Pencraft, from Intellecta Design has a mixed source. The capitals were inspired in “Swagger Capitals”, a original design from Carl Stephen Junge, at Barnhart Brothers & Spindler. Carl was an illustrator and poster designer in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, who lived from 1880. This font can be found at the 1922 BBS catalog.
The lowercases have an interesting source. Pencraft has a long history in the north-american typography. It was first designed by Hermann Ihlenburg, born in Germany in 1843 where he studied art and worked for several German type foundries. He emigrated to the USA in 1866 and worked for the L. Johnson & Co. foundry, later MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan. Ihlenburg died July 31, 1905 in Philadelphia. Sidney Gaunt, working as a type designer for Barnhart Brothers & Spindler foundry, in Chicago, added in 1914 the Pencraft Oldstyle series (BB&S later ATF). Pencraft, from Intellecta, is a free-interpretation from Pencraft Specials, a ornamental variation (with few lowercase, an incomplete alphabete) from Pencraft Oldstyle series, as displayed in the BBS catalog from 1922. The research and development of this font is work by Chyrllene K, a new, and welcome designer at Intellecta.
In time: the OpenType version of this font has over of 100 alternates letters by your choice. And it contains the complete Latin alphabet, including Central European, Vietnamese, Baltic and Turkish with all diacritic signs and punctuation marks.
