Back in Ye Olden Tymes, when people did hand lettering, there was an abundance of instructional books for aspiring artists, and there was a lot of "borrowing" among the various authors. The earliest "probable influence" I can find in my collection is an undated (but probably early 30s) version of "abc of Lettering" by Carl Holmes. This is called a "moderne" style and, with the exception of the truncation of the bottom strokes on the 3 and 5, the letterforms pretty much match an alphabet on page 21.

thank you old nick, thank you very much indeed

brett

i've ordered the book via amazon.co.uk... however, if you had a scan/photo of p21, that would be fantastic!

brett

actually, scratch that, found p21 on the interweb :-)

http://opera78.livejournal.com/163068.html

The book shown is a different edition (there were SEVERAL over the course of thirty or more years). The alphabet I was referring to is on page 36 of this edition.

ok... thanks oldnick... i was wondering :-)