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Castine Font Family

There’s a very old cemetery in Castine, Maine—a lovely coastal town with a surviving crop of stately old American elms. Dating back into the 1700s, the cemetery’s headstones have the familiar old domed-tablet shape, some topped by winged skulls. Thanks to the Castine Historical Society, I got my hands on a couple of epitaph rubbings and modeled a typeface after the lost stone carving style peculiar to the time and place. Castine (the font) has a melancholy, wistful, nostalgic air—and is frankly just a little bit spooky. Its long, sharp serifs and slight uneveness recall simpler times when character meant more than precision. Spaced loosely in display situations, it has a broken-in feel—like comfortable shoes.