There has also been the suggestion that Gundrada may have been the daughter of William's wife, Matilda of Flanders, by a previous marriage. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England 1921-22), both of these contentions are in dispute. Searching the past of a thousand years ago is like wandering in a heavy fog: facts are only dimly in view. Regardless, I know that I found these letterforms immediately engaging in their simplicity. Unadorned and unsophisticated, they have a direct honesty that rests well in the company of humanistic sans serifs like Franklin Gothic or Gill Sans, appealing to a contemporary sensibility.
The lettering on the tomb is in upper case only. Although Gundrada does not sound Norman French to me, her husband certainly and her father probably were Norman French. Nonetheless, the man that carved her tombstone was probably Anglo-Saxon, like most of the people. For that reason, we are quite comfortable with a fairly generic lower case from an Anglo-Saxon document of the time. The time was a time of transition, of contending language influences. This font reflects some of that tension.
Features
1. Multi-Lingual Font with 389 glyphs and 698 Kerning Pairs.
2. OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, dlig, liga, salt & hist.
3. Tabular Figures and Alternate Old-Style Figures.
4. Alternate Ruled Caps (line above and below, matching to brackets).
5. Central Europe, Western Europe, Turkish and Baltic Code Pages.
6. Additional accents for Cornish and Old Gaelic.
7. Stylistic alternates A, E, y and #.
8. Ligatures ST, Th, fi and fl.
9. Historic alternate longs.
The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.
Font Family: Gundrada ML
Tags: english, medieval, retro, revival