font_category: decorative

A 1942 menu cover for the restaurant at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles features its name in a stylized Art Deco serif design. This is has been turned into the digital typeface Bill...

In the last scene of the movie trailer for 1937’s “Varsity Show”, the movie’s title is hand letteredin a bold, condensed chamfer font with semi-serifs.This is now available digitally in the namesake font “Varsity...

A hand lettered emulation of a Roman stencil type face on the cover of the folio for the Stenso School Set was the basis for Eutaw Stencil JNL, which is available in both regular...

“One Hundred Alphabets for the Show Card Writer” was published in 1919 to afford sign artists the ability to create signs and show cards in then-contemporary lettering styles.One such alphabet was big, bold and...

The Teapot Dome scandal was a 1920s bribery scandal involving Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall. Fall leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming [along with some California reserves] at low...

The Butterfly Brand [from the UK] manufactured some lettering stencils (circa the 1950s) with a distinctively British look and feel.These inspired Lancashire Stencil JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A condensed, light face spurred serif alphabet was shown on an antique catalog page from Spon & Chamberlain Publishers as “French”. The catalog likely sold tools and dies to stonecutters for making inscriptions in...

On April 20, 1950, film comedian Jerry Lewis indulged his love of cameras by opening up Jerry Lewis’ Camera Exchange on Vine Street in Hollywood. It closed in 1951.Thanks to an image preserved within...

The Logansport, Indiana Pharos-Observer dated June 12, 1917 had the following headline running across its front page: “American Steamer Sunk by German U Boat”.The condensed slab serif typeface used to set that headline has...

An antique barrel lid stencil spotted in an online auction for a company once located in Guttenberg, NJ provided the hand-cut sans serif lettering which inspired Old Brass Stencil JNL; available in both regular...