There's something maddeningly familiar about this, but I just can't place it. I'm pretty sure it's a font. There's a bit of Coronet in there, but it's definitely not that. I can also a bit of Trafton Script, but again even less of a match. I have a strong suspicion that this is the italic of a roman face like Bodoni, but again I draw a blank.

You've picked a doozy, Paul. It's stumped me, anyway.

Thanks for taking the time to look Mark

I've been looking at this one too. My first impulse is that they took a script font, but replaced the 'r' letters with an italic from another font.

The script font I thought it resembled was Ballantines Script (a.k.a. Dianna). I can see that the 'y' and 's' aren't quite right, but someone who knows how to tweak a font might have started with this style.

Doing some more hunting, and I still think the 'r' comes from a different font, but I think the rest of the script comes from an old Z-series film type script. I have a German Script Font book from 1993, and it shows that a company called Typo Bach in Frankfurt and Munich was using a bunch of those Z-name fonts that show up in the Solotype Catalog. It turns out that Zither (Solotype Catalog p. 95) is nearly identical, except that the loop on the 'y' in the sample is bigger (and the 'r' is a true script 'r'). It's a better match than Ballantine's Script, which I now see has a slight bend in the vertical stems. In the Photo-Lettering Catalog this was called 'Nightingale Script', I think.

Turns out that Zither was apparently digitized by Opti, and possibly by Dan Solo, because I have a sample in the Script Font ID Guide (below):

I will make a larger sample of 'prairie style' using OptiZither, and post it shortly.

Ok. Here is my crude attempt to use OptiZither to reproduce this sample. I used the 'r' from Times Roman. What it shows me is that I may not have the exact Z-script that was used for the original, but the method seems credible to me. As you know with film type, lenses could be used to rotate the slant of the type, so my backslanting may approximate what was done. I think it was done to make the italic 'r' fit, and I think they may have used a different 'r' because the original letter looked wrong stylistically, was harder to read, or they just wanted a more vertical style and the r didn't work well that way. Who knows?

Wow! Thanks Mike - that's very helpful. I was coming to the same conclusion that it could be a mix of typefaces. The funny thing is - I was in the supermarket last night and saw a box of Lindt chocolates. The Lindt logo font looked a lot like this prarie style. Anyone know the font used by Lindt? Otherwise I will look at Ballantyne Script & OPTI Zither.