Artcraft is an

Old Style Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, they refer to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries betwe ...

typeface engraved in 1912 by

Robert Wiebking Robert Wiebking (1870–1927) was a German-American engraver typeface designer who was known for cutting type matrices for Frederic Goudy from 1911 to 1926. Life and career Robert Wiebking was born in Schwelm, Germany in 1870, he emigrated to Ch ...

for ''Wiebking, Hardinge & Company'' which ran the Advance Type Foundry. It was originally called ''Craftsman,'' then ''Art-Craft,'' before finally becoming ''Artcraft.'' After Advance was sold to the Western Type Foundry in 1914, Wiebking added ''Artcraft Bold'' and ''Artcraft Italic.'' After Western was sold to Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (a subsidiary of

American Type Founders American Type Founders (ATF) Co. was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries, representing about 85 percent of all type manufactured in the United States at the time. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typogr ...

) the face was sold by both BB&S and ATF. ''Artcraft'' is typical of the turn-of-the-century's Chicago School of Hand Lettering: a decorative serif design intended for advertisement text more than book body setting. Other types based upon advertising and hand-lettering were developed around the same time, such as Frederic Goudy's ''Pabst'' (1902) and ''Powell'' (1903), as well as Oz Cooper's ''Packard'' (1913). The face retained a wide popularity for more than two decades. Wiebking, whose reputation was based upon his collaboration as a matrix cutter for other designers, occasionally ventured a design of his own. Though he is usually credited with creating ''Artcraft,'' type historian Alexander Lawson believes that the type was probably created by Edmund C. Fischer.

Other versions

''Artcraft'' was copied for machine composition by

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...

and for hand casting by

Ludlow Ludlow ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is located south of Shrewsbury and north of Hereford, on the A49 road (Great Britain), A49 road which bypasses the town. The town is near the conf ...

. The Ludlow matrices were cut by R. Hunter Middleton. There is also a face known as ''Art and Craft'' cast by

Stephenson Blake Stephenson Blake is an engineering company based in Sheffield, England. The company was active from the early 19th century as a type founder, remaining until the 1990s as the last active type foundry in Britain, since when it has diversified in ...

which might be the same thing. The face was later made available in

cold type Phototypesetting is a method of setting type which uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing which gave rise to digit ...

and digital versions are now offered by the Font Company,

URW++ URW Type Foundry GmbH (formerly URW++ Design & Development GmbH) is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the dev ...

, and

Ascender Corporation Ascender Corporation was a digital typeface foundry and software development company in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. It was founded in 2004 by a team of software developers, typographers, and people previously involved in dev ...

References

{{reflist Serif typefaces Letterpress typefaces Photocomposition typefaces Digital typefaces American Type Founders typefaces Display typefaces