We have created this family inspired from the hand-drawn letters used from the late 1800s until beginning of 1900s for notices, advertising, posters and also early comic titles. It is a hand-made font, with little imperfections that give it its special poetic note. It can be used together with 1906 French News, 1906 Titrage and 1820 Modern.

This font was inspired by the old form of the so called "Kurrentschrift" German handwriting, based on late medieval cursive. It is also known as "Alte Deutsche schrift" ("Old German script"). It was taught in German schools until 1941, when Adolf Hitler decided to forbid it. As it is a little hard to read, we are proposing here two versions: the "pure" Kurrentschrift, and an adapted "Easy" one, with simplified difficult characters.

This family was inspired mainly (Normal and Italic style ) by a Didot pattern font used in Rennes (France, Britanny) by Cousin-Danelle, printers, for Antiquités historiques et monumentales ‡ visiter de Montfort ‡ Corseul, par Dinan... Saint Malo... etc. an historic guidebook for a journey through a part of (French) Brittany in 1820, and many other books. The present version contains 1820 Modern Normal and Italic, 1820 Modern Large Normal and 1820 Modern Narrow Normal, each style with small caps. This font may be used together with 1906 French News and/or 1906 Titrage.

This font was inspired by Spencer’s patterns, particularly the elegant varieties called “Ladies' Hand” in some handbooks. Intelligent OTF ligatures and alternates (about 160) are included in the font, giving a closer appearance to realistic handwriting.

This family was inspired from a lot of 1848-1850 French engraved documents reproducing handwritten texts talking about the Paris' insurrection days in June 1848 (described by Victor Hugo in Les misérables) . It seems that all were first written using quill pens, as the strokes are too much heavy and bold for metal pens and even though the engraver work is very fine. We have added only a few characters, most of them were present in the originals. The TTF and OTF versions are enriched with more than 50 ligatures or alternate characters.

This script font was inspired by the “Ronde” French script. It was in use from 1700s to 1900s (until 1960s in special circumstances) for registers, legal documents and texts, certificates, labels and other documents that must be particularly legible. Today in France, it is still being used for menus, advertising, and labels. The present version is a late 19th Century pattern. This font supports very strong enlargements as well as small sizes. When printed, it remains perfectly legible and elegant from 9/11 pts even if using an ordinary inkjet printer.

This font was inspired by the so-called Litterarum latinarum, quas italicas, cursoriasque vocant, scribendum Ratio (Louvain 1540), a manual intended for calligraphers by the well known scientist Gerhard Mercator. It was a magnificent “Cancellaresca corsiva” design, enriched with many alternates, final loops and ligatures. We have added a lot of accented and other characters required for modern use that did not exist in the original.

Grayson is a 1940s art deco typeface. The inspiration came from vintage store signs in London, New York, and other major cities. The font is clean, easy to read, and its letterforms are memorable which makes it perfect for branding. You can use this font for a wide variety of projects, possibilities are endless. The downloads comes with OTF and TTF versions of the font. Enjoy!

The chamfered block style of lettering has been a workhorse for years. From the early signage of the 1800s to military markings to the techno fonts of the 1980s and beyond, its clean and simple look gets the message across easily and boldly. Industrialist JNL and its oblique partner were modeled from the title on a piece of sheet music from the 1940s.

The Dollfus Mieg Company was founded in 1800 by Daniel Dollfus (1769-1818) and Anne-Marie Mieg (1770-1852). In the 1890s and again in 1901 it published Monograms and Alphabets for Combination, a book with alphabets and monograms for cross-stitching. This book served as example for several digital fonts by Paulo W. Here you can get one of them,

A heavy unnamed Gothic typeface from the 1890 William H. Page Foundry woodtype specimen book provided the template for this bold, brash, no-nonsense face. It's designed to set tight, so your headlines will definitely get noticed. Named for a town in West Central Texas which is noted for being the home of the Buffalo Soliders in the late 1800s. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

This family was inspired by the well-known Caslon typeface created by William Caslon, the English font designer, who was, with John Baskerville, the progenitor of English Transitional typeface classification in the mid-18th century (See also our 1776 Independence). We were inspired by a Caslon style set used by an unknown Flemish printer from Bruges, in the beginning of 1800s, a little before the revival of Caslon style in the 1840s. Our font covers all Western, Eastern and Central European languages (including Celtic diacritics) and the Turkish alphabet, with a complete small-caps set in each of the two styles. (Please note: The complete character set is available only in TTF and OTF “Pro” version.)

This set of initial letters was inspired from French renaissance decorated letters. It is a typical pattern, one among dozen quite similar, but this one was in use in Paris, unchanged, for centuries, and was still in use in the beginning of 1900s. This explains the difference between I and J, U and V. These characters were engraved years after the original set. Our font was inspired from a late 1800s publication. It can be used as well with Humane fonts (like our 1543 Humane Janson or 1592 GLC Garamond) as with modern fonts like our 1820 Modern or 1906 French News.

This narrow neoclassical font is based upon Schelter & Giesecke’s Schmale Mediäval which was originally released in 1840. By typing [alt] + [shift] + p respectively [alt] + p you have access to the framing elements as seen on the posters.

This font is a late 19th Century French script overview inspired by numerous French letters, from around years 1850-1860, during the second French empire, under Napoleon the third. Most of them were written with very tiny characters on light sheets of paper, as postage prices were calculated from the letter's weight. The TTF and OTF versions are enriched with more than 50 ligatures and/or alternate characters. We also offer a choice of two sorts of Capitals. Why "1859 Solferino"? It was the last battle of the Italian independence war, opposing the victorious Franco-Italian army to Austria in June 24, 1859. The Red Cross was inspired directly from the carnage remaining on the battle field.

Inspired by E.C. Matthew's, circa 1940's.

inspired in 1800"s journal headers typography

Here’s a workman-like collection of border elements gleaned from the specimen books of various American manufacturers of woodtype from around 1840 to 1885. Refer to the PDF guides for detailed, yet simple, instructions for constructing various border patterns, all with Victorian grace and charm.

Here's a handy-dandy collection of border elements gleaned from the specimen books of various manufacturers of woodtype from around 1840 to 1885. Refer to the PDF guide for detailed, yet simple, instructions for constructing sixteen different border patterns, all with Victorian grace and charm.

Black Pearl is a revival of an ornate calligraphic font possibly created between 1850 and 1870. I spent two years looking for all the letters of this font; once I found them all, I immediately went to work on recreating this old classic. I was not able to find any numbers for the font, so new to this style are numbers, some punctuation and currency symbols. The Truetype and OpenType formats include an extended character set with Central and Eastern European accented letters. Extra characters in this font are left and right pointing hands in place of the less than and greater than keys; a ship’s wheel, located on the asterisk key; and a boat anchor on the bracket keys.

The first Tuscan lettering was penned in the mid-fourth century by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus. The style was still in common usage as calligraphy when Vincent Figgins designed the first Antique Tuscan for print in 1817. Antique and Gothic Tuscan woodtype fonts appeared in the 1830’s. By the 1850’s, Tuscan fonts had become popular in America. These styles continued in print use into the twentieth century. Tuscan Antique and Gothic styles, borrowed from print and calligraphy, were perfect for signs, posters, handbills and other large format advertising. Sign painter, Frank Atkinson demonstrated several Tuscan forms in his book Sign Painting, A Complete Manual. Modified & Spurred Tuscan Romans were inspired by this and other works of the same period.

Gothic is a basic sans serif with thick strokes and minimal contrast. Designs of this nature first appeared in wood type catalogs around the 1840s, and proved extremely popular in advertising and broadside printing. This version is based on a wood type design manufactured by Hamilton Manufacturing Company.

Cowboy Serenade is an old classic Western font from about the 1870s.

Yarker is the Business Hand of the late 1800's early 1900's.

Discorgasmique is a font take inspiration from the 1940' years with a futuristic mood.

Payson JNL is based on a vintage sans serif wood type from the 1800s.

A bold but nevertheless pleasant black-letter font which was released for the first time about 1840 by the Haenel'sche Printshop and Letterfoundery in Berlin. Haenel Fraktur contains a bunch of useful ligatures, and by typing 'N', 'o' and period you get an old style number sign by activating the Ordinals feature.

Antique X Condensed is a condensed slab serif font found with the pages of a Rob Roy Kelly book of wood type designs. It was introduced around 1840 by Wells and Webb, and the example served as the model for General Merchandise JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The Pergamon series is a creation of Alfons Schneider (1890–1946) and was issued by the foundry of Ludwig Wagner in Leipzig in 1937/1940, though the website of the Klingspor-Museum says that several of the faces were probably produced after the death of Schneider. This digital version is extended with the necessary OT characters and signs, while also the “символы кириллицы” are added. Also, in addition to the members of the family designed by Schneider, regular, italic, bold and bold italic extended versions were produced. The specimens of Ludwig Wagner stated emphatically: “In allen Graden werden beide K K geliefert”, so these two forms are in all the faces, while the two condensed members also have k k, as the specimens said that this alternative character was also in these two faces.

Along Sans Grande is an ultra condensed sans serif font family developed based on the typeface styles of the Along Sans Geometric Font Family. In the case of the black weight with the largest change in the size of the stem, the size is 180:140:100, respectively. And, the thin weight style has the same proportion of stem size. Some Glyphs that need to support the stem alone remain a size 222 for Black Weight. These interpolation rules are sufficient to complement the rhythm and readability of the whole family. This family is perfect for special titling works, logo designs, and cool showcases.

The lettering for Fine Dining JNL was inspired by the opening titles for the 1940 Barbara Stanwyck-Fred MacMurray film "Remember the Night". A stylized Art Deco sans, the typeface conjures up images of elegant dining, being out on the town and all we warmly associate with the night life of the 1930s and 1940s.