I will be speaking at TYPO Berlin "Sustain" next week and am currently hard at work on my entirely new presentation From Metal Scripts to Digital Writing. I trace back the reproduction of handwriting from the earliest scripts for letterpress to feature-rich OpenType fonts with artificial intelligence that mimic the decisions made by letterers and calligraphers. While I have most of my material down I feel like I could use some close-ups of letterpress type, illustrating the specific difficulties inherent to producing slanted glyphs on a rectangular body. I am particularly interested in overhangs and kerns, connections, type on a non-rectangular body, and so on. As I am touching on a wide variety of script styles I will gradually add to this post which images I have received, and which ones I think I still need.

Here's a number of examples of what I a looking for. However I would like to also have some extreme close-ups of overhangs and kerns.

24pt Civilité with 6pt floating accent (Stempel) cut in by hand. Photo © Justin Knopp

72pt Reiner Script capitals with overhang. Detail from photo © Interrobang Letterpress

24pt Berthold Boulevard with fractions. Photo © Interrobang Letterpress

:: UPDATE ::

Thomas Gravemaker sent me images of English-style copperplate scripts; a series on rectangular body and a series on slanted body.

Stéphane De Schrevel sent me these superb combos, showing both the type and the back side of the body, of two English-style copperplate scripts – one on rectangular and one on slanted body – and one wood type script on slanted body.

Sander Pinkse sent me these images of letterpress Mistral.

Header image:30pt unidentified English copperplate script. Photo © Humberto Aste