These Hand Painted Letter-forms are part of our in-house range of typefaces available to all client projects.

PAINTED VINTAGE ROMANS: THE TRAJANS ARE FOUND

Introducing Edward Catich Trajan Lettering examiner:

A lifelong journey reviving the historic Trajan inscripti

His calligraphy and stone cutting work won Catich an international reputation, and he created many slate inscriptions using his brush and chisel technique. He created two typefaces, Petrarch and Catfish.

Many of his books were published under his own press, The Catfish Press, which operated out of his studio at the university.

Besides calligraphy, Catich was accomplished at liturgical art, working in slate, stained glass, watercolor, and print, and he played the trumpet, cello, and harmonica.

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THE TRAJANS ARE REVEALED

Studying in Rome as a seminarian in the late 1930s, he made a thorough study of the letter forms of the epigraphy on Trajan’s Column.

While the brushed-origin thesis had been proposed in the nineteenth century, Catich, having worked as a union sign painter, made a complete study and proposed a convincing ductus by which the forms were created, using a flat brush and then chisel.

He promulgated his views in two works, Letters Redrawn from the Trajan Inscription in Rome and The Origin of the Serif: Brush Writing and Roman Letters.

While the thesis is not universally accepted, electioneering posters and other plaques excavated in Pompeii show both unincised and incised Imperial Roman capital titles (followed by body text in rustic capitals) brush-painted on certain walls which pre-date the Trajan panel.

Making letters Unique, keeps your brand Unrivalled.

NGS INCISED BODONI CONDENSED

NGS Bodoni Parmense Font has been drafted in 3 forms from the original drawings by the founding type designer Giambattista Bodoni.

Above: A ‘high contrast’ serif drawn from the original 18th century Italian alphabet (Parma/Parmese).

Giambattista Bodoni Italian: 16 February 1740 – 30 November 1813) was an Italian type-designer, compositor, printer and publisher with his final studio in Parma.

He first took the type-designs of Pierre Simon Fournier as his exemplars, but afterwards became an admirer of the more modelled types of John Baskerville; and he and Firmin Didot evolved a style of type called “Modern”, in which the letters are cut in such a way as to produce a strong contrast between the thick and thin parts of their body.

Bodoni designed many typefaces, each one in a large range of type sizes. He is even more admired as a compositor than as a type designer, as the large range of sizes which he cut enabled him to compose his pages with the greatest possible subtlety of spacing.

Like Baskerville, he sets off his texts with wide margins and uses little or no illustrations or decorations.

HIGH CONTRAST CLASSICS

Bodoni achieved an unprecedented level of technical refinement, allowing him to faithfully reproduce letterforms with very thin “hairlines”, standing in sharp contrast to the thicker lines constituting the main stems of the characters.

He became known for his designs of pseudoclassical typefaces and highly styled editions, some considered more apt “to be admired for typeface and layout, not to be studied or read”. His printing reflected an aesthetic of plain, unadorned style, combined with purity of materials and concept.

Below: NGS Custom ‘Bodoni Bold Chisel Extended’. Gilded and aged by NGS in Covent Garden.

NGS Bespoke Bodoni | London Font makers | Choosing Keeping Shop Covent Garden

THE SILIENT SIGNWRITER: AN INCOMPARABLE INNER WORLD

I connected with the making of these special letters as a kid, often sitting at the knee of my grandfather, Francis Baker, watching him cut his faithful West London Roman letters in stone.

I sometimes used to look at his letters and think how they weren’t perfectly repetitive, how they had individual characters, yet were always finished cleanly and mastered – I was about 5 when I first started hanging out in his studio, sitting at his feet playing with a pencil and paper, training my hand to work like his.

Today most of the time my hand is incredibly steady.

Some days it shows some wobbles (if it’s windy up there)… the human touch comes through always… and yet on those days, the beauty naturally becomes increased, becoming more intensely ‘involved’ in order to overlay any shakes and nerves and regain the moment.

Often they become the most beautiful of my letters: hard fought for with determination.

BRUSHES WITH FATE

It’s not easy doing this work. There’s always a moment of challenge in each day – hidden away from view, the craftsman in us gets on with it, and makes it a treasure for you and often indelible for us. Rippling of the quill in hand atop a ladder, hearing the passing conversations, blending in to the townscape. Learning about the worldly craft.

Interesting people come by: actors, locals, the curious. Many stop and chat.

Nothing can compare (as you may begin to see), to the truly crafted ripple of painted sign written letters.