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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The Fell Types
Interference by the British Crown with printing and type founding had delayed developments in England during the period of the mid - late 16th century. However, the Bishop of Oxford Dr. John Fell had gathered together an important collection of printing types, mainly from France, Holland and Germany. With the assistance of Peter De Walpergen, Fell then created a number of typefaces, known as the Fell Types. Their features include short extenders, higher stroke contrast, narrowing of round letters and flattened serif on the baseline and the decenders. The Fell italics repeated the earlier French forms in that they were slanted irregularly and the capitals included Swash 'J' and 'Q' examples. Once Caslon's typefaces were introduced early in the 18th century the Fell Types became obsolete.

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