LTC Italian Oldstyle
Lanston Original Series no. 243

Italian Old Style, designed by Frederic Goudy in 1924, was digitized in 2007 by Paul Hunt. In 2013, it has been updated by James Grieshaber to include all original ligatures plus small caps and expanded language coverage. This font is not to be confused with the English Monotype font also called Italian Old Style, which is an earlier design from 1911 based on the William Morris Golden Type, which was itself based on Nicholas Jenson’s Roman face. Goudy went back to the original Jenson Roman design and other Renaissance Roman faces for his inspiration and the result is what many consider to be the best Renaissance face adapted for modern use.

Bruce Rogers was one of the biggest admirers of this face. He designed the original specimen book for Italian Oldstyle in 1924 using his trademark ornament arrangement. This specimen is a classic example of Rogers’s design and Italian Oldstyle in an exceptional setting.

With most digitizations of old typefaces, one source size is often used as reference (as was Goudy’s method for cutting his own Village foundry types) so that all sizes refer to one set of original artwork. The original metal fonts made by Lanston Monotype (from Goudy’s drawings) and other manufacturers used two or three masters for different size ranges to have optimal relative weights. Smaller point sizes would need proportionally thicker outlines as to not appear thin and larger sizes would require thinner lines as to not appear too bulky. The variations in size ranges can also be affected by the size of the cutter head in making the master patterns. The light Roman & Italic  of LTC Italian Oldstyle were digitized from the larger display sizes (14, 18, 24, 30, 36 pt.) and the regular weights were digitized from smaller composition sizes (8, 10, 12 pt.).

The re-creation of the Bruce Rogers 1924 design on the obverse of this card uses the light for sizes 24-36, regular is used for size 8-18. The fitting for the regular weights is noticeably looser to allow for better setting at small sizes. Very few font revivals take this approach. The Roman fonts in this set also include all of the ornaments used by Rogers to create the covers of the Italian Oldstyle Specimen book.