Charles Lloyd Quartet — The Flowering album art
Contributed by Robert Beatty
on Jun 1st, 2025. Artwork published in
.
Album cover for The Flowering by the Charles Lloyd Quartet, released in 1971 on Atlantic Records. Designed by prolific album designer Haig Adishian using Davison Fandango Ornamental and a painting by Jacques Richez.
4 Comments on “Charles Lloyd Quartet — The Flowering album art”
I’ve just recently seen this:
(from luc.devroye.org/fonts-48235…). I think Fandango could be based on this, as well as Algonquin and other Othello-esque typefaces & ornaments.
This general style was popular in lithography and engraving, and there was likely some cross-pollination going on between the worlds of type and lettering. I’ve linked to an example from 1888 in the comments to a Use of Algonquin.
The book that Devroye mentions, Studies in Pen Art by William Edward Dennis (1860–1924, pdf with bio by Dr. Joseph M. Vitolo), was published in 1914, but Dennis’s Sickels Alphabet is older, and was reproduced in 1901. Agreed – it’s likely that Dave Davison, the designer of Fandango, was inspired by it. But I don’t think it preceded Algonquin (1890), at least not this specific specimen.
The University of Scranton has a better reproduction of the other alphabet shown by Devroye – the one with the (18)98 date – there credited to Charles Paxton Zaner. It was reproduced in 1900 and termed a “Single Line Center alphabet”.
There were other artists working in this style, see a Sickels Alphabet by F.W. Tamblyn, shown in 1905, and one by Henry W. Flickinger from about 1904, as well as applications by Clinton Skillman (1904), A.W. Kimpson (1910), Patrick W. Costello (1917), and Samuel E. Bartow (1920).
Oops, I didn’t mean to word it like that. I had meant to say that Fandango does seem like it is based solely on prior lettering such as Algonquin, etc. My apologies :P although thanks for the additional type history! I really love diving into the details of everything design related.
All fine! It would be interesting to dive deeper into the evolution of this style, and trace the timeline in more detail. Stephen made a start years ago, focusing on typefaces.
Fandango comes closer to Dennis’s Sickels Alphabet than other models I’ve seen. Not only regarding the ornamentation, but also the vertical slit-like counters with the asymmetrical round terminals.