Up until the late 1920s, it was a popular habit in American songwriting to use African Americans as the topic of compositions using denigrating themes, words and even exaggerated character illustrations on the covers of the published sheet music. One such example of what was considered "entertainment" for its time was a piece entitled "Little Black Me". While this now socially and morally unacceptable piece of forgettable tripe is collected by some only for the historical documentation of the times they reflected, one good "positive" came out of this negative chapter of our country's musical heritage: The beautiful floral ornamented letters in the song's title has yielded Fancy Free JNL. Originally hand-lettered on an arc, these spurred Roman letters have been re-drawn, and are offered in both the regular design and a companion version with the ornamentation removed for lettering that is less ornate.

Toward the end of the 1920s, Art Deco influences were starting to creep into modern design. The hand lettered title on the cover of the1928 sheet music for “Fascinatin’ Vamp” not only embraced the new Deco movement, but sent it on a wild typographic ride. Letters of mixed thicknesses and stylings made up the two word title, and this unusual group of letter shapes became the inspiration for Free Form Deco JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Sultan free is an Arabic text typeface for desktop applications. Sultan free is a freestyle script. It is available in One style, calligraphic, and very dynamic. This makes it suitable for large display sizes, especially in the area of advertising, while still functioning well as a text face. The font includes a support for Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Sultan free typeface comes with many opentype features.

Victorian Leaf Ornaments are a collection of leaves drawn in the exotic Victorian style. There is an assortment of 47 ornaments all located under the character set keys.

These are the classical arabesques published in Ludwig Petzendorfer's Schriften-Atlas. Eine Sammlung der wichtigsten Schreib- und Druckschriften aus alter und neuer Zeit nebst Initialen, Monogrammen, Mappen, Landeskarten und heraldischen Motiven fur die praktischen Zwecke des Kunstgewerbes, 1889. See Frompac 1889 Arabesques for another example of these arabesques.

Halloween is a time when perfectly reasonable people choose to reenact some lost pagan rituals. No one seems to know why exactly, but Halloween has been celebrated in its present form for a little over one hundred years. This set of ornaments dates back to the early 20th century and depicts a “classic” Halloween collection of black cats, pumpkins, witches, and other indispensable Halloween ornaments.

Antique Ornaments JNL collects twenty-six vintage printers' ornaments from the 1800s into one convenient digital font file.

Letterpress Ornamentals JNL collects twenty-six decorative embellishments, corner pieces, borders, separators and ornaments for enhancing your print project.

Clear Prairie Ornaments were designed as a set of ornaments and border elements to complement Clear Prairie Dawn. Many of the glyphs are based on rural and urban prairie motifs, including stars, wheat and even stylized outhouses.

A tribute to George Bruce .

This font was inspired by Lviv ArtDeco architecture dominating in 1920s-30s. This collection of ornaments is a graphic representation of building decorative elements, mostly of metal tracery elements and wall bas-relief. This font can be used for a variety of purposes, in graphic design as well as in industrial design.

LTC Ornaments Two is the first Lanston Ornament font which uses OpenType features to assist in decorative border creation. The ornaments themselves features designs of Fournier and other classic fleurons and ornaments whose origins date back to the earliest printers.

Ornaments 6 are based on designs for the Curwen Press by Edward Bawden and Percy Smith.

Art Nouveau Ornaments was inspired by designs from historic sources drawn in the Art Nouveau style. There is an assortment of 47 ornaments located under the character set keys.

Black Ornaments is a family of ornament/dingbat fonts, inspired by the CalligraphiaLatina font series. Is excellent for use in editorial works of art and publishing, as the cover of books, headpieces, packaging, magazines and many other solutions.

LTC Bixler Ornaments One includes all designs found in the metal Bixler Type Handypacks #1–6 from P22 that were created using actual Lanston mats to cast these metal type sets. The 14 designs found in the metal type are presented in this digital version—each rotated and optimized to align easily and tightly for digital layouts.? LTC Bixler Ornaments Two incudes all designs found in the metal Bixler Type Handypacks #7–14 from P22 that were created using actual Lanston mats to cast these metal type sets. The 17 designs found in the metal type are presented in this digital version—each rotated and optimized to align easily and tightly for digital layouts.

Intellecta Design, in partnership with Monocracy Types (Paulo W) launches Augusta Torino Ornaments. Classic art deco ornaments digitized from the font catalogues of "Società Augusta Torino", also Nebiolo Fundicion, one of the most important european extinct typefoundry from last century. Soon, more fonts of that collection.

Meninas are the new comprehensive collection of innovative craft alphabets and ornaments researched in rare cross-stitch booklets from 1850 to 1930. This alphabet and ornaments series was entirely designed by hand, without use of auto-tracing, by Iza W, from Intellecta Design. Keep your eyes wide-open, because we will launch more amazing alphabets in this collection. “Menina” means “Girl” in Portuguese. Menina Graciosa is a Graceful Girl. See too her sister fonts: Menina Formosa , Menina Carinhosa , Menina Poderosa Ornaments , Menina Espinhosa .

LTC Keystone Ornaments is a set of over 100 glyphs based on "running border" ornaments from Keystone Type Foundry of Philadelphia, circa 1903. These geometric dingbats can be used individually for decorative emphasis, or combined in repetitive lines or complex patterns.

In researching historic decorative material offered by Lanston Monotype as well as other metal foundries such as Barnhart Brothers and Spindler, there were occasionally ornaments that defied description. Perhaps it was a Victorian sense of humor or someone really thought these were a good idea or perhaps popular taste has just changed so much over the last hundred years, or our forbearers were completely insane. In any case, LTC is somewhat proud to present a collection of the most bizarre, disturbing and baffling printers ornaments we could find. Along with mutant fowl-children and frolicsome amphibians, there are also Masonic and other secret fraternal symbols that may not be creepy to everyone, but just enough to be moderately disturbing.

The Ornaments of Paris were inspired by a recent trip to Paris. Each tiny Paris icon is distilled from a church, a fence, a doorway, a railing, the Louvre, graphics in a store window, a feeling, a rainy day, a glass of wine... For more of the similar see Fleurons of Paris.

Unlike previous dingbat fonts released from Lanston Type Co., Archive Ornaments derives from a unique collection of brass ornament plates that were originally used in creating the matrices for casting metal type. Using the plates as a reference point allowed for a more precise rendering of the ornaments. Letterpress prints were made directly from the brass plates, which were then re-drawn and digitized. Each character has been optimized for the combination of decorative borders and patterns as well as individual accentuation. The completed digitized font contains over 100 glyphs, ranging in style from geometric to organic designs.

This font is a collection made with the largest part of the ornaments contained in the GLC foundry medieval and renaissance period fonts. It was made for the use of customers who wish to embellish their works without buying our complete catalog! It is used to embellish and animate as variously as web-site titles, posters and fliers design or greeting cards, all various sorts of presentations, menus, certificates, letters. It was specially drawn to accompany our medieval and renaissance fonts, like 1462 Bamberg, 1509 Leyden, 1538 Schwabacher, 1543 Humane Jenson, 1557 Italique, 1589 Humane Bordeaux, 1592 GLC Garamond and others, giving them an historical additional genuine touch...

Ornaments 1 are from designs from 18th and 19th Cent. founders descended to Stephenson Blake.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. ITC Bodoni™ was designed by a team of four Americans, after studying Bodoni's steel punches at the Museo Bodoniana in Parma, Italy. They also referred to specimens from the "Manuale Tipografico," a monumental collection of Bodoni's work published by his widow in 1818. The designers sought to do a revival that reflected the subtleties of Bodoni's actual work. They produced three size-specific versions; ITC Bodoni Six for captions and footnotes, ITC Bodoni Twelve for text settings, and ITC Bodoni Seventytwo - a display design modeled on Bodoni's 72-point Papale design. ITC Bodoni includes regular, bold, italics, Old style Figures, small caps, and italic swash fonts. Sumner Stone created the ornaments based on those found in the "Manuale Tipografico." These lovely dingbats can be used as Bodoni did, to separate sections of text or simply accent a page layout or graphic design."

A set of authentic 18th century Belgian printers ornaments provided the reference for this creepy group of glyphs.