In the late nineteenth century the basic Clarendon face was radically altered by foundries in the United States, resulting in the production of the French Clarendon type with enlarged block serifs. This development is also traditionally associated with wild-west printing; it is commonly seen on circus posters and wanted notices in western movies.[25][26]
The concept, now called as reverse-contrast or reverse-stress type, predated Clarendon altogether. It began, possibly around 1821 in Britain, as a parody of the elegant Didone types of the period. It was created by inverting the contrast of these designs, making the thin strokes thick and the thick strokes thin.[27][28][29] The result was a slab serif design because of the serifs becoming thick. (In the 19th century, these designs were called Italian because of their exotic appearance, but this name is problematic since the designs have no clear connection with Italy; they do slightly resemble capitalis rustica Roman writing, although this may be a coincidence. For similar reasons they were also called Egyptian or Reversed Egyptian, Egyptian being an equally arbitrary name for slab serifs of the period.)[