Read Mrs. Collins’s recent article in PRINT Magazine on stationery engravers lettering styles from the last century. Here’s an excerpt:
“Many social stationery fonts, such as London Script and Bank Gothic, have origins in letterpress printing. Amazingly, there are over three hundred more lettering styles from another source, social stationery engraving. Most of these have never been digitized and are still found in the Cronite Masterplate library. This article explains Masterplate technology and a little about how the Cronite library came to be.”
When not engaged in creating monograms and ciphers from scratch, Nancy Sharon Collins spends much of her working time pouring over this catalog’s offerings. Every time she browses the engraved pages, now more than 50 year old, she finds an amazing style looking new to her! As much as, and possible more than monograms, Mrs. Collins loves working with the lettering styles in this incredible, and arcane, library.