The Arts and Crafts Movement of the 1890s was led by private press printer, socialist, furniture and fabric designer William Morris, who hoped to reintroduce high standards of handcrafted work to industrialized Britain.

In type design, Morris looked to the fifteenth-century Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson and based his Golden Type on Jenson’s letterforms, upon which the English Monotype Corporation, in turn, based Italian Oldstyle in 1911.

Monotype Italian Old Style makes a fine text face, and can be a good display type in its larger sizes.