Art Deco Font Collection
Our new Art Deco font collection includes a remarkable selectiion of fonts from the design movements of the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on the kinds of fonts which were generally associated with the decorative arts movement which developed out of the Arts and Crafts movement. More...Wild West Fonts
Our Wild West font collection features 14 fonts based on designs from the classic days of the American West (1870-1890). They are typical of the type and lettering styles used in signs, circulars, posters and newspapers during that era. The selection includes both decorative, display and text fonts. All the fonts are historically accurate and they are not available from any other source. While they are basically fonts of the Victorian era, they represent a subset of the typefaces popular in that period particularly slanted to the environmnet of the wild west, frontier newspapers and wild west shows.More...Pre-Raphaelite Collection
The art of the Pre-Raphaelites recreated classical and legendary themes, fascination with architectural elements and realistic drapery, and the use of models who fit a particular style and appearance, usually with thick, curly hair and voluptuous figures. Our Pre-Raphaelite collection features select images from the most prominent artists of the movement in high-resolution suitable for use in print.More...The Baby’s Opera Collection
Or latest collection based on one of Walter Crane's childrens book is our comprehensive presentation of The Baby’s Opera, Crane's compilation of childrens songs (including music and lyrics) with detailed illustrations, hand lettering and clever decorations on every page. Many of the designs and motifs can easily be extracted for use in your own designs. More...Text Fonts Collection
You've got to have text fonts, so wny not make them interesting and unique rather than the same old boring set that come with every computer. Our Text Fonts Collection has more variety and more style than you'll find anywhere else. More...Howard Pyle Fonts and Art
Howard Pyle was one of the most renowned illustrators of the 19th century. His work was widely published in adventure novels, magazines and romances. He was the founder of the Brandywine school and artists colony in Chadd's Ford Pennsylvania, where he taught artists like N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover and Thornton Oakley their craft. Our Pyle collection includes a large selection of Pyle's art and designs plus original fonts based on his hand lettering. More...Medieval Fonts and Art
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. DETAILSThe Lady of Shalott
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. DETAILSArt Nouveau Collection
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. DETAILS2009 Sampler
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. DETAILSViking Fonts and Art
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. DETAILS.Gothic Fonts
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. DETAILS
A Little Guide to Bookbinding
In our ongoing acquisition of antique graphic arts resources we’ve recently been looking for books by Pedro J. Lemos who was the Director of the Stanford University Fine Arts Museum. Lemos wrote extensively on graphic arts, lettering and design in the early 20th century. Lemos’ work draws on the Arts and Crafts and Art Deco movements of the period and includes books on various artistic movements and themes, book on art instruction for children and adults and sourcebooks on various aspects of design and hand crafts. We’ve made some use of his guide to historic calligraphy which is simply titled Lettering and are also drawing on some of the design ideas in his Applied Art teaching guide, which includes a full, illustrated course of instruction for children and their parents.
Applied Art includes lots of useful information and detailed guides for a variety of art and craft projects designed for students of different ages. The instructions are often quite detailed and include technical information which you wouldn’t normally expect to find outside of a formal classroom. It’s given us some good ideas for fonts and for decorative motifs, but it can also be more directly useful. Some of its sections make good monographs on different kinds of design projects. For example, there are several projects included in simple home book design and book binding. The instructions are easy to follow and detail several different methods of creating your own books. We’ve taken these illustrated lesson guides in bookbinding and put them together as an easily accessible PDF for anyone who wants to try a little home book binding. The techniques are timeless and the results can be quite impressive. If there is interest we’ll put together some more of these little guides on other subjects. The one on paper lanterns is particularly charming.
To download the PDF click on the image to the right.
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New Font: BigBlok
A great many years ago when working in game publishing I had a real fascination with doing titles in a strong, super-bold font called Bolt Bold. The truth is I rather overused it. In doing some research I find it on more than a dozen different game books I wrote in the early 80s, all quite collectable and out of print today.
Latest Fonts
Waldeck Font
Waldeck is a gothic font based on 17th century German calligraphy. It has elaborate, decorative uppercase characters and stylish but fairly simple lowercase characters, plus some unique features, including custom decorative descending flourishes for several of the characters. It's a nice change from some of our recent releases. Ultimately it will probably end up in a future expansion for our popular Gothic Fonts collection. Download and try out the free demo version of Waldeck (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.
Stampwork Font
We've done a lot of fonts lately based on antique type and lettering, so here's something brand new, a font designed to look like the output of a rubber stamp. It's in the tradition of our Draughtwork and Roughwork fonts, with a sort of technical look. Stampwork has two versions of the uppercase character set. One set features over and underline artifacts like those produced by the edge of a rubber stamp which is pressed down too hard. The other set is plain. There are also alternative line artifact characters to add variation. Download and try out the free demo version of Stampwork (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.
Woburn Initials Font
It's been quite a while since we did an initials font, so here is Woburn, a lovely set of floriate initials based on an early woodblock design which uses late gothic characters and adds nice, clean floral embellishments. As a bonus we've added a full lowercase character set in a compatible style. It also works well in combination with our classic Cymbeline font. Woburn will be added to the next release of our Decorative Initials collection. Download and try out the free demo version of Malvern (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.
Malvern Font
Malvern is a new Celtic-style font with upper case letters which are an attractive variant on insular minuscule lettering but with a unique lowercase character set which is stylistically compatible but not really part of the Celtic tradition. It fits well with the style of the fonts from our Celtic Fantasy collection, which it will probably eventually be added to. The uppercase characters are somewhat similar to our classic Durrow font, but with some additional flourishes. Download and try out the free demo version of Malvern (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.
Orford Font
Orford is based on samples of hand lettering from a 1693 manuscript collected by Lewis Day in his classic book on historical paleography, Alphabets Old and New. It is stylistically similar to our Allegheny font, but cleaner and clearer. It has characteristic clubbed ascenders on many of the lowercase letters, and alternate versions of a large selection of characters. It's an excellent example of colonial period calligraphy and works quite well as a font. It will eventually be incorporated in an updated release of our Colonial Fonts package. Download and try out the free demo version of Orford (will work on Mac or PC). If you like it you can buy the complete character set with all the extra features from our Ordering Site.Tangle Font
Tangle is a fun font drawn by hand to have the look of twining vines, reminiscent of a grape arbor in the winter. The inspiration is from my front gate which is twined with an endless tangle of mustang grape vines. It was designed on a whim, but turned out pretty well. It has a full upper and lower case character set, plus numbers and punctuation and special characters. Maybe some clever vintner will notice it and put it to use on a wine label. You can try out the free demo version of Tangle for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the upper case characters. The full version of Tangle is available on our Ordering Site.
Valentin Font
Valentin is an Art Nouveau font with an eccentric, stylized look. It has the same fixed-weight characteristics as Ganelon and Gaheris, but the character forms are dramatically different. It's clean and clear and very readable, very much the kind of lettering you'd have seen on 1920s vaudeville playbills. The graphic with the letter sample to the right isn't part of the font, but seemed to fit stylistically. It's a bit of decorative marginalia from a book illustrated by Clara Peck which is just full of Arthurian theme illustrations and decorative motifs which are going to be included in our forthcoming Arthurian Fonts and Art package. You can try out the free demo version of Valentin for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the characters of the standard set. The full combined version of Valentin is available on our Ordering Site.Posada Font
José Guadalupe Posada was a Mexican printer, engraver, cartoonist and illustrator of the late 19th and early 20th century who was enormously influential on the development of Mexican Folk art styles which continue today. Posada is best known for his Calavera cartoons and illustrations which satirized his fellow Mexicans as skeletons in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos. Many of Posada's cartoons were published as single-sheet handbills and included original hand-lettered captions and titles in a style reminiscent of period newspaper headlines. We've previously collected many of Posada's Calavera lithographs in our Macabre Fonts and Art Collection and now we're releasing our first font based on Posada's lettering, somewhat unimaginatively tagged with his name. It's a rough and bold all-caps character set with alternative caps on the lower case keys, with an offset positioning which Posada used in a number of his cartoons, as demonstrated in the sample to the right. You can try out the free demo version of Posada for either MacOS or Windows. It features just the characters of the standard set. The full combined version of Posada is available on our Ordering Site.
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a treasure. thank you.
best wishes –
Jim
How fun! Thanks for sharing, Dave.
Neal
Excellent little book! Thank you so much – perfect for art journals, etc.!
[...] e-book on early bookbinding techniques A Little Guide to Bookbinding | Fontcraft: Scriptorium Fonts, Art and Design click on the book cover. Might be good for a project. __________________ Come and comment on my [...]
Glad you folks liked it. We’ll do some more of these little project guides in the future. I’ve built up quite a store of this sort of material from old childrens magazines and art books so it might as well be put to use.
Dave
Can’t wait to share this with a teacher friend to try with her advanced 5th graders, they’ll love it! Thank-you!
Dave -
You and I share an interest in older graphics publications. I enjoyed reading this. I’ll have to find some suitable material to make into a book and the mythical “Spare time” to do it. Too many irons in too many fires, you know…..
Thanks for taking the time to make a PDF and making it available! It pains me to think how many antique graphics-related ephemera is out there languishing in some attic, or worse yet, has already been tossed out.
this is wonderful, dave. thanks.
This is lovely stuff. One of the fascinating aspects of this sort of instruction is how carefully thought out and beautifully crafted are the directions themselves: the booklet is, itself, a work of art, on which a great deal of care was lavished. Please do continue making these available! ~ John Thorne
I’m putting another together already, with several different folded paper projects including some very cool ideas for paper lanterns, taken from the same source as this one.
Dave
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