Bernice

The good folks at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum asked me to design an ornament font for their “new” (as in newly discovered and refubished) wood stamping machine as part of the Wood Type Legacy Project. The machine is a little complex, so I designed a set of simple glyphs that can be rotated and combined to make all sorts of different ornaments. This font is also co-developed as a digital font by P22.

Here’s how it works. The first glyph is assigned in different rotational and flipped positions to the letters abcd & ABCD. You can use it very simply, by typing patterns of letters row on row, abababab/cdcdcdcd or ababab/ABABAB etc. or you can mix it up by typing more complex combinations.

The second glyph is assigned in different rotational and flipped positions to the letters ehfg & EFGH. As before and always you can make simple patterns or more complex ones.

etc.

You can also mix them together for more complex borders and patterns. The number of combinations is probably infinite.

The font was named by Hamilton for retired type trimmer Bernice Schwahert. You can buy the digital version for $25US here, or you can go to The Hamilton museum in Two Rivers, WI, and ask to use the wood version in their shop.

2016