I designed Ayres Royal to honour London’s famous calligrapher John Ayres (about 1700). He designed calligraphy examples called The Accomplished Clerk, that were meant to be for the office clerk.

I doubt if there were many clerks in those times that were able to write such beautiful letters.

In order for the font to be of any use, I adjusted my Royal Bavarian Script to go together with the initials of John Ayres. The two fonts have to be used together, that’s why I am not selling them as singles.

It would be bad style to use the font with the initials only. In some languages, such as German, there are too many capital words and the many heavily-decorated initials would make longer texts very hard to read.

Your historical designer Gert Wiescher