A marvellous trade brochure issued by the well known Samuel Fox & Co. Ltd. of Stocksbridge, Sheffield, and detailing their range of “Red Fox” heat resistance steels; these were available in various grades such as Austenitic, Martensitic and Ferritic and various forms and finishes including sheet, strip, bar and wire.

The brochure is interesting in that it was issued in 1944, printed at Percy Lund Humphries in Bradford, and is an unusual example of complex high quality colour printing in wartime. The designer is Henri Kay Henrion. Henrion (1914–1990) was another of the German born emigré designers who moved to the UK in the 1930s. In the early years of WW2 he was interned as an ‘enemy alien’ but as can be seen he was working; famously, for the British war effort. Henrion designed much of the “Dig for Britain” campaign run by the Ministry of Information. In post-war years he became art director at the influential Contact Books before in 1951 setting up his own design studios. He had numerous commercial clients and as well as teaching became a noted exhibition designer.

As well as the red fox dominating the cover, the motif is repeated across all pages of the brochure. Judging from the small inconsistencies, at least the two big lines are probably drawn be hand, but closely following the designs of Thorne Shaded and Marina Script. The former originated at Robert Thorne’s Fann Street Foundry in London around 1810 and was revived in 1938 by Stephenson Blake in Sheffield – located just a few miles south of the steel mill. The latter is a Stephenson Blake original, first cast in 1936.

Samuel Fox & Co. Ltd. had been a part of the United Steel Companies since its formation in 1918. Their origins were as wire drawers in 1842 and they turned to the manufacturing of their own steel in time becoming famous for their steel umbrella frames – the mark of a “Fox’s Frame” was for decades the sign of one of the best you could buy. Their works at Stocksbridge became a home to many highly specialised steels and after many changes in ownership and structure the site in South Yorkshire still produces specialist steels. Sadly the manufacture of Fox’s Frames ceased in 1970.

Poster designed by F.H.K. Henrion for Red Army Day on February 23, 1943, issued by the Joint Committee for Soviet Aid during World War II:

Donations to Joint Committee for Soviet Aid under the Patronage of H.E. The Soviet Ambassador

Born Heinrich Fritz Kohn in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1914, the designer later named himself Frederick Henri Kay Henrion. He went to Paris to study with Paul Colin and there discovered the works of Cassandre as well as the Surrealists, which gave him a taste for collage and photomontage. In 1939, he moved to London. After being interned on the Isle of Man as an alien, Henrion worked for the Ministry of Information and the US Office of War Information, using his talents as a poster designer to support the war effort against Nazi Germany.

The poster depicts a soldier wearing a helmet with a red star on it over his bandaged face, rendered with a coarse halftone effect. While “red army day feb. 23” is in Block-Signal, “AID THE WOUNDED” is shown in bold condensed caps, slanted and on a sloping baseline. These are either custom drawn or from an unidentified typeface. The Signal glyphs might be rendered by hand. At least the numerals don’t match those shown on a specimen card. The small print is set in two italic weights from Erbar-Grotesk.

“F K Henrion, one of the émigré artists from mainland Europe, arrived in Britain in 1936. He designed a number of posters promoting the Post Office Savings Bank during the war years, which were initially aimed at allaying public fears that savings would be safer in banks.

In later war posters such as Action stations – saving is everyone's war job. Post Office Savings Bank, he conveys the action through the immediacy of photography. Henrion based posters such as this on actual action shots, obtained through contacts with war photographers made through his work for the Ministry of Information.” — The British Postal Museum

Girobank was a British public sector financial institution founded in 1968 by the General Post Office. It started life as National Giro.

“A fine, bold design by Henrion as part of a common GPO theme of the time - packing parcels carefully. F H K Henrion was one fo the foremost of many German emigres of the 1930s who subsequently based themselves in the UK and did much to further the cause of design and commerical art.” — Mikey Ashworth

If the stencil line is a typeface I don’t know it.