Font Forum

I saw a short television news item yesterday that a copy of Magna Carta, said to be the only one in private ownership, is to be sold at auction. They mentioned 1297 which was new to me as I know that the original dates from 1215 when King John was King of England. I knew that his son King Henry III had reaffirmed Magna Carta, but he reigned until 1272. In 1297 King Edward I, son of King Henry III was King of England.

A quick picture was shown. Medieval hand written and there seemed to be some red capitals amongst the black lettering, yet it was only a quick showing and then it was gone! "Font" I thought!

So now I am hoping to find a picture from which a test font can be produced.

I have started by searching at http://www.yahoo.com using the following keywords.

Magna Carta auction

A number of links came up in the search.

So, the search is on for an image!

William Overington

28 September 2007

Try the British Library

Somebody already beat you to it William -- IN FACT using Font Creator !!

Here's a copy ....

http://rapidshare.com/files/58974241/Magna_Carta.ttf

Dick

Thank you to both of you for your postings.

The best image of the version in the auction that I have found so far is at the following web page, by clicking on the multimedia image which is on the left some way down the page.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/nyregion/25magna.html

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007 ... APHIC.html

I did a screen print and produced a bmp and then imported the image into FontCreator. The E came out quite well, but the rest seems too small to work well.

I have found a webspace for the National Archives (of the United States of America).

http://www.archives.gov/

I have not been able to locate any image of the Magna Carta there.

I have found the following webspace.

http://www.sothebys.com/

At that page is the following pdf.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ ... 133469.pdf

William Overington

29 September 2007

It looked like Bhikkhu Pesala's

Try the British Library

would give you very fine detail (on their version) - enough in fact to get to the individual letter. Very nice zoom feature.

I was surprised to read that For Sale version had been owned by Ross Perot, ex-American presidential candidate and in fact local Texas-boy... would be curious why they thought now was the time to sell... housing market can't be that bad.

DP

The following reports what happened at the auction.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ ... 152137.pdf

William Overington

22 December 2007