Fantasy and science fiction books often represent a refuge for novelty typefaces, both for contempary ones and such of yesteryear. The first edition of this collection of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith is no exception.

The painterly face with pronounced horizontal contrast was issued in 1898 by the Berlin-based Berthold foundry and its subsidiary Bauer & Co in Stuttgart. Initially named Artistic, the spelling was soon changed to Artistik after the 1902 reform. It was probably the fact that Ludwig Petzendorfer included this anonymous design in his Schriftenatlas, Neue Folge (1903–1905) which gave Artistik a second lease on life. Sometime in the 1970s, Letraset rediscovered the Art Nouveau cracker, and issued an adaptation for dry transfer lettering in their Letragraphica range.

Artistik is used for all text on the jacket (even for the ISBN). It also features for the title page as well as for headings and drop caps in the interior. The text typeface is much more sober: It’s Jan Tschichold’s Sabon. A Rendezvous in Averoigne was published by Arkham House, Sauk City, in 1988, with an introduction by Ray Bradbury.

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The book jacket was designed by Jeffrey K. Potter.

Title page. The title and the names on the typographic frontispiece are set in all caps, which is unbecoming for this typeface, at least with no extra letterspacing.

Contents and introduction.

Chapter title and drop cap in Artistik, with subchapter heading and running title in Sabon caps.

Inland (1895) in contemporary use for Inpatient Press’s edition of the Averoigne stories by Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) from 2019. With its undulating letterforms, Inland nicely echoes the hair reflected from the water surface in Clark Filio’s cover art. The particular font in use is Bizarrerie Bold (2010), a digital revival by Claude Pelletier. It’s paired with Lucas Le Bihan’s Sporting Grotesque (2016), a design informed by grotesques from the 1880s. Both typefaces are used with electronically condensed letterforms.

From Inpatient Press:

Finally collected in a signature single standalone edition, Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne is a testament of temptation and transcendence: corrupt sellswords, vengeful sorceresses, and time-warping dissident priests all play a part in these tales set in the louche groves of Smith's decadent imagination.

Printed in the style of the erstwhile Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy Series, Averoigne concludes the iconic five-book cycle begun by editor Lin Carter in 1970 and left unfinished until now.