Triptych
Pyte Foundry · Ellmer Stefan · 2019
A three-part family by Ellmer Stefan drawing on Victorian text typography, pairing a freely interpreted oldstyle Roman and Italick with a grotesque drawn from 19th-century sans-serif sources.
About
The Roman and Italick are loose, low-fidelity interpretations of Alexander Phemister's Old Style Antique No. 7, first issued in 1858, deliberately avoiding high-resolution source imagery to invite abstraction rather than faithful revival. The accompanying Grotesque is an extrapolation across a broad range of 19th-century European grotesques and American gothics, particularly in its Bold weight. The three styles are designed as a hierarchical typographic system, described by Pyte Foundry as utilitarian and economical, stripped of ornament.
Classification
Three-part family rooted in 19th-century Victorian text type, specifically Old Style Antique No. 7 by Alexander Phemister of Miller & Richard (1858), with an accompanying grotesque drawn from period sans-serif sources. The Roman and Italick sit firmly in the oldstyle serif tradition while the Grotesque extends the family into sans territory.