Our letters V and W are made out of V's, but in Middle English there was another v, called in Unicode Middle-Welsh V, and a sort of doubling of that, with a lot of glyph options, called the Anglicana W. This has on the basis of my proposal
http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17238-n4838-anglicana-w.pdf been accepted for encoding. Modern typographic forms for the Anglicana W harmonizing with seriffed Latin Roman and Italic have never before been devised, and I'm to make recommendations for the Unicode code charts (and for publications of my own). I'd like to see what people come up with, given the origin and earlier ductuses of this letter, seen in a modern context. Some Baskerville sketches are given below. I think given the skeleton, the lower-case anglicana w's loop better than the capitals, where the top of the epsilon-form should really connect with the leftmost vertical.
Comments
Instinctively, I want to simplify the form and make it more directly relate to the shape of two merged Middle-Welsh V forms, so that typographically there is the same parallel between that V and W as between the modern pair. That would reflect a similar outcome of a longer evolution, rather than trying to capture the ductus of the mediaeval scribal form outside of the corresponding ductus of all the other letters in such sources.
The form in BM Add. MS 36704 seems a step in this direction in terms of the lower right being comprised of a single bowl, rather than a stack of two.
When I have some time, I'll work out what the Brill options would be.
"I just saw your anglicana w proposal and wonder – is this a w+h?"
No, it is definitely not a wh. In Cornish MSS for instance “wh” is written either with a w or an anglicana-w followed by an h. There are abundant examples of both.
André
André
Of your new doodles, I find the simple first UC/lc pair based directly on the Welsh V shape look best and also read as a kind of W/w while being clearly distinct from the modern forms.
1st, work out the lc shape first and lets then turn to the capital in a second step.
2nd, a key question may be, on which glyphic model of the existing and conventional v- or w-glyphs the new form shall be based on.
this was my initial take on this, a couple of months ago:
Anglicana W seems to derive from 66, as ((3, mutating sometimes to \\3. There's also the @-shaped ones which usually have two bowls. I don't think those would harmonize with Times/Baskerville/Andron/Brill and so on.
I don't mind at all if the double-bowl version is the Unicode glyph chart form, but I do think the relationship with the Welsh V should be maintained in the left strokes ascending above the x-height. That actually seems more definitively characteristic of the letter than the number of bowls.
For the Unicode chart, I would favour a form that captures frequent features of the character that a) easily distinguish it from other characters and b) make explicit presumed historical relationship to other characters (in this case the Welsh V).
In the proposal document there are many variations on the Anglicana W. Basically the letterforms I am taking into are account are Carolingian v, Middle Welsh v, Carolingian w, Carolingian b, and Eth.
Now historically, the Carolingian v and Middle Welsh v are distinct, and in some manuscripts (certainly in Middle Cornish), the Carolingian v and Carolingian b are actually indistinguishable. Just as Carolingian w derives from v + v, the Anglicana w derives (in my view) from Middle Welsh ỽ + ỽ (looks like 6 + 6 if your font doesn't show U+1EFC..1EFD).
Now a Middle Welsh v has a tall stem and a short bowl. The Anglicana w as a fusion of two Middle Welsh v's has two stems and two bowls. (There are Middle English examples with two stems and one bowl, but the "quintessential" one has two, which is certainly what will go in the Unicode chart.) The skeletons we find in the manuscripts are various. \\3, ||3, ((3 are primary, though the length/height of the stems may vary; the first is sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, as in ı|3 and ıı3 and (perhaps) less often |ı3. The double bowls are generally not taller than x-height (though I have used digit 3 here). As noted above, there are also @-shaped Anglicana w's which are quite common, but those are subsequent developments, not primary/
The Unicode code charts need to show capital and small forms. Let's deal with the small forms first.
Option 1) Retain Middle Welsh v's basic shape. This begs the question as to what the best typographic form for the Middle Welsh v is. There isn't much precedent. Some have been represented by a swash fraktur-style v; this is echoed somewhat in Andreas Stötzner's draft above (those are attractive glyphs, but not necessarily what we might wish in Times or Baskerville; Andron has some elegant forms which differ from more vanilla styles).
(Note: Perhaps in this exercise the Middle Welsh v should also be considered. Should it have a rounded or pointed base? In http://www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n3027.pdf it is round in some figures and more pointed in others.
Otherwise, well, one can reverse an ð and take the crossbar off. That gives one kind of finial. Or one can look at the hook of the f and 6. The Unicode charts are basically Times. Getting the join of the first stem with the top bowl isn't necessarily easy. In this Baskerville draft I'm not happy with any of the joins there, but this exemplifies reversed ð shaping. Three heights are given for the two stems.
Option 2) Take the Middle Cornish glyph similarity between b and v to heart, and use verticals. In this case I don't think the first two are successful; the third, the shortest one, is actually attested in line 1 of Figure 15. It doesn't strike me as particularly generic. I've been reading Cornish text with this shape and it kind of bugs me. Andreas did something similar to these in Andron.
Option 3) And then there's the one which is a sort of hybrid of Anglicana w with Carolingian w; this is found for instance in "Wher" and "well" lower down on the same Figure 15. In the example below the first is a capital W, then two capital Anglicana W's; the next three are lower-case Anglicana w's followed by w.
I am inclined to think that the third and the sixth will end up looking best in Roman type. they might be easier for readers, too. Here, the character width between Carolingian and Anglicana W and w is the same respectively. In any case, I would like to know what other typographers think. I also have italic to consider. I should set a passage and see what that looks like, too.
Here is the same passage with the hybrid Carolingia/Anglicana form:
The same in italics:
The same in Roman with an extended centre stroke:
And that in italics:
With regard to the reversed-ð form, I think the main reason it doesn't harmonise better is that the strokes are too heavy. It needs to be optically adjusted to blend into the texture of the surrounding text.
I find after reflection that I disagree with this. There isn't much choice for making a Middle-Welsh v to be rather 6-like; in some Cornish texts this letter is practically (or indeed) indistinguishable from b, and certainly a v with a long \ simply wouldn't look right in an ordinary context. But for the Anglicana w I think it is best to look at the whole range of attested Anglicana w's compared with the standard Carolingian w which co-exists with it in many MSS. To me a glyph made of 66 looks like a little brushfire within the word. I think since both a \\/ and a \\3 skeleton occur in the Cornish Passion Poem, that retaining that \\ feel in a modern font is wise. On the other hand the lower right joint in \\3 is problematic. But then I thought of a sort of \(3 hybrid an I find it so far to be pleasingly legible.