The Vale Press was one of the Arts & Crafts presses founded in London in 1896 during the revival of fine book-making. The types used by the Vale Press were designed by artist Charles Ricketts, who also supervised the design and printing of Vale Press books. The main type used in Vale imprints was called the “Vale Type.” Vale, like William Morris’s Golden type, was based on the Jenson 15th century model and exemplifies the classic roman printing type style.
The King’s Fount was an experimental semi-uncial font based on the Vale type, and while a bit unusual, Ricketts was quite fond of his creation. The King’s Fount was designed in 1903 for the Vale edition of the 15h century poem “The Kingis Quair”. This semi-uncial font evokes old English and Anglo-Saxon lettering. Both Vale and King’s Fount share many characters designed by Ricketts. The digitization of these faces, by Colin Kahn, are true to the original design’s intentions but are drawn with clean, rather than distressed, outlines.
P22 Vale Pro combines the two fonts P22 Vale Roman and P22 Vale King’s Fount into one “Pro” font. This pro font also includes a Central European character set, old style figures, fractions, ornaments and a special faux “Middle English” feature to make “anee text appeer Olde.” This feature is not known to exist in any other font. For those without OpenType savvy applications, the single King’s and Roman fonts are included with the Pro set.
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https://www.p22.com/ihof/vale.html
This article was last modified on January 10, 2022
This article was first published on April 3, 2007
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