Deepdene is a

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

Frederic Goudy Frederic William Goudy ( ; March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers ...

from 1927–1933. It belongs to the "old-style" of serif font design, with low contrast between strokes and an oblique axis. However, Deepdene has crisp serifs and a nearly upright italic, with much less of a slant than is normal for this style. Issued by the American branch of

Lanston Monotype Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...

, Deepdene was popular on its release and often used for the body text of books. Several digitisations have been created. Deepdene is named after Goudy's home in Marlborough-on-Hudson. This was itself named for the road on which he previously lived in

Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

Design

Goudy described the design as loosely inspired by "a Dutch type which had just been introduced;" Goudy's friend Paul Bennett suggested in later life that this was

Jan van Krimpen Jan van Krimpen (12 January 1892, in Gouda, South Holland, Gouda – 20 October 1958, in Haarlem) was a Dutch typographer, book designer and type designer. He worked for the printing house Joh. Enschedé, Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé. He also wo ...

's Lutetia although

Walter Tracy Walter Valentine Tracy RDI (14 February 1914 – 28 April 1995) was an English type designer, typographer and writer. Biography Walter Tracy was born in Islington, London and attended Shoreditch Secondary school. At the age of fourteen he wa ...

writes that the attribution cannot be certain. He also later created a medium weight, bold and bold italic. Goudy's biographer D. J. R. Bruckner praised the design as "the type that brings together the most characteristics of Goudy types the best". Goudy later created a

blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter or black-letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for ...

design, Deepdene Open Text and the derived Deepdene Text, which was intended to complement it for purposes such as initial capitals. The designs are not related otherwise. The family in metal type included: * Deepdene (1927,

Continental Continental may refer to: Places * Continental, Arizona, a small community in Pima County, Arizona, US * Continental, Ohio, a small town in Putnam County, US Arts and entertainment * ''Continental'' (album), an album by Saint Etienne * Continen ...

, later rereleased by

) Changes were made to fit Monotype's

hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mo ...

system, which placed restrictions on what widths characters could be. * Deepdene Italic (1929), matrices cut by Goudy's wife Bertha. ** Deepdene Medium (1931), designed for

but apparently never cast. * Deepdene Bold + Bold Italic (c. 1933-4,

)

Digitisations

Deepdene has been digitised and released by several organisations and software companies. P22's digitisation under their LTC imprint perhaps uniquely includes the swash capitals and

small caps In typography, small caps (short for small capitals) are grapheme, characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. Small caps are used i ...

in italics. The

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

"League of Movable Type" project has released an open-source digitisation, "Linden Hill", by Barry Schwartz, in regular and italic with swashes but without bold weights.

References

Notes

{{notelist, 30em

External links

Swamp Press specimen, Ed Rayher
(includes Deepdene in metal type on p. 32) Old style serif typefaces Typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy Monotype typefaces Letterpress typefaces