“Split-fountain inking,” more commonly called “split fount,” is a printing technique you’ve seen dozens of times and probably didn’t know it had a name. In this process, two or more ink colors are placed side by side on a screen or press and blended together to create a gradient or rainbow effect in a single print pass.
A portion of the “Community Not Chaos” poster by Walt Crowley from 1968.Listed by Wikicommons as being in the public domain
The technique is seen a lot in posters and t-shirts. In the poster image, for example, the top of the person’s head starts out blue and ends up yellow towards his beard.
As you can expect, eventually we pivot to dogs, and and in this post, we hone in on what we feel is one of the most handsome hound breeds in the world, the Bavarian Mountain Scent Hound.
The breed renowned for its outstanding “cold nose” tracking abilities comes in deep red, deer red, reddish brown, tan, as well as various shades of fawn and biscuit, and while the standard does not call for it, the Bavarian is well known for its distinctive darker head in contrast to its lighter brown or reddish body. This striking pattern is the result of specific genetic mechanisms controlling pigment distribution in the dog’s coat. Specifically, its darker head is primarily due to the Em (melanistic mask) allele at the MC1R gene, which causes the concentration of dark pigment on the head and muzzle. The Em allele is autosomal dominant which means that only one copy is needed for the mask to be expressed.
Put another way, the “melanistic mask” gene12 acts like a switch by telling the dog’s body to put extra dark pigment on the face and head, while the rest of the coat stays a lighter brown or red color. Even though other genes help decide the exact shades and patterns on the body, the melanistic mask gene, a genetic trait, is the main reason the head stands out as darker, giving this breed its signature look. It is a look that has always struck us as a “split fount” coloring in a dog – a seamless gradation from a dark head to a lighter colored body.
We should add that per the breed standard, amall light-colored patch on chest is allowed, and this is called the “Bracken Star.”
Top image by Vladis/AdobeStock