ATF 1923 Catalog: Artcraft Series

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ATF 1923 Catalog: Artcraft Series [Robert Wiebking] Showcasing the best pages from the Artcraft Series in the ATF 1923 Catalog. Artcraft&Bold&Italic are display typefaces originally designed for Barnhart Bros&Spindler by Robert Wiebking (1911-1913). Jaspert lists Artcraft as a 1930 publication at Ludlow, and Klingspor as Western Type Foundry typefaces from 1911 until 1913. Mac McGrew: Artcraft was designed in 1912 by Robert Wiebking and featured under the name of Craftsman in the first ad for his short-lived Advance Type Foundry, operated by Wiebking, Hardinge&Company, in Chicago. A short time later, the typeface was advertised as Art-Craft, and later as one word---Artcraft. Advance was soon taken over by Western Type Foundry, for whom Wiebking designed Artcraft Italic and Artcraft Bold a year or two later. Western in turn was taken over by Barnhart Brothers&Spindler in 1918. BB&S was already owned by ATF but operated separately until 1929; in the meantime, though, Artcraft and a number of other typefaces were shown in ATF specimens as well as those of BB&S. Artcraft has an unusual roundness in some of its serifs and line endings and a line of it produces a rolling feeling; some characters have curlicues, such as the long curl at the top of the a and and the exaggerated ear on the g. A number of auxiliary characters were made for roman and italic fonts; as these were sold separately, they were overlooked by many printers and typographers. The boldface has fewer eccentricities. Artcraft was a popular typeface for a number of years; the roman was copied by Monotype in 1929 without the fancy characters, and all three typefaces were copied by Ludlow. Adaptation in 1924 of Artcraft Italic to the standard 17-degree slant of Ludlow italic matrices was the second assignment of Robert H. Middleton (after Eusebius, q.v.) at that company. Hansen called it Graphic Arts. One source attributes the Artcraft family to Edmund C. Fischer, otherwise unidentified, but the details stated here are more generally accepted and seem to fit known facts better. Digital versions: Artcraft (2001, URW). Federlyn NF (2011, Nick Curtis). Artcraft Pro (Jim Ford at Ascender). OPTI Artcraft (Castcraft). APT New Artcraft (1996, Alan Jay Prescott).	EXTERNAL LINKS MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Type scene in Illinois ⦿ Arts and Crafts Movement ⦿ Nick Curtis ⦿