Category: Press and typeface identification
Later topic: Full Cyrillic mat photos Help ID?
Earlier topic: Please help me with this type

Bamboozled by Blackletter Founts!

Hi, I need help identifying a couple of blackletter founts I bought recently as part of a package. I have got the first one down as Festival Text, a Stephenson Blake issue but not found much more. There are three in total, with three images of each…

Many thanks in anticipation of your responses!

Chris

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Your first three photos show Washington Text, patented in 1904 by S.M. Weatherly and introduced by the Keystone Type Foundry in 1905. It is distinguished by the long starting strokes on many of the capitals and was described by Theodore Lowe DeVinne as “graceful as an ox of one horn.”

The other two don’t easily come to mind. Are there pinmarks on the fonts to identify their makers? That is generally a great starting point when searching for the names of fonts. I suspect that they may have been produced in Europe.

Thankyou - Washington Text it is. I like the description too - it is a curious style - a blackletter and celtic mix but does have one or two interesting forms, particularly the uppercase W shown on the second image, but all in all it is a rather inelegant style.

I cannot find any pinmarks on the type, but there are some Stephenson Blake marks on the spacing material that it was bundled with. I don’t know if that is accurate though because a lot of the spacing material I have with other founts is marked the same. I have exhausted my rather limited SB&Co. resources and drawn a blank with the other two. I thought the third one (my mistake before) was Festival Text, but on closer inspection, this is wrong as there are additional strokes and details on many of the lower case letters.

Chris