vga256 on Nostr: REQ: the origins of these floral victorian style dropcaps. i've been fascinated with ...

REQ: the origins of these floral victorian style dropcaps.

i've been fascinated with this one particular set for decades, and I've never been able to figure out where exactly they came from.

a few things i do know about them:
1. they existed in 1985 because they were used on the cover of Ultima IV (US Gold edition/Commodore 64/UK/Europe) https://www.mobygames.com/game/884/ultima-iv-quest-of-the-avatar/cover/group-39244/cover-20321/

2. they were used as a complete set of alphabetic decorative stamps by Anita's Stamps in 1995. the *entire* alphabet exists as a stamp.

3. searches of all the popular image sites have yielded only a few letters like the ones attached. I've found six of 26 letters.

given that the entire alphabet was created, it *seems* like this would have been something sold commercially to typesetting shops as a complete set of movable type, but it is equally possible it existed only in hand-inked form in a book of some kind.

image source: centurylibrary.com

#typography