Are they all custom made/handmade vector type?

I would think so.
The small text in the second image is Mark Simonson’s Coquette.

She draws a lot by hand and scans. There's no "helpful tool" other than time, practice, and talent. Try the almighty pen tool.

Drawing a path and applying a stroke is the way to make flourishes in a drawing program, whether Illustrator or FontLab; apply contrast by dragging extrema points.

To figure out the shape of the swirls, it may help to study old calligraphy specimens and practice drawing the shapes with an ink pen; this is because soon after you've started a flourish, you have to start leaving gaps for later passes of its one long stroke, which requires enough "muscle memory" familiarity with the flourishes to think ahead.

Working with circle/ellipse segments and keeping your Bezier handles orthagonal makes curve editing a lot easier...

wow! thank you guys!

Working with circle/ellipse segments and keeping your Bezier handles orthagonal makes curve editing a lot easier...

BTW do you know how to get rid of stray centre points once you've made segments from the original circles? I get this in Illustrator, and they aren't selectable with the direct select tool.

I don't think that's a point, it's just a marker showing you the center of the object.

You might want to check her blog:

http://jessicahische.blogspot.com/

That’s her old one. The new address is jessicahische.com/spendstoomuchtimeinternetting.

I don't think that's a point, it's just a marker showing you the center of the object.

Is there any way to get rid of them?

It's in the Attributes palette:

Be sure to select the object first.

I don't know if there is a way to change that centers are shown by default with new objects.

Thanks a lot Mark