Petrarka may be described as a Condensed, Sans-Serif, Semi-Fatface Roman. Huh? Bear with me on this. The Fatface is a name given to the popular nineteenth-century romans that where characterized by an extremity of contrast between the thick and thin stroke. The earliest example that is generally familiar is Thorowgood, believed to have been designed by Robert Thorne and released by Thorowgood Foundry in 1820 as "Five-line Pica No. 5." Copied by many foundries, it became one of the more popular advertising types of the day. Later, in the period from about 1890 to 1950, you find a number of typeface designs with the thin stroke beefed up a bit, not quite so extreme. What you might call Semi-Fatfaced Romans begin to replace the extreme Fatfaces. Serifed designs like Bauer’s Bernard Roman Extra Bold and ATF’s Bold Antique appear. In addition, we see the development of semi-fatface lineals or Sans-Serif Semi-Fatfaces. Examples include Britannic (Stephenson Blake), Chambord Bold (Olive), Koloss (Ludwig & Mayer), Matthews (ATF) and Radiant Heavy (Ludlow). Petrarka has much in common with this latter group, but is distinguished by two salient features: it is condensed and it shows a strong blackletter influence, as seen in the ‘H’ particularly. More…

Petrarka was released about 1900 by the German foundry of Schelter & Giesecke of Leipzig and is one of the designs of the period that attempts to reconcile roman and blackletter traditions. This font includes the accented letters for both the western & central European character sets. Also included with the font are several alternative characters: a conventional H, a conventional L, a conventional T, a script T (based on Carolingian miniscule and used in the original release by Schelter & Giesecke), four ampersands (one conventional at #172 and three based on a script E) and an alternative $ sign. In all, there are over 400 glyphs in Petrarka ML.

Making a cameo appearance in this Multi-Lingual font is the Anglo-Saxon letter yogh (#729), which, along with the thorn and the eth, is always useful for preparing flyers in Old English. There are still pockets of resistance to the Norman French influence that washed up on England’s shores in 1066. This font stands with King Canute, seeking to hold back the tide (ignoring the fact that Canute was a Dane). Support the fight to preserve Anglo-Saxon culture. Buy Petrarka ML today.

Petrarka Initials brings together the Petrarka upper case letters with a very sympatico Art Nouveau rendering of a female face. The Initials are based on the ANSI 1252 character set and, unlike the regular ML font, does not included the extended character set. The Initials do, however, include the accented uppercase as well as the alternate H & T at positions 123 and 125. A blank frame is at 135 and the Art Nouveau face by itself is at 177. As the gallery image shows, Petrarka Initials is very useful for setting poetry and acrostics.