Henri Abraham Chatelain was a cartographer and publisher of the famous Atlas Historique, ou Nouvelle Introduction a L'Histoire, a world atlas released between 1705 and 1732 in Amsterdam.

A few years ago, at an antique book shop in London, I bought a page from Chatelain’s atlas—a page covering the Near East, India, the Indian Ocean—that had a particularly alluring, oblique handlettering style. The text is in French, which gave me plenty of samples of diacritics and accented characters.

The overall effect is neat and legible, with a distinctly historical flair.