Some of the most extravagantly flourished capitals you’ll see, from another of those books with an unwieldy title, Kunstrichtige Schreibart : allerhand Versalie[n] oder AnfangsBuchstabe[n] der teütschen, lateinischen und italianischen Schrifften aus unterschiedlichen Meistern der edlen Schreibkunst zusammen getragen (1655). The authors are credited as Paul Franck, Paul Fürst and Christoph Gerhard but it’s Franck’s name I know from a book of type designs, and it was a search for better examples of these letters which led me to the Internet Archive who have scans of the entire book. This is the place where European lettering design approaches the bravura elaborations of Arabic calligraphy.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gramato-graphices
• John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems
• Letters and Lettering
• Studies in Pen Art
• Flourishes