Italian Old Style™ was designed by Frederic W. Goudy for the Lanston Monotype Company in the USA. Goudy was asked by Monotype to copy Cloister Oldstyle, a successful font that belonged to a competing foundry (it was designed by Morris Fuller Benton, see Cloister Open Face). Goudy refused on grounds of ethics, and instead talked Monotype into producing a new face. This he based freely on fifteenth century Venetian types, which were the same historical models used by Benton for Cloister and later by Bruce Rogers for Centaur. Goudy's result was Italian Old Style, released by Monotype in 1924, and considered by many to be one of Goudy's best fonts for book typography.