Maybe something like this?
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/castletype/plantain-stencil/

By the way, do you checked these?
http://new.myfonts.com/search/stencil/
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=114

Thank you.

A typical port house might declare a vintage of a few thousand cases: call it twenty thousand bottles. Some houses many more. So the physical stencils had to be very robust.

Plantain Stencil has several delicate cuts, not needed for the purpose of holding together a metal stencil, and delicate in appearance. E.g., compare with example 1 the ‘K’ (top-right cut) and ‘N’ (both cuts redundant).

From the other list the obvious choice is Stencil Antiqua, which has the same problem in the ‘5’ and the ‘N’, though the ‘K’ is excellent.

I’m after a robust stencil, in style late-Victorian or early-20C English. These modern stencils could withstand hundreds of thousands of digital uses, but not twenty thousand physical bottles.

Edit: happy to cough up for the right font. But not to pay thousands.

Arno: that’s very fair, but partly flowing from my failing to express myself clearly.

I don’t know how much work it is to derive a stencil font. If a pile of labour, then that’s difficult. Paying thousands for a custom corporate typeface exceeds my budget. But — what I meant, even I failed to say — if somebody is willing to add such a typeface to their library of fonts for sale at ‘usual’ cost, I’d buy one. If many copies can be sold, fabulous, more money to the designer.

Rephrased,
> payment can only be in the form of acknowledgement.
is missing the word “material”.

Is that reasonable?

Mmh, I don’t know, where the word material is missing, because a material acknowledgement would be more than only an acknowledgement.

if somebody is willing to add such a typeface to their library of fonts for sale at ‘usual’ cost, I’d buy one.

This would be naturally okay. But I doubt, that the designer can simply make a stencil font from one of his existing fonts, because the outlines cannot become arbitrary broken. And most fonts could probably not changed in that way, at least not, if they shall not be pure deco stencils. It probably would be less work than creating a stencil font from the scratch and not necessarily worse. But if the designer was not already interested in creating such a font, he probably is asking, how big the market for such a font is.

To get back to your original question, yes, there are a LOT of stencil typefaces with a large character set that would meet your needs. Have you looked through some of the offerings out there? For instance, a quick search on veer:

http://search.veer.com/vintage+stencil

You'll want to check the character set before purchasing, of course, but more than a few of those should meet your requirements.

Check Jeff's Fonts next week and you'll see a close approximation to this font.

It's already launched.

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/jnlevine/mystery-stencil/

Sorry, that was posted in the wrong stencil font ID thread. But do look through Jeff's collection as he's digitized about a hundred stencils. http://new.myfonts.com/foundry/Jeff_Levine/

I think those would do as Stencils as the serifs are most likely rounded and softened in the stencil painting process on the bottles.

> A man of good taste—albeit impractical transport arrangements.

Yes, I realized that after checking your profile. And obviously, I was being a bit facetious.

> How about I throw in a large and very useful piece of software for organising tastings?

Well, my neighbor (and the source of most of my vintage port collection) is the publisher of Wine & Spirits magazine and he keeps me straightened out, so I’m afraid I have little use for tasting software. Sorry. ;-)

Julian, I think the challenge here is that you have very specific aesthetic requirements which any currently available face is unlikely to meet. There have been several reasonable approximations suggested, none of which is close enough for you.

I do understand why these don’t satisfy your sensibilities (I was just looking at some Kopke bottles the other day); but as you acknowledge, any font that does will not likely have any other commercial potential. So this project would essentially be a labor of love. And unless you can find someone with the skills and time *and* who shares your specific interest in this pet project, it’s not likely to materialize.

You may have to decide whether to compromise with one of the given suggestions, in order to get something at least a bit more suggestive of stenciled port bottles, or just stick with what you have. Finding a perfect match is looking unlikely.

Best of luck to you.

Blurred! {Thinks to self: how best to do that in PostScript, in a manner that doesn’t massively increase PDF file size? Hmmm.}

Edit, mostly as an aside to self: would a very slight greying suffice? gsave gsave 0.75 setgray 0.48 setlinewidth stroke grestore 0.5 setgray 0.24 setlinewidth stroke grestore 0 setgray fill ?

Drifting further off topic, and it’s all my fault…

The next tasting for which placemats are being prepared, Utrecht 9th July (thread), has placemats that are a mere 2¼k per page. (Cue the audience being impressed.) I’d like to keep things tight.

Size would obviously be increased by embedding fonts, but adding a stage in PhotoShop would increase production complexity, and reduce the number of machines that can use my code. Not so good. So I am really restricted to what can be done reliably in PostScript.

Would a thin (0.48 setlinewidth?) stroke in 0 setgray black achieve similar?

“(Caps and Numbers only?)”: sorry, smalls important too. Search above for “Roeda”.

Julian, the examples you posted in your first post are — as Darrel mentioned — Stencil Bold. Obviously distorted when the actual painting occurred. As noted, is does not contain any lower-case letters.

Looking though the thread on your forum I found this image, something slight different, a real stencil beaut:

Do you have any more pictures of/similar to this one?

This one seems nice:
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/joebob/billie-kid/regular/characters.html
But unfortunately it doesn't meet the diacritics' requirements.

I’m back from being away, and www.fontspring.com/classification/Stencil is indeed laden with Stencils.