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 

Renaissance Fonts and Art Collection

 

Click any font to see a larger sample.

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.

The new and expanded edition of the Renaissance Fonts & Art package is a great deal with all of the fonts and art for only $79. It comes for either Windows or MacOS computers and includes both Postscript and TrueType fonts. You can order by phone at 1-512-656-8011, 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

Rating 3.00 out of 5

October 23, 2011 | Filed Under Collections, Historic | 1 Comment 

Special Arthur Rackham Mini Package

We’ve been doing an awful lot with Walter Crane recently, but sort of neglecting one of his great contemporaries who has been a mainstay of our collection in the past, Arthur Rackham.  Rackham was arguably the greatest illustrator of his era and certainly one of the highest paid.  He is also certainly the best remembered and most widely imitated today.  Popular current artists like Brian Froud and Charles Vess owe him a great deal and acknowledge his role in laying the groundwork for the modern tradition of fantasy and folklore illustration.

Our Rackham Fonts and Art Collection is great, but it is still far from complete considering how prolific he was.  So we’re slowly incorporating more material.  One unusual and extremely rare item has just been processed and is now available, a collection of color and black and white illustrations from the 1910 edition of Rackham’s illustration of Greek myths titled Greek Heroes.  This is a unique and special work because Rackham worked outside of his typical illustration style and the color pieces in particular look very different from what we’re used to from Rackham – much more realistic and less stylized.  The black and white pieces are more typical of his other work. Themes covered include the labors of Hercules, the tale of Jason and the Argonauts and the story of Perseus.

It’s also a relatively small set of high quality illustrations – what would be considered a minor work when compared to some of his other massive and elaborate projects like his illustrations for Wagner’s Ring Saga. But however minor it is, it’s also very rare and the illustrations are almost never seen elsewhere and they are also powerful and visually striking, with an unusual color palette of browns and reds which Rackham used relatively infrequently.

The set of 12 high resolution illustrations from Greek Heroes (4 color, 8 black and white) has already been added to our Rackham Fonts and Art Collection, so if you order that package now it will be included. Alternatively you can also purchase the mini-collection separately for just $8 and you can order it and download it directly from our ONLINE STORE.

Rating 4.00 out of 5

October 12, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Arthur Rackham | Leave a Comment 

Horror Fonts and Art for Halloween

For years here a the Scriptorium we’ve been developing fonts and collecting unique art which is perfect for Halloween and putting it together into packages which we promote through our Boneyard Fonts site. After 10 years we’ve put together a gruesomely provocative collection of fonts and art, adding new items every year around Halloween. We’re now up to almost 40 fonts, plus art from great masters of the macabre like J. G. Posada, Edmund Dulac, Willy Pogany and Harry Clarke. You’ll find everything you need for any Halloween or other horrific design project.

Recent additions to the collection include two new fonts based on title lettering from classic Hammer horror films, plus a great selection of images based on the unique Calavera illustrations by revolutionary Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada. These show skeletons engaged in a variety of typical daily activities, featuring a certain amount of political and social commentary, but also a nice dose of macabre humor. We also have several Posada fonts in development, but don’t expect them until next year.

Our collected horror images and fonts are organized into three separate package, the Diabolic Fonts and Art collection, the Macabre Fonts and Art collection and the Halloween Fonts and Art collection. They’re available individually or in a discounted combo package. All of the fonts are also available indidivually. Read on for some details on the three horror fonts and art packages.

HALLOWEEN FONTS AND ART







































The Halloween Fonts and Art package includes some of our wildest and most unusual fonts, plus all of the large selection of colorful custom Halloween graphics we’ve assembled over the years, including frames, borders, decorative tiles, buttons and emblems. It’s excellent for web, poster or flyer design.

The fonts in this package include the Halloweenies font and many of our fonts based on title lettering from popular horror movies like the new Veronique and Paleos fonts, and some great fonts for spooky text and titles like Sanguinary and Ironworks. If you want to see larger samples of the fonts just click on the small samples to the right. If you want to take a closer look at some of the images in this package you can just CLICK HERE. There are a total of 12 fonts included in the package, plus many images.

This collection is only $49 with all the fonts and art. Fonts are included in both PostScript and TrueType format for MacOS and Windows. You can also get this package in combination with the Macabre and Diabolic packages for a low combo price of only $129. To order online just go to our ONLINE STORE

MACABRE FONTS AND ART

































Our Macabre Fonts and Art package features fonts and arts with the flavor of the grave. We’re talking morbid images and skulls and skeletons galore. In this package you’ll find some of our best horrific art and some very unusual fonts. It’s great for more sophisticated design projects which need a more degenerate, gothy look.

The fonts in this package include all of our skeletal fonts like Golgotha, Skull and Bones and the classic Boneyard, plus stylish and unusual script fonts and titling fonts like the very popular Valdemar which will be featured in the marketing for the Harry Potter movies. The art in this package is particularly appealing. It has both Edmund Dulac’s illustrations for Poe’s poetry and Harry Clarke’s illustrations and decorative marginalia for Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”. Plus this package includes our newest art feature, Jose Guadalupe Posada’s “Calavera” illustrations of skeletons doing all sorts of odd things. To see a more detailed sample of any font just click on the image of it to the right. If you want to take a look at some of the art in this package just CLICK HERE. There are a total of 12 fonts included in the package, in addition to the scores of high quality images.

This package is only $49 with all the fonts and art. Fonts are included in both PostScript and TrueType format for MacOS and Windows. You can also get this package in combination with the Halloween and Diabolic packages for a low combo price of only $129. To order online just go to our ONLINE STORE

DIABOLIC FONTS AND ART


































This collection leans towards the arcane and supernatural, with fonts based on mystical languages and containing
magical symbols, or which look just plain evil. The art fits with the theme, drawn mostly from illustrations for Faust.

Among the fun fonts in this package are Goetic and Malachim two mystical language fonts, our scariest titling fonts Dementia, Sabanak and Sepultura, plus the new Diabolus arcane initials font and our two popular Voodoo symbology fonts Veve and Guede. The images in this package include illustrations for Faust by both Willy Pogany and Harry Clarke, plus Clarke’s fantastic black and white marginalia for his edition of Faust. To see a more detailed sample of any font just click on the image of it to the right. If you want to take a closer look at some of the images in this package you can just CLICK HERE.

This new package is only $49 with all the fonts and art. Fonts are included in both PostScript and TrueType format for MacOS and Windows. You can also get this package in combination with the Macabre and Halloween packages for a low combo price of only $129. To order online just go to our ONLINE STORE

Rating 4.00 out of 5

October 4, 2011 | Filed Under Collections | 1 Comment 

Walter Crane Decorations Mini-Package

Even when writing essays on socialism and the philosophy of art, Walter Crane was incapable of resisting an opportunity to add some decoration. In his book The Claims of Decorative Art, Crane embellished each chapter with an intricate decorative header featuring neoclassical and mythological scenes in his usual meticulous and detailed style.

We’ve taken all of the decorations from the book and collected them together into a special mini-package with 22 images. They’re perfect for incorporating into your own designs or decorating a document or web page. You can see some examples to the right and you can ORDER the package for only $15 online and download it right away.

BUY PACKAGE




Rating 3.00 out of 5

September 29, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Mini Collections, Walter Crane | Leave a Comment 

Walter Crane’s The Golden Primer

Illustrated books teaching young children how to read were a staple of 19th century education, and Walter Crane was famous for his alphabet books as well as books like The Golden Primer which were designed to teach vocabulary to slightly older children through the use of rhymes and images.

The Golden Primer is one of Crane’s harder to find works. It has not been extensively reprinted and original editions are scarce and highly collectible. We acquired a copy several years ago and in our ongoing development of resources based on Crane’s work we have now created high-quality digital versions of all of the highly decorative illustrated plates in the book.

We’ve made this into a neat little collection with a set of 33 images ready to be used for your design projects. In addition to the 26 color illustrations the package includes Crane’s black and white decorations and the four sample alphabets included for teaching the young readers how to write in different styles.

You can get the full package from our online store at a special price of just $29 with an immediate download. Just CLICK HERE

For a preview of the package, they the PDF Version which includes lower resolution versions of all the color images, but not the black and white decorations or alphabet designs.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

September 1, 2011 | Filed Under Art Collections, Collections, Walter Crane | 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 

Arts & Crafts Collection

 

Click any font to see a larger sample.













 The new second edition of our Arts & Crafts font collection features 15 fonts based on designs from the Arts & Crafts movements of the late Victorian period. They are derived from designs from several branches of the movement, and demonstrate the unique aestheitc vision of great designers like William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Elbert Hubbard. The Arts & Crafts movement was enormously influential on the works of designers, artists and architects of the 20th century, and inspired the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements.

The package includes early Arts & Crafts fonts like William Morris’ Kelmscott and True Golden, fonts from the Glasgow branch of the movement like Chelsea Studio, based on Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s lettering, fonts from the Roycrofters of New York like Semiramis and Ganelon, and even fonts from the California Arts & Crafts period of the early 1900s like Coloma. The newest additions to the package include Palmyra, Hyacinth Initials, Spoonbill and Advertising Gothic. They are shown in red on the left.

Also included in this new edition of the package are a selection of floral frames, borders and decorations developed from Roycroft publications from the early 1900s. All the fonts are historically accurate and they are not available from any other source. The package is available for Windows or the MacOS, and includes both TrueType and Postscript fonts. The price is only $69 for all the fonts and the borders and decorations. You can order the Arts & Crafts font and art package directly for delivery on CD by phone from 1-512-656-8011, or you can purchase the package online – just – CLICK HERE TO ORDER with an immediate download.

If you want to try out a font from this collection, try out the Palmyra demo. Palmyra is reminiscent of the lettering style found in many books and pamphlets from the Roycrofters – the arts and crafts design community founded by Elbert Hubbard. It has a constructed look with rounded ends on the letters characteristic of pen-lettering. It has multiple versions of many of the letters to allow variations in your designs. Click here to download the demo of Palmyra for either WINDOWS or MacOS. You can purchase the full font ONLINE.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

July 25, 2011 | Filed Under Collections, Historic | 5 Comments 

Ancient and Arcane Fonts

 

 

While developing more traditional fonts based on historical material, we have occasionally hit upon historical oddities or lettering styles of exceptional antiquity which have interesting qualities and in which there is enough interest to justify the effort needed to make them into fonts.

As a result, our collection has come to include a substantial number of fonts based on the earliest ancient languages as well as fonts based on a variety of magical, fantastical and arcance lettering styles.

 


Languages like Ugaritic, Chaldean and Phoenician may have become extinct long ago, but they are still of interest to scholars and have a suprising attraction for many graphic designers who want to use lettering in a decorative way to create an arcane appearance without using any comprehensible modern language. Ancient scripts are perfect for this, because they give the appearance of genuine writing, while not being recognizable to the lay viewer. Our selection of ancient scripts is large and growing, focused on the more obscure lettering styles, though we also offer fonts for more familiar languages like Greek, Coptic and Cyrillic.

 

Down the centuries, mystics and kabbalists have sought to understand the universe by learning the secret scripts which would unlock the door to arcane knowledge. We have a number of fonts based on the languages of demons, angels and mad alchemists of one kind or another.

In addition, we have several fonts which
feature regular characters, plus arcane symbols as special characters, and art fonts with mystical images, including fonts like our Marseille Tarot font where ever letter is a card from the Major Arcana of a classic Tarot deck.

The worlds of the ancient past and magical aracana are not that far from the worlds of pure fantasy, which explains why we have such a large selection of completely fantastical fonts.

Most of these are drawn from the intricately developed background of the Ysgarth roleplaying game, which has gone farther than most games in exploring the details of fantasy world language and society. You can find out more about Ysgarth at the
Ysgarth website.

 


Regardless of the use you put them to, there is a special fascination to these strange and arcane fonts. We’re planning on developing more of them in the future, including heiroglyphic, demotic and other lost languages. Plus, if you like this sort of font, check out our calligraphy page, because at there is a point at which calligraphy crosses over a line into the bizarre and magical when the artistry of the lettering overwhelms the pure representational aspect of the characters.

 

These fonts are all available collected together in our Arcane Fonts package which you can ORDER ONLINE and download immediately for only $59. You may also be interested in our Russian and Cyrillic fonts collection. All of the fonts are also available individually. Just do a search for them by name.

 

To get an idea of what our arcane fonts are like, try out the shareware version of our new Malachim font. It’s based on an alphabet which purports to be a version of the script used by angels. It should give you a good idea of what our fonts can look like on your computer: Download Malachim

 

Rating 3.00 out of 5

July 16, 2011 | Filed Under Collections, Historic | 1 Comment 

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