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Old English Lettering
Camelot, Beowulf, Digenis Acritas, the Canterbury Tales. If there is any period of history that will draw out the adventurer and the romantic in each of us, if there is one timeframe of history that makes us homesick for velvet, tapestry, chain mail and tattoo letter designs it’s the Early Middle Ages.
So little is known about this timeframe that it is very easy to slip into thinking of it as full of castles and dragons and fair maidens being rescued by knights in shining armor and Old English lettering tattoos.
The world was smaller then, and larger. Smaller because there was less land area that had been discovered; conquered. Larger because there was more scope for the imagination; great tracts of lands suspected but not yet discovered; unknown areas of maps marked with the intriguing legend “Here there be monsters.”
It was, in short, a time of transition; a time of great change and political upheaval, a time of adventure and discovery. New people, new countries, new foods new tattoo designs and spices at every turn and, at least in the land of Camelot the language of the day was known as Anglo-Saxon or Old English lettering was creating the underlying foundations of what would come to be known as the English language
It was spoken and written throughout what we now know of as England and south-eastern Scotland between the 5th and the 12th centuries. Thanks to the diligent efforts of the priests of the era we have segments of actual documents from that timeframe, showing us how the language was written, how the words were formed and how they took on an art form all of their own as did all the local tattoo parlors.
It is no wonder that in a day so filled with regulation and standardization that the adventure and mystery associated with Old English letters and its corresponding timeframe should come back into popularity. Just by using scripted letters one can convey a sense of uniqueness, of adventure, you can almost feel the stones of the castle walls and smell the sulfur of the dragon’s flame.
Old English Lettering Styled Fonts
Old English lettering from the Victorian era are very decorative and stylized. Many of them take on an engraved appearance, as engravings were a common means of illustration, apart from body art, at the time.