustrations included on the site, as well as articles on his technique and some of his subject matter and even a set of short art lessons for beginners. And just to beat my own drum for a second, he uses my font designs extensively on his site, particularly Stonecross, Brandegoris and Durrow.
If it’s not sufficient to view his work on the web — and it really isn’t the ideal format for this sort of detailed artwork — he has collected many of his images into two books which are available for purchase online. One covers mythology and the other covers fairies and fairytales. Original paintings are available for sale and you can also purchase prints of many of his works. And it looks like more and more you’ll be able to see his work on book covers and other publications, because as his work has improved his marketability has also increased and it looks like after years of hard work he may be starting to get some of the attention he deserves. Bravo!
Dave
Classic Font: Tuscarora
We first released Tuscarora in the early 90s based on samples of rough hand-drawn poster lettering. It became very popular and ended up being used as the basis of the Beynkales font which was used in the movie Corpse Bride. The original Tuscarora has a more dramatic look than Beynkales and we’ve enhanced this new release with additional alternate characters and a full set of foreign language characters. But most of all, it remains a fun, wild font which is great for a lot of uses.
You can download and try the demo version of Tuscarora in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font with the new characters and features is available from our ordering site.

Decorative Intials Collection

decorative Initials font consists of characters which combine basic letter forms with artistic embellishment, often in the form of floral or geometric patterns used as a background or intertwined with the letter. Decorative Initials have their origins in medieval manuscript decoration where complex and colorful characters were used to make a manuscript page more attractive.
Most Decorative Initials fonts have their origins in the adaptation of this medieval concept to early typography, limiting them to complex two-color patterns, though in some cases these might be decorated after printing. Decorative Initials fonts are sometimes referred to as ‘Drop Caps’ because they are ‘dropped’ into a page of text.
he Scriptorium Font collection includes a wide variety of decorative initials fonts based on designs from the middle ages through the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements of the late 19th and early 20th century. Many of these initials follow traditional floral motifs, but some are quite unusual, offering unique themes like the nymphs found in Maidens or the arcadian scenes in Campobello.
Some go even farther afield, like the wild art deco style of Finestra or Romantica. And not all initials come in the traditional style you’re probably most familiar with, where a letter is superimposed on a box of foliage or other decoration.
We also offer initials which are characters drawn or decorated in unusual ways, like the anthropomorphic initials in Netherworld, Otherworld and Boneyard, or the decorated Celtic calligraphy initials of Knotwork and Columba, or the floral decorated uncial capitals of Florimel. Initials in the forms of animals or people were quite common in medieval and early modern design.
ecause of their original use and the complexity of the images, decorative initials fonts may present some unexpected challenges for the user. More than other fonts, decorative initials demand at least a 32-bit operating system to function properly, though that isn’t an issue with computers less than 5 years old these days. They also require substantial printer memory and processor power because they are composed of such complex outlines. Generally they will work fine under any version of Windows or the MacOS, but with older operating systems some decorative initials fonts may cause various problems. In addition, because most decorative initials were originally designed to meet the needs of a specific book or document, they may not always feature complete modern character sets.
In particular, many of our fonts are based on early woodcuts or hand-drawn initials, rather than actual typefaces of initials. So in a font like Burghers (17th century Dutch woodcuts) or Batten (19th century hand-drawn initials) you’ll find duplicates of many letters and you may find other letters missing. Generally the most popular letters like O, T, A and C are well represented, while less common letters may be missing. Fortunately, in most cases your need for initials will be likely to match the letters which were in high demand in the original, and there is a definite benefit to having a variety of different initials to pick from for a specific letter.
For more information on using Decorative Initials fonts, take a look at our previous article on Designing With Decorative Initials
ll of our decorative initials fonts are available in both True Type and Postscript format for Macintosh and Windows computers. They are available individually or in a special collection with all the initials for $79.00. Our single fonts and decorative initials font packages can be ordered online, by mail or by phone for delivery online or by mail for internet delivery or delivery on CD by mail.
To order the full collection online and take delivery online or shipped on CD, CLICK HERE. To order by phone call 1-800-797-8973. To browse individual decorative initials try THIS LINK.
To get an idea of what our decorative initials fonts are like, try out our special Initials font which combines characters from most of our decorative initials fonts into a single font. Just CLICK HERE to download it.

Art Encounters: So Inclined at Middlebury College
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
One of the stops on our ongoing college tour through the northeast was Middlebury College, a charming little liberal arts college on an enormous campus in northern Vermont. Middlebury has an outstanding academic reputation and is particularly known for its innovative arts programs and immersive language and international studies programs. One of the interesting decisions of the college’s board was to set aside 1% of their endowment for public art projects, with the result that the campus is graced with a variety of interesting art, including some large and very impressive sculptures.
Of these super-sculptures the one which really appealed to my imagination was So Inclined which is installed outside the entrance to the Kevin P. Mahaney Center for the Arts. It basically resembles some sort of primitive village of huts made out of maple and dogwood saplings and branches woven together into shapes resembling the hair of characters from Dr. Seuss in a way which suggests artifice and nature at the same time, as if wind or some other natural force compelled the branches to grow together and twisted them into a shape rather like an organic tee-pee. Each of the structures in the village-like cluster connects to some of the others and has a doorway and some have windows as well. You can go inside the structures and while I was there taking photos I saw a number visiting kids playing inside the structures which are perfect for hide-and-seek.
So Inclined really spoke to my imagination, conjuring up images from the more mystical works of Charles de Lint and Robert Holdstock
, or the naturalistic fairy illustrations of Brian Froud
. The sculpture is like a village where Froud’s fairies or a stickman from a de Lint or Holdstock story might live. It wasn’t really menacing, but it also brought to mind the use of the woods and thickets in The Blair Witch Project
. Not surprisingly it also keys in really well to one of my own recent font designs. So Inclined does in wood very much what I was trying to evoke in the design of my recent Tangle font which also uses the theme of twisted wood.
So Inclined was created on site in September of 2007 by Patrick Dougherty who specializes in these large, stickwork installations and is currently artist-in-residence at the McConnell Arboretum near Sacramento. Samples of his 150 installations can be seen at stickman.com and it is remarkably diverse and creative given the limitations of a medium which essentially consists of nothing more than bent sticks. Dougherty produces clever and inspiring work made doubly appealing by its interactive character and accessibility to children (and playful adults).
New Font: Foundry Ornament
It’s been a dog’s age since we featured an art font, so here we go. Foundry Ornament is a decorative art font based on cast metal type printers ornaments. The images have a heraldic theme, with gryphons and lions and other mythical creatures. They include images suitable for marginalia and page decoration as well as for use as repeating borders. The font is very compatible in style with our Monumental Gothic font and also fits well with some of our other ornament fonts like Medieval Tiles and Caswallon Ornament.
You can download and try the demo version of Agravain in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font is available from our ordering site.

A Font-Conscious Visit to Williamsburg
This week I’ve been taking my lovely 17-year old daughter Caroline on a tour of colleges in the mid-Atlantic states which she’s considering applying to this fall. One of the first which we visited was the College of William and Mary located in historic Colonial Williamsburg, which is an area where fonts from our Colonial Collection have always had a large audience. We’ve sold fonts to area businesses, to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, who have used them for various publications and presentation materials.


Among the fonts which seemed to be particularly popular and which we saw in use more than once on books and signs and pamphlets and even in restaurant menus were Allegheny, Boswell, http://www.fontcraft.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=hesperides”>Hesperides and Buccaneer. All excellent choices for a colonial design and very characteristic of the period in which Williamsburg was founded.


There’s a lot to see in Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown and the associated colonial sites, but you can have some of that history for youself with our Colonial Fonts Collection and its selection of antique fonts which hold a bit of the spirit of old Williamsburg.
Renaissance Fonts and Art Collection

![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Renaissance saw the movement of literature into vernacular languages, the beginnings of printing and mass book production and the popularization of fiction and writing of all sorts aimed at a wider, commercial audience. In accord with the humanist philosophy of the Renaissance there was a demand for more practical, accessible forms of lettering and a trend away from the artificiality of gothic and medieval styles. As with so many things, Renaissance scribes and artists found inspiration by throwing out the past millenium of history and going farther back, looking to the lettering styles of Rome for inspiration.
Rediscovered Roman lettering styles were adapted to fit the practical needs of Italian businessmen and record keepers and ultimately improved on to meet the sophisticated needs of Renaissance writers like Dante, Machiavelli and Boccacio. This produced the lettering styles which we traditionally associate with the Renaissance. They needed writing which was easy to reproduce in larger volume than ever before, but readable to a broad audience. Letter forms had to be attractive, but simpler and less exacting, requiring fewer strokes, permitting a flowing hand, and abandonning elaborate decoration and dramatic variations in weight and thickness. The lettering styles of the Renaissance had a huge influence on early type designers and established design principles and basic letter forms which live on in modern type designs.
Our Renaissance font collection includes 10 unique fonts based on designs from the Renaissance. These include three variations of humanistic cursive (Palmieri, Castiglione and Hanes), plus two more unusual examples of quirky italian cursives (Fiorenza and the new Alleghieri), a unique Roman style hand-lettered font (Rudolfo and Rudolfo Swash), a fully-developed example of Trajan-style Roman lettering, the basis for most formal Renaissance lettering (Hadrianus), plus a classic flouished cursive (Trinculo) and a set of floral intials from the Quattrocento (Fraticelli). There’s a little bit of everything from the period, from early period cursive like Palmieri to more practical late Renaissance lettering like Fiorenza.
The package also includes a selection of frames, borders, initials and emblems designed by Evelyn Paul based on Renaissance period book decorations. These include illuminations and decorations in both color and black and white, as well as a few selected full-page decorative plates. In combination with the varied selection of fonts they provide just what you need to give any document a full-fledged Renaissance look.
For a limited time the Renaissance Fonts & Art package is available for a price of only $59. It comes for either Windows or MacOS computers and includes both Postscript and TrueType fonts. You can order by phone at 1-800-797-8973 (01-512-276-7352), or to order online just CLICK HERE

To get an idea of what our Renaissance fonts are like, try out the demo version of our latest one, Alleghieri. It doesn’t have all of the punctuation and variant characters, but should give you a good feel for the font.
Alleghieri was developed from several different examples of late Renaissance lettering. While it is based on a style which is clearly intended for quick, easy writing, we’ve preserved many of the unusual character forms and elaborations to give it a lot of personality. The result is stylish and unique, with a real feel of the Renaissance, but great readability as well. The full version includes a large selection of variant character forms and special characters.
Click here to download the working trial version of Alleghieri for either WINDOWS or MacOS Or you can purchase this font online and get it quickly by email, including all the alternate and additional characters - BUY IT NOW
Classic Font: Melusine
Melusine is based on an ornate style of gothic calligraphy used primarily in decorative signs and advertising in Germany around the turn of the century. It has many of the characteristics of a true medieval gothic hand, but is a more elaborate, extreme variaton on the style. It is one of the fonts featured in our Gothic Fonts package. Melusine was first released ten years ago this month, so it was due for an update. This new release has an expanded character set and several improved and tweaked characters. It was quite popular when we first released it and it deserves a second look.
You can download and try the demo version of Evadare in TrueType format for Mac or PC. The full version of the font with the new lowercase is available from our ordering site.

In the Middle Ages the demand for written documents required new and better forms of writing, styles which were readable, consistent, efficient to produce, and sometimes decorative as well. This package features a selection of fonts and art based on designs from the Middle Ages, emphasizing the years from 1100 to 1400. The 25 fonts include versions of the major popular lettering styles of this period and the art includes beautiful borders, frames and other decorative elements based on medieval designs.
Howard Pyle’s illustrated edition of Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott is probably the single greatest expression of book design in the American arts and crafts movement of the late 19th century. This early Pyle work combines his vivid illustrative style with exceptional decoration and lettering into a modern illuminated masterpiece. Our Lady of Shalott CD package has every page from the book in high resolution format, including the decorated verses, the full-page illustrations and the embellished titles and flyleaves. It also includes extracted and instantly usable versions of the initials, illustrations background patterns, borders and frames from the book.
This collection brings together all of our best fonts based on Art Nouveau period designs into an extensive collection, with over 30 unique fonts, including text, title faces and even decorative initials. This includes new fonts created just for this package plus classics in the Art Nouveau tradition. It also features a bonus collection of frames and borders based on designs from magazines and books of the period. Altogether it makes the ultimate resource for Art Nouveau style design.
About once a year we release a special sampler package with a collection of selected fonts and art from our most recent and forthcoming packages, including some unique items not available anywhere else, all brought together as an overview of what we've been up to at the Scriptorium during the past year at a special, extremely low price. This latest sampler has four complete new fonts, 15 demo fonts and a special selection of art and graphics which includes a special set of illustrations of Celtic mythology by Katherine Cameron.
This collection presents calligraphy and art based on the traditions of historic Germanic cultures. It draws on the broad scope of early Germanic design, from the pre-Christian era through the early middle ages, including not just Scandinavia, but other elements of Germanic culture from the Franks to the Saxons to the Normans and beyond. The main component is a collection of historic fonts which is complemented by a unique set of historic borders and motifs, plus art based on Viking myth and legend.
A collection of our best fonts based on gothic type and late medieval calligraphy. It covers the range from the historical styles in which gothic printing had its inspiration to the ornate heights of complex gothic fonts from 19th century Germany. This includes fonts in the style sometimes called 'Old English', as well as what calligraphers sometimes call 'Black Letter'. If you like your fonts dark, angular and complex, this is your dream collection. 













































