I’ve been wondering if there’s a name for that 19th Century-style font which seemed to be used in ads from the 1880s-c1910 or so.
This is the type of thing I’m talking about.
I presume it’s got a name besides “That 19th Century British font, not the “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite” one, the other one”.
Anyone know?
Well, there are many similar fonts; they didn’t all use the same font and most were hand lettered. You can see some here: Search | MyFonts
Many 19th century advertising typefaces are classified as “woodcut”. I believe it’s because the large letters used in the typefaces were carved out of wood.
Some such fonts are classified as ‘Victorian’
A great many type faces from that period were hand lettered and engraved for one-time use only and never actually had a name.
The original Coca-Cola logo, for example, was probably sketched out by some anonymous advertising artist and rendered in india ink on white illustration board. The lettering was not named and didn’t even contain all the letters of the alphabet. In some cases, after a certain style of lettering was used for a product name, a designer was asked to create a full set of matching letters.
I have a book on decorative alphabets that was edited by a noted type authority, Alexander Nesbitt. He refers to some styles similar to the one you posted as “Gothic alphabets with typical 19th century aberrations and trimmings.” In the 1800s, typographers revived a lot of earlier Renaissance styles.
In poster art, they often seem to be called Art Nouveau, and many of them actually are.
Thanks for the info- very useful indeed!
The next question, of course, is where might I obtain a font set for MS Word, preferably free, and, of course, legally?
Dafont is quite a good site for free fonts - you might find something there.
Free font websites come and go - and it seems like many of them don’t have any fonts at all, just links to other sites purporting to have fonts, but that also just have links, etc.
The best way I’ve found to search for useful free font sites is to Google the term Free font categories - the term ‘categories’ not only seems to weed out some of the linky dross, but also brings you to sites where you have to do less wading in order to find what you need.
One word of caution… Installing lots of fonts in Windows can be a significant performance hit for the machine - especially at startup, but also in general use. It’s ever so easy to browse these font sites and end up installing dozens of mouthwatering loveliness, but it could slow your PC right down if you do.
