font_foundry: Solotype

Many foundries had versions of Concave ‹ wide, narrow, extra condensed, some with lowercase, some without. A good general utility style for Victorian typography.

Victorian fonts are a delight to use, but many don¹t have a lowercase. Today, that doesn¹t cut it, so where practicable, we design a harmonizing lowercase to extend the usefulness of the font.

In our early days of type hunting, we considered this to be the prize of our collection. Fonts of this late Victorian period seem to have less ruffles and flourishes than the earlier ones,...

A European font from Bauer’s foundry was the inspiration for the caps in the font. There was no lowercase, so we designed one. Although the original font was intended for display lines in advertising,...

A Victorian type which, like so many others, was originally offered without a lowercase. As we do so often, we designed a matching lowercase for it. We also added a shaded version of the...

This early 1900s type is from the German foundry of Schelter & Gieseke, and is typical of early twentieth century design. As usual, we have added all the modern necessities, such as monetary signs...

This is a simplified Tuscan, free from excessive ruffles and flourishes. Types of this general design began to appear in profusion in the 1830, and continued as a popular form until the end of...

A surprisingly modern looking condensed sans serif issued by Mackellar, Smiths & Jordan foundry in 1887. Its narrow width makes it useful for long copy headlines. Designed by the freelance type cutter Charles Beeler...

The Fredrick Ullmer Co. in London acted as agent for many typefoundries, and this was one of their offerings. Some of the letters were rather outlandish, so we fearlessly decided to improve them. The...