Any Font gurus here?W&B with unusual lettering

[oakeshott]

On my way to a music festival last week, stopped at an antique store and picked up this W&B. since it doesn't say "London" on the tang, doesn't that mean it is pre-1895? If so, wouldn't that date be incongruous with the type of font on the blade? It feels like the font is much more modern. The scales are clearly horn and the wedge is lead.

Oh, and yes, I practically stole it.

 

[Gamma]

I've had a few with that engraving, but I don't remember tang stamps.
I'm not sure about the dating thing either - I always have to research it. Sheffiled, England - something - not sure.

Anyway - cool blade. Bet it shaves well.

 

[oakeshott]

My daughter, graphic designer and font freak, says this so far:

I can't find anything old or new quite like it. It is different enough from the crappy wood-log fonts online, that I think it may be handrawn/original. There was a wide range of decorative outlandish lettering in the 1890s, so this may infact be original. What's odd, is that the font looks so much like these cheesey font.com fonts—I wonder where the hell the idea came from. This is intriguing, I'll keep investigating.

 

[Gamma]

The font is kinda campy - I dig it. I'd believe it's 1890sish or even earlier.
People did weird stuff back then too - etching was a big deal. I can see someone flexing their creativity by coming up with the log-font.

 

[WetWhiskers]

Not to belabor the obvious, but each of the "O"s is different, so it isn't a proper "font" so to speak.

Ww

 

[oakeshott]

Not to belabor the obvious, but each of the "O"s is different, so it isn't a proper "font" so to speak.

Ww

Whiskers,
You didn't belabor anything. Obvious to you, but not to me and that observation, totally missed by me, supports my daughter's comment that it looked handdrawn. I find that kind of cool. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

[Oscroft]

Not to belabor the obvious, but each of the "O"s is different, so it isn't a proper "font" so to speak

The two Ls are different too.

 

[ANeat]

In "Ames guide to Self Instruction in Practical and Artistic Penmanship" from 1884 they listed a couple different fonts with a similar look to the stuff on the Razor. They just had them labeled as rustic fonts.

 

[oakeshott]

In "Ames guide to Self Instruction in Practical and Artistic Penmanship" from 1884 they listed a couple different fonts with a similar look to the stuff on the Razor. They just had them labeled as rustic fonts.

Ok. I gots to ask:

How is it that you happen to have "Ames guide to Self instruction in Practical and Artistic Penmanship"? Also, is it available as an eBook?

 

[ANeat]

Ok. I gots to ask:

How is it that you happen to have "Ames guide to Self instruction in Practical and Artistic Penmanship"? Also, is it available as an eBook?

Well Ive always had an interest in, well just call it calligraphy, or other types of lettering. The IAMPETH has the book available in PDF. I just happened to be scanning thru it a couple weeks ago and seen the "log" fonts

http://www.iampeth.com/books/ames_guide/ames_guide_index.php

 

[WetWhiskers]

How is it that you happen to have "Ames guide to Self instruction in Practical and Artistic Penmanship"?

Well Ive always had an interest in, well just call it calligraphy, or other types of lettering. The IAMPETH has the book available in PDF. I just happened to be scanning thru it a couple weeks ago and seen the "log" fonts.

Man, just gotta LOVE this place!

Best regards,

Ww

 

[GreekGuy]

Very cool Mark!

If you think about the razors available during this period, there really wasn't much in the way of decoration. Most scales were black horn, which thankfully worked well. But there was no fancy spine work, no gold wash, I don't even think there were jimps at this point. So to have some etching on the blade was as much decoration as you got. And a big, bold font like that draws attention. It even stood out to you, 100 years later, having undoubtably seen countless W&Bs, not to mention other razors

 

[oakeshott]

Very cool Mark!

If you think about the razors available during this period, there really wasn't much in the way of decoration. Most scales were black horn, which thankfully worked well. But there was no fancy spine work, no gold wash, I don't even think there were jimps at this point. So to have some etching on the blade was as much decoration as you got. And a big, bold font like that draws attention. It even stood out to you, 100 years later, having undoubtably seen countless W&Bs, not to mention other razors

Too true, Nick, too true. What I can't understand though is why a "frontier" looking calligraphy (I'll no longer refer to it as a font per Ww) is used on an English razor. I'm going to guess that there was someone at W&B who was a fan of American culture at the time OR, they were marketing specifically to Americans and thought this is what we would like.

 

[ANeat]

Too true, Nick, too true. What I can't understand though is why a "frontier" looking calligraphy (I'll no longer refer to it as a font per Ww) is used on an English razor. I'm going to guess that there was someone at W&B who was a fan of American culture at the time OR, they were marketing specifically to Americans and thought this is what we would like.

That would be my guess, just appealing to a certain demographic. Similar to the razors they (W&B) cranked out with all the Chinese looking characters that as far as I ever heard didnt translate into anything