Give Them the Real John Hancock

Time was when the marketing of a fake da Vinci signature or Cezanne scrawl would land you in the pokey, or at least in a suspense film with David Niven. Nowadays, folks use famous signatures to sell sheets, so feel free to forge at will. And if you don’t have the penmanship, you can buy the font.

P22, a 5-year-old type foundry in Buffalo, N.Y., offers a wide variety of famous fists--da Vinci, Cezanne, Rodin, Michelangelo, van Gogh, and the just-released Frank Lloyd Wright, Maxfield Parrish and Edward Hopper. The packages include the alphabet in the artists’ handwriting (and for da Vinci, an extra set backward) as well as nifty little signature icons. The fonts can be installed on your home computer for use in designing Web pages and for word processing.

P22 also offers fonts based on writing and design style, from the obscure--Acropolis Now (classic Greek) and Futurismo (Italian Futurism)--to the arty--Bauhaus, Kells (as in Book of) and London Underground--to the playful--Hieroglyphic, Needlepoint and Child’s Play.

Richard Kegler, who runs the company with his wife, Carima El-Behairy, came up with the idea while finishing a master’s degree project on Marcel Duchamp. He wanted to display some of the artist’s quotes in his own handwriting but could find no font that even came close. (Due to copyright problems, the Duchamp font is no longer available.)

Kegler had helped pay for his degree by hand-binding books that were sold in museum gift shops around the country. He worked with these same museums to develop the famous fonts.

L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, for example, requested a John Cage font. The boxed sets are often sold with specific exhibits--P22 produced a Monet font for a recent exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Cezanne, Kegler says, is a big seller among P22’s corporate customers. “Nordstrom uses it, Starbucks, Target just licensed it,” he says. “I think people may start getting a bit sick of Cezanne.”

If they do, there’s plenty more to choose from. Kegler designs most of the fonts, working with any estates and foundations that hold copyrights. “I learned with Duchamp that you have to clear these things,” he says with a laugh.

Surprisingly, the most popular fonts are the ones they didn’t have to negotiate copyrights to obtain. Hieroglyphics, Kells, da Vinci and Arts & Crafts are the top four sellers. “Da Vinci’s pretty much public domain,” he says. “We just made sure we didn’t use anything Bill Gates owns.”

Currently in development are Thomas Jefferson and a few ancient languages.

All of the fonts are available through P22’s Web site (https://www.p22.com) or through the catalog, which can be ordered at (716) 885-4482.