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Joseph Champion

Joseph Champion (b. Chatham, 1709, d. 1765) was a British calligrapher and penman. Champion contributed many plates to Bickham's Universal Penman. His most important work, The Parallel or Comparative Penmanship Exemplified, was published in 1750. It consists of reproductions of the work of foreign masters like Materot, Barbedor, Van den Velde, Perlingh and Maria Strick, with corresponding plates by Champion. Following these plates come some alphabets by Champion. His last published work was The Penman's Employment (1762).

The first known attempt to digitally implement Champion's alphabets, was in 1989 by French type designer François Boltana, who in Ligatures&calligraphie assistée par ordinateur (1995) proposed three copperplate calligraphic alphabets based on Champion. These did not result in a commercial font however. PF Champion Script Pro (Panos Vassiliou, 2004-2008; a winner at Paratype K2009) on the other hand has 4280 glyphs in each of its two styles, and it supports Latin, Greek and Cyrillic.

One of Champion's alphabets, dated 1733-1741. Samples of his penmanship from The Universal Penman (1730): i, ii.

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INTERNAL LINKS
Calligraphic typefaces ⦿ Greek/Coptic ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿ Type design in the United Kingdom ⦿ Penmanship ⦿ Copperplate ⦿