Muntheschrift vs Fabritius

At the Stavanger Graphics museum there is a small mention of Fabritius being the only lead type of Norwegian design. Inspired by the hand illustrated and lettered by by Gerhard Munthe of the ancient poem “Draumkvædet”. It’s taken a while to get around to looking for a digital version, being a blackletter font I don’t think I be using it any time soon.

I came across this fascinating article (Gerhard Munthe and the struggle for a typeface of the early Middle Ages) into the history of trying to get this font, from illustration to typeface and the failure of Muntheschrift to see the light of day. The long swishes on the example prints are fascinating, so too are the struggles to fit the typeface onto lead. The whole history of the typeface, with its mix of roman and gothic capitals, and inspiration from ancient texts is well worth a read.

While at the museum there were some print samples from a Ludlow print press - in Tempo. Tempo 😍 the Futura I never knew I loved, but sadly there is no digital recreation of it. “LudlowTempo” is not Tempo. Plumbing the depths of the internet for samples of Tempo, I learnt a bit more than needed about Ludlows type, from “# The Ludlow: Typographic Influence, 1931–1962”