TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Apr 15 05:52:14 EDT 2024
FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE
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Bruce Mikita
Faux Chinese font from Bruce's Type Foundry, 1867, originating from Bruce's Ornamented no. 1048. Paul Shaw notes: Mikita is considered by type historians to be the oldest ethnic type since it has an "Asian" quality and can be traced back to a design by Bruce's New York Type Foundry in 1867. But that face, created by Julius Herriet, Sr., underwent a number of name changes, based on how it was perceived over the years. Originally called Bruce's Ornamented no. 1048, it was copied in England the following year by the foundry of J.&R.M. Wood, which named it Novel. Bruce later renamed it Rustic Shaded, a descriptive name that suggests a cabin's carpentry. But in the mid-'50s, when Charles Broad, the owner of Typefounders of Phoenix, dubbed it Mikita, the letters must have been equally suggestive of Japanese woodworking. A decade or so later, the Visual Graphics Corporation, a leading manufacturer of display phototype fonts, offered it as Bruce Mikita (TB-29). The digital version of the typeface was created in 2000 by Harold Lohner of Harold's Fonts. Although unaware of the type's history-on his website, Lohner asks, "Who was Bruce Mikita?"-Lohner recognized the font's latent qualities, writing, "It seems handcrafted and rustic and suggests East Asian calligraphy." Lohner based his version on a showing of the typeface in Dan X. Solo's Victorian Display Alphabets (1976). Interestingly, Solo, the owner of Solotype Typographers, considered the typeface Victorian rather than Japanese. |
EXTERNAL LINKS |
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file name: J R M Wood Novel 1868 Bruce New York 1867
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Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html |