Holiday Fonts and Art

hatever holiday you celebrate, it’s probably a time of cards and presents and decorations and parties — that means you’re going to need great fonts and art to add elegance and unique flare to your seasonal projects. The Scriptorium Holiday Fonts and Art  collection has the resources you need, including free samples and shareware demos, as well as a selection of holiday fonts and unique seasonal art which it took us years to collect.

e’ve recently combined our Holiday package into a single package and added a number of new fonts and images, all for a lower price than we were charging for our older packages. You get lots of holiday fonts and art to fit every taste, at a very reasonable price. In addition, we’ve got several shareware fonts for you to try out for a free evaluation, plus some great sample art. To try them out, see the bottom of this page.

he newest fonts added to our Holiday Fonts and Art collection include the Scurlock and Asrafel fonts plus the new Holiday Borders dingbat font which is featured as a free demo at the bottom of this page and also the extraordinary Rudolfo font package including Rudolfo Swash.

e’ve also added some new graphic material including some specialized borders, some color decorative initials (featured on this page) and a selection of new art, including pieces by several pre-raphaelite and renaissance period artists. These new images are pretty extraordinary.

Other images in the collection include all of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Dickens’ Christmas Carol and Howard Pyle’s illustrations from his story Travels of the Soul, plus art by Rackham, Rossetti, Nielsen, Dulac, Mucha, Wyeth and others. Only a small portion of the images are sampled on this page. Several bonus borders by Pyle are also included. Other recent additions to the collection include some seasonal Pre-Raphaelite images by Millais, Leyton and Hunt.


The new release of the collection now includes a total of 21 fonts, plus scores of great images and useful graphics. Fonts include everything from art fonts to decorative initials to elaborate text and titling styles.<


Like all of our font and art CDs, this package can be ordered online from our ORDERING site, or you can order by phone from 1-800-797-8973 (01-512-656-8011).


You’ll find a lot of these images and fonts in use on this site. This should give you some idea what you can do with them. In addition, to give you an even better idea of the unique quality of our fonts and graphics, we’ve got several demo items you can try out, including a demo version of our recently released Holiday Borders font, which is available exclusively on this CD. Just click on the appropriate button below each font sample to download a shareware demo version to try out.

Click on the image above to download Holiday Borders for Windows and Mac OSX.

For those of you doing your own Christmas design work, here’s a special pallette which you can open in Photoshop or other art programs and access with the sampling tool. It includes a variety of special colors which we think are particularly seasonal.

And finally, here’s a great Christmas themed page border with holly and candles and other good things. This graphic was found in an old issue of St. Nicholas children’s magazine from the early part of this century. Just click on the sample image to the right below to download the large size image.

As a special feature we’ve put together some ideas on how to design your own holiday cards. Just CLICK HERE for all the details.

You can order the complete package for download or delivery on CD for just $79 from our ONLINE STORE.

CELTIC CHRISTMAS?

One of the popular trends we’ve seen rcently s an interest in Celtic art and ornament as a theme for Christmas cards and decoration. We’ve got a special page devoted to Celtic fonts and art, which has some excellent resources if you want to give your holidays a Celtic look. Click here to visit our Celtic page: CELTIC FONTS & ART.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

December 7, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Collections, Font Collections, Holiday | 1 Comment 

Illuminated Initials from Early Manuscripts

In the mid-19th century Owen Jones undertook to catalog historic design and decoration in phenomenal detail and with exacting thoroughness in a series of beautifully illustrated books. The most famous of these is his Grammar of Ornament, which provides an overview of design and ornament from ancient times to the Renaissance. His next most notable work on historic design is his collection of Illuminated Initials from Early Manuscripts, a magnificent work on historic calligraphy and illumination which we are now making available in digital form, prepared with the same kind of care and attention to detail as our digital edition of the Grammar of Ornament.

The collection consists of all the original illustrations in the Jones book, including hundreds of initials and decorative calligraphic letters. It includes a large selection of ornate initials from different historic periods, plus several complete historic calligraphic alphabets and a selection of decorative borders and embellishments. The designs are extraordinarily detailed with brilliant colors and include examples of illumination from the early medieval period through the gothic period of the high middle ages, including outstanding Celtic, Gothic and Frankish styles.

You can see some samples of individual initials of several different styles here, or click on the sample page to the right to download a PDF with reduced-size versions of all the pages from the original book. The PDF can give you a good idea of the content of the collection, but not the quality of the images in the full package, which are in high resolution and large size with vivid colors and painstaking digital clean-up and color adjustment. These are great examples of the highly detailed, full-color initials which look great, but just can’t normally be turned into fonts. With a few exceptions, as the package also includes a bonus – two original fonts based on alphabets from the collection, Alcuin and Leodegar.

The complete Illuminated Initials from Early Manuscripts collection is available for purchase online and can be downloaded or delivered on CD for just $69 from our ONLINE STORE.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

November 23, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Collections, Font Collections, Initials Fonts, Owen Jones | Leave a Comment 

MapMaker Collection


Making functional and attractive maps is a very specialized skill, prized by game designers, roleplayers and artists. To make exceptional maps, you need to have the right tools. Our MapMaker font and art package provide the fonts, textures and emblems which make drawing floorplans and developing stylish world and regional maps a breeze. Our map resources are based on the designs of classic cartographers like Abraham Ortelius and Johan Hondius give your maps a unique antique look which will inspire the imagination.

The core of the collection is the extraordinary collection of more than fifteen original fonts specially created for cartographic design. They include fonts for mapping terrain, fonts of complete building plans, fonts for designing buildings and a selection of cartographic lettering fonts.

Basilica is a font of architectural elements fordesigning floorplans of churches, castles, houses and other buildings. It includes a variety of wall thicknesses, windows, doors, stairs and other essential pieces which you can easily assemble in any graphics or desktop publishing program to create impressive, easy to understand layouts for anything from a hut to a palace to a house by house map of a city.

The characters in Ortelius can be combined to make traditional geographical maps in an antique style. They include segments of coastline and rivers which can be combined in thousands of different patterns, plus city, town and fortification emblems, terrain symbols, compass symbols and everything else you need for a high-quality map of your world or key parts of it.

Our Landscape fonts are a pair of fonts containing landscape symbols, images and textures ideal for adding details to your maps and plans, such as trees, rocks, terrain features and other important elements of the environment. It’s excellent for architectural plans and building layouts.


Cityscape is mainly a decorative font, but it can add flair to your maps and plans. Each character is the silhouette of a building and they can be combined to create a complete panorama of a city. Samarkand is a decorative building silhouette font like Cityscape, but with a middle eastern theme. It includes mosques and towers and all the elements of a medieval islamic city.

Our three floorplan fonts include Temples, Castles and Houses. Each font includes a large selection of complete building floorplans which you can access with a few key clicks. Plans include original designs and notable historic buildings, mostly medieval and renaissance designs. The floorplans of temples, churches and cathedrals are particularly impressive.

The package also includes a selection of fonts for doing the titles and labels on your maps, plus several select highly decorative cartographic calligraphy fonts. The six main title fonts were selected for readability and for their historical accuracy for the era of exploration.

Brandywine is based on the lettering of Howard Pyle and is very clear and readable in small sizes, despite having a hand-drawn look. Queensland is a bold, hand-drawn italic font ideal for titles and captions. Windlass is a bold titling font with an antique look ideal for headings and large captions. In some of the alternate character locations it includes decorative map elements with a pirate theme. Buccaneer is based on hand lettering by Howard Pyle for his Book of Pirates. Walsingham is very similar to the lettering style favored by 16th century English mapmakers. Pavane is similar to the style of continental mapmakers like Abraham Ortelius. All six fonts are versatile and are similar to typefaces and lettering styles used on historical maps of the 15th and 16th centuries. Also featured in the package are the new fonts Platthand, John Speed and Hexmap.



The LITE version of the package includes just the fonts for only $59. The PLUS version includes all the fonts, plus a large selection of color design elements and over a hundred antique maps for only $89. The current release is the new 5th edition of the package. Just ORDER ONLINE. You can also order it in a discounted combo package with the Colonial Fonts for just $129 and save $20.

To get an idea of what our MapMaker fonts are like, try out the demo version of our Floorplan fonts. It combines selected floorplans from all three of our Floorplan fonts. You might also want to check out a set of sample maps or try our map design tutorial.

Rating 4.50 out of 5

November 12, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Collections, Design, Font Collections, MapMaker Fonts | Leave a Comment 

William Morris Font and Art Collection


William Morris was one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts Movement and closely involved with the Pre-Raphaelite artists of the mid-19th century. His ideal of integrating art, literature and graphic design inspired a generation of artists like Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Millais and Waterhouse. Morris was an artist, poet, writer and designer himself. He is probably best remembered for his fabric designs and his book designs for Kelmscott Press, especially their edition of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer known as the Kelmscott Chaucer, for which Morris designed all the fonts, borders and decorations and commissioned illustrations by pre-raphaelite master Edward Burne-Jones. He pioneered modern renderings of antique styles of type as well as the production of high-quality home furnishings, including the famous reclining Morris Chair. Morris left behind an enduring legacy of quality and creativity which will continue to inspire artists for years to come.

Our Morris collection includes an excellent selection of Morris’ fabric designs and patterns, plus a collection of original fonts based on his type designs for books published by the Kelmscott Press. We have recently augmented the collection with new fonts, new patterns and the addition of a large selection of decorative borders, emblems and initials.

Morris floral and leaf fabric patterns are excellent for use in web page design. They can be made into contiguous tiles for use as backgrounds on web pages. They also make excellent backdrops for decorative pages in print and great endpapers for books with a classic look. Each of the patterns in our Morris collection is a high-resolution image and suitable for use online or in print. Above you can see the original patterns from the collection. The new patterns added in the latest update are shown to the left.

The fonts featured in this collection are shown to the right. The first three are the original set, and the two in lighter green are our most recent additions. Morris Initials is based on initials done for the Kelmscott Chaucer. The second font is Kelmscott, based on Morris’ Troy type which was used to set many of his books. The third is True Golden, based on Morris’ Golden type which was also widely used in books from the Kelmscott Press. The first of the new fonts is Morris Black Letter, based on hand lettering Morris did as a prototype for what eventually developed into the Troy style. The second is Chaucerian Initials, based on the illuminated capitals in the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer’s works. The relationship between the text faces and the initials is clear to see, and they work very well in combination.

To the left you can see some samples of the newly added borders, frames and emblems from Morris’ edition of Chaucer. These include a wide variety of large and small floral borders as well as unusual initials which include complete words embedded in the decorations of the initial.

Like many of our collections, the Morris collection has now grown to the point where it is only available on CD. The complete collection is only $59. Our Morris collection is also available in a retail package ideal for sale in museums and bookstores. Send email for information on wholesale terms and availability. You can order the Morris collection for delivery online or by mail from our online store.

If you want to try out one of our Morris fonts, give Chaucerian Initials a try. The demo version is slightly different from the final version which is in the Morris package. You can download the True Type version which will work with Windows or MacOS right here.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

August 3, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Font Collections, Historic | 1 Comment 

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

Rating 3.00 out of 5

May 13, 2011 | Filed Under Font Collections, Fonts | 2 Comments 

Display Fonts Collection

Starting in the 19th century with the explosion of popular entertainment and popular-oriented art forms, one of new form of art was the design of posters and advertisements intended to catch the imagination and generate special interest in the audience. From the advertising found in magazines and decorative fronticepieces in books to the poster art movement in France, a consciousness emerged that type and lettering could be decorative and artistic and eyecatching in a way which had previously never really been considered.

The concept of display and ornamental type started with newspaper and poster designers taking regular text styles and using them in enormous sizes, or developing italic or slightly embellished styles for emphasis within text. From these beginnings designers began to experiment with what they could do to make titles stand out even more, starting with extra bold or exaggeratedly weighted styles and increasingly more decorative and ornamental styles. Many of these early titling faces took on characteristics of traditional calligraphy, because it was the only decorative lettering which many designers were familiar with, or looked like text faces expanded and transformed.

By the middle of the 19th century type designers were experimenting with all sorts of onramental type, particularly for use in advertising and in specialized books aimed at an increasingly intellectual middle class market. Much of this type partook of the characteristics of calligraphy, but it was increasingly complex and decorative beyond the scope of simple pen-strokes.

One of the innovators in this period was William Morris, who launched the Arts and Crafts movement, which included among its interests the development of new and visually striking styles of lettering and typography, such as Morris’ own Troy type and the unique lettering of artists like Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Walter Crane.

In the last two decades of the 19th century Art Nouveau spread across Europe, emerging from the Arts and Crafts movement, but attracting a much larger popular audience. Decorative type and lettering was a major element of the Art Nouveau movement, which had strong ties to the performing arts and other visual arts which required publicity in the form of advertisements and posters.

The Art Nouveau movement spurred a renaissance in font design, but much of the art of the period was expressed in unique designs which were never made into typefaces at that time. Hand-lettered posters and advertising titles by artists like Alphons Mucha were in great demand, and the Poster Art movement grew out of Art Nouveau and the poster became the major new medium for popular art by the end of the 19th century.

The hand-lettering of Mucha influenced many other artists and designers and when Mucha returned to his native Czechoslovakia he spurred a renaissance of art and design in eastern Europe, which eventually developed into the cubist and futurist movements in art which had a great influence on designers around the world in the period
between the two world wars.

Today there is still a great demand for new and unusual display fonts. They are essential to advertising in every media, because they draw attention and give a product a signature look which sets it apart from the competition. Advances in desktop publishing have also made it possible to introduce a greater variety of fonts for titling in publications, both in print and online. As a result display fonts are available in great diversity, offering every kind of look for every kind of use.

Because the basic function of display fonts is to do titles and label things, they may not have the same character set as traditional text fonts. Display fonts often only have either upper or lower case characters, and usually don’t have extended punctuation beyond what’s normally called for in titles. They are also often designed to be bolder or more ornate than text fonts, often to an exaggerated degree, and as a result they may only really be readable at large sizes and are often poorly suited to text use. Virtually anything can be a display font, from the weirdest degenerated style to the most intricate and complex artistic fantasy.

The Scriptorium’s collection of display fonts offers exceptional variety. We have fonts based on Art Nouveau designs, early Victorian styles, hand poster lettering by artists like Alphons Mucha and unique original fonts you won’t find anywhere else. We offer over 80 display faces, all of which are available in TrueType or Postscript format for Macintosh and PC-compatible computers. They are available singly for between $18 and $24 each, or as part of discounted packages. We also offer a complete collection of all of the Display Fonts for only $129. It includes all of our display fonts, including the very latest releases.

Our single fonts and font samplers can be ordered online, by mail or by phone for delivery online or by mail. The special display fonts CD can also be ordered online or by any other means and is deliverable by mail on CD or by convenient download.

To see a large selection of individual display fonts which can be ordered online and downloaded CLICK HERE

To order the complete Display Fonts collection CLICK HERE

To order by phone call 1-800-797-8973.

 Fonts in this collection. Click on name to see sample.

Abaddon
Academy
Acadian
adamantine
adresack
alcalde
angelus iii
apollyon
ariosto
asphodel
asrafel
atkinson eccentric
averoigne
bad acid
balsamo
baphomet
basileus
bassackwards
bastion
beaumarchais
beauvoir
bedegraine
bentham
bernhardt
big iron
bilibin
black cow
brandegoris
bruges
bucephalus
butterfield
buzzhead
caesario
chambord
chelsea studio
cibola
cipango
circuit
coloma
corpus
culdrose
curetana
del norte
dementia
dementia swash
descant
desctructura
dromon
dunsany
earthpig
eglantine
elphinstone
elysian
engravers gothic
engrossing
ereshkigal
flaubert
fortinbras
fortress
ganelon lowercase
ganelon
gargantua
gehenna
goddard
goodfellow
harbinger
helzapoppin
hermia
hideous
hubbard
hyacinth
illuminata
ironclaw
irzuley
jambon
joyeuse
louisbourg
lysander
maginot
manegrim
manquo
marmyadose
mayhem
mazarin
mephisto
midian
mondial
moravia
munich
necromantic
niederwald
norumbega
oberon
odeon
orlock
paleos
pantagruel
parika
perdido
phaeton
plakat
plowright
praitor
primer
pullman
purcell
quicksilver
reggio
reynard
riudoso
rochambeau
rossetti
rousseau
samaritan
samedi
sanguinary
sanhedrin
schoolhand
semiramis
setebos
slava
slither
sprite
squiffy
starfield
stonehouse
structura
taranis
tenebris
titania
tuscarora
vafthrudnir
valdemar
vasilisa
vrubel
walhall
waziri
windlass
yazata

To get an idea of what our display fonts are like, try out the demo version of our Dromon font. It should give you a good idea of what our display fonts can look like on your computer.

Download Deomon for Windows or for Macintosh.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

March 6, 2011 | Filed Under Collections, Font Collections | Leave a Comment 

Letterpress Font Collection


Click any font to see more.

Letterpress printing is one of the oldest and simplest forms of printing, using letters carved into wooden blocks or cut from a rubbery material and attached to the blocks and then printed as a whole page composed of multiple elements. Today it is used primarily for poster printing by presses like Hatch Show Prints which have preserved the old type and presses and continue to print the way they did a hundred or more years ago.

Stylistically, letterpress printing is characterized by the use of large, block type, simple printer’s ornaments and sometimes limited attention to making all of the characters match in exactly the same style. Substitution of letters from a vaguely similar font into a line of type by accident or intent is quite common. Because of the primitive printing methods and the age and wear on the type flaws like nicks and faded areas are also quite common, plus there are rarely sharp corners or small serifs as they tended to degrade or tear off. It’s also common to see Letterpress posters where the type has been set with virtually no white space, with the entire printing space filled with type or with solid blank spaces. Because the technology is old, a lot of the font styles are also antique looking, reminiscent of those found in our Wild West font collection.

Our new collection of letterpress fonts is based on type commonly used in letterpress printing, derived from old posters and in some cases directly from letterpress type blocks. It includes a variety of weights and styles and many of the fonts are brand new releases developed specifically for the package. In addition to several of the typical bold sans serif fonts like Caelian and Letterpress Gothic, it includes a couple of “circus” style fonts with Boomtown and Big Show, a couple of heavy weight serif fonts with Plymouth and Bastion, a couple of lighter weight fonts with Stampwork and Atkinson Egyptian and finally two more ornate fonts from the German tradition popular in the midwest at the turn of the last century with Plakat and Wolfram. It’s a nice variety of fonts and everything you need to make good letterpress-style designs like those we’ve features in our recent articles on Hatch Show Prints

All of our letterpress fonts are available individually – just click on the image shown here – or you can get the complete package with all the fonts for an introductory price of only $49. The package is available for Windows or Macintosh, including both TrueType and Postscript fonts. The special introductory price is only going to last only through the end of November. You can order our Letterpress Fonts collection online and dowload it immediately. Just CLICK HERE TO ORDER



Rating 3.00 out of 5

November 16, 2010 | Filed Under Collections, Font Collections, Letterpress Fonts, Vintage Type | Leave a Comment 

Oriental Fonts Collection

Over the years we’ve designed fonts on just about every theme, and one which we’ve come back to now and again is fonts which capture the spirit of the Far East. The orient offers rich source materials with cultures where calligraphy was valued as an art, not just a means of communication. . We’ve developed enough of these fonts now that they’re worth putting together into a special collection.

The new Oriental Fonts Collection inlcudes five original fonts. While they don’t have true oriental language characters in them, they are designed to give the look of the Far East to text written in the Latin alphabet for western readers. Cipango and Asphodel are based on advertising and packaging lettering from the early 20th century of the sort you would find on products imported from the east. Suchow is a very traditional font which creates western characters from brush strokes similar to those in Chinese calligraphy. Yoshitoshi has the look of Japanese brush strokes derived from the work of legendary illustrator Yoshi Toshi. Katisha is a fanciful, almost gothic interpretation of oriental lettering with ornate and decorative characters.

The package includes all 5 fonts together at a much lower price than if you were to buy them separately. You can get the whole set for $39 and save more than $40. Even better, you can order online and take delivery by immediate download in our ONLINE STORE..

Rating 3.00 out of 5

October 14, 2010 | Filed Under Collections, Font Collections, Fonts, Uncategorized | 2 Comments 

Calligraphy Fonts Collection

When scribes first put pen to page they began the long struggle to control the written form of language and balance the demands of form and function. From humble beginnings adapting inscriptive lettering to other media, the stylistic and functional demands on written language have grown and changed and over the centuries writing has become an art form as well as a vital tool.

Early writing was often carved in stone or wood, which imposed a certain angularity of style. In the Roman period, as more and more written records were kept on vellum and papyrus, the scribes faced different restrictions and the shapes and characters of the letters began to change, becoming more
rounded and often more decorative. By the 6th or 7th century a wide diversity of distinct calligraphic styles had emerged, from the open uncial styles of Northern Europe to the formal styles of Lobmardic documents and the rough, informal lettering of Roman bureaucrats.

After the decline of Rome the focus of learning and of the written arts moved to the north and west, with much of the cultural tradition of the ancient world being preserved in the cloisters of Ireland and the British Isles. Irish monastic culture spread through Europe in the so-called Dark Ages, taking with it new styles of lettering derived from the insular minuscule and uncial styles.

With the rise in ascendancy of the Church of Rome more formal and elaborate lettering styles began to become popular. Putting aside the somewhat paganistic ornamentation of the Celtic period, the gothic styles began to emerge, with more rigid and angular character forms and elaborate majuscule letters, taking on some of the character of the complex architectural style of the high middle ages.

Gothic styles remained popular until the advent of printing, and even into the modern era in printed form in Germany and other parts of Northern Europe.

By the 14th century diversity began to reemerge in writing styles. With the growth of the middle class in England and the lowland countries, secular literacy began to increase, and a demand developed for calligraphic styles which were legible, attractive and also efficient enough to allow manuscripts to be reproduced rapidly and commercially. This period saw the emergency of court and chancery hands, informal gothic variations and the growth of the popular Bastarda or Lettres Batarde hybrid lettering style which became the standard for secular writing.

Even with printing on the horizon, the Renaissance saw the emergence of new lettering styles as widespread literacy created great demand for easy to read and quick to write styles, such as the humanist cursives of Renaissance Italy.

Early printing emerged in a variety of styles based on the diversity of calligraphic styles popular in the early modern period, but even as printing became more standardized, calligraphy did not disappear. Hand lettering remained the standard for decorative titles, captions, posters, maps and many other uses, but moved more and more into the realm of the artist. Illustrators and poster artists of the 19th century produced a diversity of unique lettering styles, from the radical slavic excesses of Alphons Mucha to the playful pseudo-uncials of Howard Pyle and Charles Folkard.

The Scriptorium’s collection of historic calligraphy is unrivaled. We offer over 140 fonts based on specific historical or artistic styles, from Roman to Medieval to modern times. All of these fonts come in TrueType or Postscript format for Macintosh and PC-compatible computers. They are available singly for between $12 and $24 each, or as a collection in a highly discounted package. The new fourth edition of our calligraphic fonts CD package is only $169. It includes all of our calligraphic fonts (over 140 at last count), plus parchment and vellum textures to simulate the look of antique papers and other surfaces.

Our single fonts complete calligraphic fonts CD can be ordered online, by mail or by phone for delivery online or by mail. To order our Complete Calligraphic Fonts collection with over 140 fonts online go to ONLINE ORDERING or if you prefer to buy your calligraphic fonts individually, try our SINGLE FONTS SECTION.

To order by phone call 1-800-797-8973.

To get an idea of what our calligraphic fonts are like, try out the shareware version of Offenbach Chancery. It doesn’t have all of the punctuation and special characters, but should give you a good idea of what calligraphic fonts can look like on your computer.

Download Offenbach for Windows (PKZip). Download Offenbach for MacOS (StuffIt).

Selected fonts in this collection. Click on name to see sample.

Allegheny
Alleghieri
Allembert
Allencon
Altenburg
Altgothic
Aneirin
Antioch Uncial
Azariel
Baraquiel
Bastarda
Belphebe
Benevento
Bienville
Bilitis
Brandywine
Brigida
Broceliande
Burgundian
Cadeaulx
Caliph
Carissimi
Carmilla
Carmilla Swash
Castiglione
Caswallon
Chaillot
Cicero
Clairveaux
Collins Old English
Constance
Corabael
Corbei Uncial
Courtrai
Coverack
Cymbeline
Dahaut
Daresiel
De Bellis
Durrow
Fabliaux
Falconis
Fiorenza
Folkard
Formidable
Franconian
Froissart
Gaiseric
Ghost Gothic
Gjallarhorn
Glendower
Gloriana
Hanes Italic
Hesperides
Interlude
Iphegenia
Isfahan
Jerash
John Speed Ornamental
John Speed
Koch Fantasie
Koch Gothic
Langhorne
Ligeia
Lindisfarne
Lyonesse
Macteris Uncial
Magdeburg
Magdelena
Malagua
Malebroche
Martel
Melcheburn
Melusine
Minerva
Morgow
Morris Black Letter
Offenbach Chancery
Orphiel
Padstow
Palmieri
Pavane
Perigord
Platthand
Pomponianus
Pontifica
Pontificaswash
Potsdam
Prelude
Procopius
Publius
Pyle Gothic
Queensland
Rackham Italic
Rackham
Ranegund
Ravenna
Rheingold
Rosalinde
Rudolfo Swash
Rudolfo
Sanctum
Scrawlies
Scurlock
Serendib
Stonecross
Stuttgart Gothic
Sualtim
Surtur
Talleyrand
Terpsichore
Textura Quadrata
Teyrnon
Theodoric
Trinculo
Tyrfing
Undine
Vespasiano
Vivat
Volund
Walsingham
Wanax
Wittenbach
Zahariel
Zothique

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September 8, 2010 | Filed Under Collections, Font Collections | Leave a Comment 

Art & Symbol Fonts Collection

Art fonts (sometimes called “dingbats”) have their origins in early printers ornaments used to fill space on a printed page. Traditionally these ornaments took the form of floral or geometric designs, and were inserted when the page was set, just like type.


Modern art fonts are able to reproduce more complex images so they can also draw on the tradition of artists marginalia and other simple illustrations designed to accompany text. Marginalia perform a similar function to printers ornaments, but are usually more specialized and more characteristic of the work of a particular illustrator or the theme of the book in which they originate.


Traditionally most art fonts are fairly primitive, drawing on mostly functional
themes, such as international sign symbols or recreating antique printers ornaments. But the medium of digital type is capable of much more, and we try to explore some of those possibilities with our art fonts. They go beyond the primitive concept of the “dingbat” and provide a more sophisticated range of small, versatile illustrations which will enhance documents very effectively.

In exploring the potential of art fonts we owe a great debt to Arthur Rackham and some of the other artists who liberally decorated their books with marginal figures and scenes which are visually striking, yet simple enough to work well as characters in a typeface. Rackham was involved in every aspect of the production of many of the books on which he worked, and his role went well beyond the normal scope of the illustrator. He did so much decorative work on his books that we have 6 different fonts based on his marginalia.


We also have many of historically based art fonts, drawn from ancient images and
decorative arts, including Roman tiles, Native American pottery painting and medeival
heraldry, plus a selection of humorous and whimsical silhouettes.


All of our art fonts are available in both True Type and Postscript format for Macintosh and PC computers. They can be purchased individually for prices ranging from $9 to $12, or in a special CD collection with more than 25 of our art fonts for $69.00.


Our single fonts and art font packages can be ordered online, by mail or by
phone for delivery online or by mail. The special collection of all of the initials includes dozens of unique art fonts suitable to a wide variety of uses.

To the Complete Art Fonts package visit our ONLINE STORE or check out the section of Art Fonts you can order and download individually. To order by phone call 1-800-797-8973.

We’ve also got a free sample art font for you to try out. It features selected characters from some of our most popular art fonts and you can download it for free.


This font includes characters from Sigil (A-D), Decoration (E-H), Sangrael (I-K), Zapatec (L-N), Spirals (O-P), Florissant (Q-R), Mesoglyphs (S-T), Emblem (U-V), Hexstar (W-X) and Celtic Borders (Y-Z) – all upper case letter positions. Click here to download it for either WINDOWS or MacOS

Rating 3.00 out of 5

August 11, 2010 | Filed Under Art Fonts, Collections, Font Collections, Fonts | Leave a Comment 

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