Camelot type

I recently acquired two cases of Camelot type (10 point & 12 point)…Goudy’s first design, sold to ATF for $10 in 1896. It has a unique look, & I want to use it in more ambitious projects…but I don’t have enough sorts. Does anyone know where I might find more?

Much obliged.

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Congratulations Ernst. Camelot is a great face. Fairly hard to find, so good luck with your quest.

Goudy designed the uppercase only. The lowercase was designed by Joseph W. Phinney at ATF. The lowercase has alternate characters a, h, m and o that should also be mixed in your cases.

Rick

You are in with a modest chance of obtaining more of this face, as McGrew stated that it “was included in ATF specimen books as late as 1941” and Goudy wrote in 1945 that “the type is still in occasional use, even now”.

McGrew illustrates alternative forms for M, R and S, as well as a, h and m.

I’ve not seen the alternative o, and McGrew does not mention or illustrate this sort; please could you post images of this letter?

I have two cases of Camelot. 18 and 24 point having the following alternate characters: S, M, N, R, a, h, m, n, o, s. At the risk of catching a lot of crap, I must say this is the most ill-fitting type (lower case) that I’ve ever set in my life. You’ll need loads of brass and coppers to make a paragraph look good!

Here’s a proof of the 10-point Camelot:

image: camelot.JPG

camelot.JPG

Rick’s proof in McGrew did not show all of the alternate characters. I have only one small 12-point font of it, at my present location, and I show the following alternate characters:
M, N, O, R, S, W, a, h, m, n, o, s
I don’t know which style of ‘o’ was considered the alternate, but one was circular and one was condensed.

Dave Greer

This is a very interesting thread. I spoke above from memory, but as the discussion proceeded I have now gone down to the shop and inspected all of my Camelot fonts.

The font displayed in McGrew’s book are ALL the characters displayed in “Characters in Complete Font” on the bottom of page 312 in the 1923 ATF catalog. I probably referred to that when I pulled a proof of my 24 pt. font for Mac McGrew.

Well, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, there are addition alternate characters!!!

As Dave points out there is an additional alternate N (It is wider) and an O (it is almost perfectly round). I cannot however find an alternate W in any of my fonts. In the lowercase, there is an alternate n (same styling as the alternate m), an alternate o (wider) and an alternate s (“swan-like” -shorter/smaller at the top and fuller at the bottom).

I should also note that the number of alternate N and O in my cases is VERY small (in fact only one is some cases) so they are probably really rare. I would love to see what the alternate W looks like if anyone has one of those.

Rick

Rick,
Here’s a shot of the two sizes that I have, at my present location (12- & 18-point) The ‘W’ is shown in both fonts, so I don’t think that they are wrong-fonts. If it does not show-up on Briar, I will give a Flickr address in the next post.
Dave

image: Camelot 001.JPG

Camelot 001.JPG