Artcraft (typeface)

Artcraft is an Old Style typeface engraved in 1912 by Robert Wiebking for Wiebking, Hardinge & Company which ran the Advance Type Foundry. It was originally called Craftsman, then Art-Craft, before finally becoming Artcraft. After Advance was sold to the Western Type Foundry in 1914, Wiebking added Artcraft Bold and Artcraft Italic. After Western was sold to Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (a subsidiary of American Type Founders) the face was sold by both BB&S and ATF.[1]

Artcraft
CategorySerif
ClassificationOld Style
Designer(s)Robert Wiebking
FoundryAdvance Type Foundry
Date released1912
Re-issuing foundriesWestern Type Foundry
Barnhart Brothers & Spindler
American Type Founders
Ludlow
Monotype

Artcraft is typical of the turn-of-the-century's Chicago School of Hand Lettering: a decorative serif design intended for advertisement text more than book body setting. Other types based upon advertising and hand-lettering were developed around the same time, such as Frederic Goudy's Pabst (1902) and Powell (1903), as well as Oz Cooper's Packard (1913). The face retained a wide popularity for more than two decades.

Wiebking, whose reputation was based upon his collaboration as a matrix cutter for other designers, occasionally ventured a design of his own. Though he is usually credited with creating Artcraft, type historian Alexander Lawson believes that the type was probably created by Edmund C. Fischer.[2]

Other versions

Artcraft was copied for machine composition by Monotype and for hand casting by Ludlow. The Ludlow matrices were cut by R. Hunter Middleton.[3] There is also a face known as Art and Craft cast by Stephenson Blake which might be the same thing.[4]

The face was later made available in cold type and digital versions are now offered by the Font Company, URW++, and Ascender Corporation.[5]

gollark: What we need is domes.
gollark: Um, are you forgetting the poisonous atmosphere?
gollark: As I said, we control one probe (maybe KAL would let us manage the one fork too), collaboratively.
gollark: No, we all control one probe.
gollark: Also, before repowering the reactor, make sure to make/update a backup of the AI which the other probe (the asteroid mining one) can read.

References
  1. MacGrew, Mac, American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, Oak Knoll Books, New Castle Delaware, 1993, ISBN 0-938768-34-4, p. 17.
  2. Provan, Archie, and Alexander S. Lawson, 100 Type Histories (volume 1), National Composition Association, Arlington, Virginia, 1983. pp. 18–19.
  3. MacGrew, p. 17.
  4. Millingoton, Roy Stephenson Blake: The Last of the Old English Typefounders Oak Knoll Press, New Castle Delaware, 2002, ISBN 1-58456-086-X, p. 226.
  5. "Artcraft Pro". Identifont. 1999-02-22. Retrieved 2011-10-20.
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