Figgins Tuscan was designed by Vincent Figgins and published by HiH. Figgins Tuscan consists of 1 style. p > Early in the 19th century, foundries began releasing a variety of embellished decorative letters based on the Tuscan letterform. Fancy Tuscan letters quickly became so popular, they ultimately came to represent the chaotic extremes of Victorian style. Foundries took on each other to produce most extravagantly decorated letterforms. As typically occurs, success relied on excess.

What is typically ignored is the long history of the Tuscan style. Early examples have been traced back to ancient Rome. Indeed, the characteristic bifurcation might have represented a fishtail to the early Christians, thus sharing in the roll of symbolic identification played by the basic drawing of a fish as a whole. Later. trifurcation was established as an alternate termination, followed by loops, full fishtails, curls, hooks and other expensive variations.

Nicolete Gray provides a comprehensive history in her Appendix Among NINETEENTH CENTURY ORNAMENTED TYPEFACES. According to Gray, the first metal typeface based on the Tuscan form was the Ornamented of 1817 by Vincent Figgins of London. Thorowgood followed suit in 1821, Fry in 1824 and Caslon in 1830. Each was to re-visit the type often times throughout the Victorian era.

Here we provide our interpretation of what Figgins may have produced in a fundamental, plain Tuscan kind - without the decorative additions. We are quite safe here due to the fact that Figgins was really innovative. He explored much of the terminal variations noted above and integrated them with various ornamental gadgets to produce a constant stream of brand-new faces to satisfy the demands of the marketplace.

Figgins Tuscan ML represents a major extension of the initial release, with the following modifications:

1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. There are also a few glyphs for Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic and Old Gaelic. Overall of 355 glyphs.

2. Added OpenType GSUB design features: aalt, ornm and liga ˜ with total 34 lookups.

3. Added 351 kerning pairs.

4. Revamped several glyphs: the comma, quotes, brackets, braces, severe accent, and serious accent.

5. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing.

Please note that some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (approximately 221 glyphs).

The zip bundle consists of 2 variations of the typeface at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which remains in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF variation which remains in Open TT (True Type) format. Use whichever works finest for your applications.

Font Family: Figgins Tuscan

Tags: 1800s, all caps, bifurcated, caps only, commercial, decorative, english, retro, tuscan