Antiquarian was inspired by the hand-lettered headlines and captions that appear on an original page of “Atlas Historique, ou Nouvelle Introduction a L’Histoire’—a world atlas published by Henri Abraham Chatelain between 1705 and 1732 in Amsterdam—that I picked up at an antique book shop in London in 2004. (It’s a kindred font to Antiquarian Scribe, an oblique script used in the body copy on the same page.) With its wide serifs, low x-height, heavy uppercase characters, and raggedy outlines, Antiquarian has a uniquely historical personality, while remaining legible enough for use in text-type applications.
The OpenType release has many additional features, including true small capitals, numerous ligatures, alternate/titling caps, old-style and lining figures, antique map ornaments, and Greek and Central/Eastern European alphabets.
