font.lab and font.axis

Hi all,
In the course of ongoing improvement of plotrix, I was alerted to the 
fact that setting, e.g.:

par(font.lab=3, font.axis=3)

only seems to work for "plot" (and maybe other functions), but not for 
"axis".

par(font=3)

works for everything (except the title, which is probably specified 
separately), but there are probably situations in which someone doesn't 
want to change all of the text on the plot. Would someone like to 
suggest a better way to get "axis" to look at the font it's supposed to 
be using? Thanks.

Jim