Help me to find the source of this font.

Hi Colleagues,

I need a help to find the source of a font. I will be very grateful
with yours wisdom, helping me to find the source of this font. The font is part of my graduate academic thesis, where I write about font revival and need, as part of the thesis, create my own revival.

The font is attached. I am working since many years in this revival and, unfortunatelly, the original source is actually lost and I cant remember where it comes from. Maybe the original name is signet, but I am not sure.

I need a help to fill the blanks. Is it possible?

Chyrllene K,
Intellecta Design

image: image.jpg

image.jpg

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I uploaded that image to whatfontis.com and it spit back

W.J. Pearce 213 - there is a link there for a download.

Just there if you need the complete font. Other than that I am of no help…

Hi Michael,

I do not need the font, but information about its origin.
Creator of the font, catalog, name, and other …

You know where to find the catalog it?

I have a little difficulty with the language, and did not understand what I meant with the line below. Please explain to me.

W.J. Pearce 213 - there is a link there for a download.

Thank You!

This was originally not type at all, but a design for hand lettering (there is a difference). I have not discovered any instance of its having been re-done as type during the metal type era.

It seems to have originated with the book
“Painting and Decorating” by Walter J. Pearce.
(London: Charles Griffin and Co., Ltd., 1898)
Several digitizations of this book are online at
The Internet Archive
Go to www.archive.org and search on:

pearce painting decorating

For example, the scan by the Smithsonian Institution Libraries is at:
https://archive.org/details/paintingdecorat00pear

It is shown on p. 209 (Plate 20) of this edition of Pearce as
“Original Alphabet, Modern”

This lettering alphabet was in turn collected in a
book by Lewis Foreman Day,
“Alphabets Old And New For The Use Of Craftsmen”
This appeared in various editions from 1898 onward.
The Third Edition (London: B. T. Batsford, no date)
is online in a pretty good scan done by the
Smithsonian Institution Libraries, at:

http://archive.org/details/alphabetsoldnewf00dayl

This lettering appears as No. 213 in Day’s book,
where it is captioned:
“213. Block Capitals.” W. J. Pearce”

The description of this plate (p. xxvii) says:

“213. Modern ‘Block’ Capitals - based chiefly on Roman.
W. J. Pearce. From ‘Painting and Decorating.’
C. Griffin & Co., Ltd.”

Modern digital “fonts” based on this lettering have
been done at least twice. The one distributed as
“W.J.Pearce 213” seems to have been done in 1997 by
Klaus Johansen. The original distribution of it
(copies are everywhere on “free font” sites of dubious credentials) is on his website at:

http://listemageren.dk/fontarkiv/Listemagerens-Fontarkiv.htm

(If you take a look at the files associated with any of these digital fonts, at a low level, you can generally find the names encoded in them; in this case, to find its source with Johansen, I grabbed a copy from a random site, viewed it using the good old-fashioned text editor “vi” under Linux, and saw:

Listemageren 1997

I plugged “Listemageren Pearce” into Google, and got back
to Johansen’s site.

According to Luc Devroye’s site at:
http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-51779.html
it has more recently been digitized by Dick Pape as
“LFDBlockCapitals213”

I must thank you for posting this query. Until just now I had been unaware of both Pearce’s book and Day’s. They are welcome additions to my bibliography on lettering.

Regards,
David M.
www.CircuitousRoot.com

Thank you David!
It’s certainly what I needed. Look all links and do a search, but surely this information will be of much help.

Thank you again!

All the best,
Chyrllene K