Flyer advertising German sparkling wine by Sektkellerei Wille A.-G., Oldenburg in Oldenburg. While the front (shown below) features hand lettering – an expressive angular script for the company’s name plus various sans-serif styles – the back has text set in a number of typefaces, including Admiral by Julius Gipkens (Woellmer, 1906), Phosphor by Jakob Erbar (Ludwig & Mayer, 1923; with both forms for S), and Bravour by Martin Jacoby-Boy (Stempel, 1912).

The body copy is set in two weights and various sizes from Säculum. The first nine styles of this extensive series were designed by Heinrich Hoffmeister and issued by Stempel in 1906–19. Säculum merges characteristics from William Morris’ Golden Type (see Jenson Old Style), like the “Venetian” e or the square tittles, with traits from the Bookman branch, like the large-eyed a and the high ear in g. In this regard, it’s similar to Universum, which was Flinsch’s (and later Bauer’s) name for Old Roman.

Founded in 1865 by Carl Wille (1841–1915), the Wille winery was the largest of its kind in northwestern Germany after World War I. The business suffered during the global economic crisis and closed down in 1932.

The flyer is not dated, but mentions vintage sparkling wine from 1921, indicating a ca. mid-1920s date. It was printed by Adolf Essich & Co., previously known as F. Büttner, est. 1857. In 1922, this company moved to the Rudelsburg building where it operated until another move in 1981.

From James E. Arsenault & Company:

An exceedingly rare broadside printing on silk of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s inaugural document, establishing the Society as the main activist arm of the American Abolition Movement which pushed for the immediate abolition of slavery in the U.S. […]

Issued by the AASS following their inaugural Philadelphia convention, this remarkable broadside calls for a “National Anti-Slavery Society” through promulgating a “Declaration of Sentiments.” Printed in two columns, the Declaration, written by Garrison, pointedly builds upon the spirit and principles of the American Revolution, and demands the immediate cessation of slavery throughout the entire United States. […]

Garrison’s text is surmounted by a wood-engraving by Reuben S. Gilbert (active 1833–1846). The classical illustration of Hercules and the Nemean lion is here powerfully repurposed to illustrate a verse from Psalm 91: “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.” […]

Printers Merrihew & Gunn of Philadelphia are known to have published other abolitionist materials

The titling text is set in Caslon’s Italian (or a very similar imitation) accompanied by Meridian Shade(d) for sub-titling, and some kind of Modern/Scotch serif for the body text. There is also an abundance of decorative borders framing and dividing the composition.

The Library of Congress offers a high-resolution image of another copy of the broadside where the type can be inspected in detail (view the full-quality 27.6 MB TIFF to avoid lossy image compression that otherwise makes the type hard to evaluate).

A detail from a high-res image hosted by the Library of Congress

Introductory page, with Cuneiform, Rustic, a fat face, and Madisonian for text. The drop cap with vine branches might be from the “First Series” of initial letters shown in the 1869 catalog of the Bruce foundry.

I stumbled across The History of Ink while browsing the bookshelf of a friend. It was published in 1860 by Thaddeus Davids and Company, one of the largest ink manufacturers in the world at that time.

I was instantly captured by the book’s title page, which contains no type but is a lesson in Victorian maximalist lettering. Perhaps even more impressive is the wide array of typefaces used throughout the text. You know you’ve got a winner when Rustic No. 2 isn’t even the second-weirdest typeface on a page.

The main text face is Madisonian, an unusual script-italic hybrid and ancestor of the slightly-tracked script. It was published by the Bruce Foundry around 1860, meaning this book might have been an early use of the typeface. Some might argue that Madisonian is not really a typeface for body text, but it certainly looks fantastic and connects nicely to the pens and inks that are the subject of the book.

The book also features a handful of decorative typefaces from the catalog of L. Johnson & Co., renamed MacKellar, Smiths, and Jordan shortly thereafter. Hairline Italic makes prominent appearances in running heads and supporting text. Lutetian, Southern Cross, Cicero, an open Tuscan, an outlined and contoured Tuscan, and Cuneiform are used for headers and other miscellaneous roles. (This book is actually how I discovered Cuneiform, which served as the inspiration for my latest typeface.)

This book’s type choices challenge every piece of conventional wisdom that I learned about book typography. In characteristic Victorian excess, everything feels like it is shouting. But if you think of this less as a book and more as a showpiece for ink by one of the primary players in the industry, it all begins to work and I am loving every minute of it.

Cover (lettering).

Title page (lettering), featuring the Latin motto Vox dicta perit, litera scripta manet (“A heard voice perishes, but the written letter remains.”). Lithography by Snyder, Black & Sturm, 92 William St., New York.

Half-title featuring an open Tuscan (“History”), an outlined and contoured Tuscan with hatch fill (“Ink”), Cicero (“Etymology”), Italian Text / Cuneiform (“New-York”), and Hairline Italic (“Thaddeus Davids & Co.”).

An example of Lutetian in use for headers, and Hairline Italic for running heads.

The italic used for the smaller text is unidentified.

“Conclusion” is set in Southern Cross. Note that the larger size used for the sample has less spurs.

Cicero and Hairline Italic used for the description of the plates.

Part of a list of how to say “ink” in 50 different languages. (This is lettered as far as I can tell.)

Shown below is the full-page advertisement seen on page 29 of the October 3rd, 1908, Saturday Evening Post. It appeared among ads for other, better known automobile makers like Packard, Cadillac, Winton, and Oldsmobile—expensive cars for wealthy buyers. Until then, the Ford Motor Company had been only a modest competitor, producing a small number of Henry Ford’s Model R and Model S vehicles. — Jeff Nilsson, The Ad that Launched a Revolution, on the Saturday Evening Post, 2011

This revolutionary advert features display lettering and surprisingly wordy copy set in long lines of Cheltenham. Fitting with the early 20th century, it employed sentence spacing as well as special punctuation spacing near the quote-marks and semicolon. There is a drop cap, one paragraph is bolded for emphasis, and the short paragraphs are separated by spacing as well as by large indents.

Instruction manual for Fruco’s “patented egg beater with valve”, also convenient to beat cream, mayonnaise, and butter.

The frames for the featured items in this supermarket ad are quite unusual. It's possible that they are a set of metal border elements, but they don’t appear in ATF’s, Linotype’s, or Ludlow’s catalogs, who were the main suppliers for American newspapers at the time. They could also be custom engravings.

This ad from The Era-Leader of Franklintown, Louisiana features an unusually modern layout for 1921. While the engaging use of negative space and asymmetrical layouts became quite common 20–30 years later, it was quite rare to find such generous emptiness in the dense newspaper pages of the time. It has quite a powerful effect.

This advertising refrain is an old one, going back to 1868, at least.

Source: zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de Scan: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. License: All Rights Reserved.

Die rote Fahne, Nr. 1 from 9 November 1918.

On this day in 1919, one hundred years ago, German socialist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were tortured and murdered by the Freikorps at the end of the Spartacist uprising.

This post takes a look at the typefaces used in Die Rote Fahne (“The Red Flag”), the newspaper founded by Luxemburg, Liebknecht and others. The first issue was published on 9 November 1918, the day that Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and Liebknecht proclaimed the German Free Socialist Republic. Revolutionary workers had occupied the editorial office of the conservative Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger on Zimmerstraße 35-44. Their leader, Spartacist Hermann Duncker, announced to the journalists at work:

“Gentlemen, the page has turned. Your pages must turn too! You understand that a victorious revolution will not suffer a counter-revolutionary press.” [100 Years of Revolution]

Source: zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de Scan: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. License: All Rights Reserved.

No time for details: In German Fraktur typography, it was common to use letterspacing for emphasis, in lieu of italics. This clipping has plenty of considerably letterspaced words, none of which would ask for emphasis. The goal here was to simply justify the lines as quick as possible. What’s a few stolen sheep compared to the liberation of the working class? Also note the dissolved umlauts at the bottom left (“Ueber”, “Uebernahme”): Fonts didn’t always include capital forms for ÄÖÜ, but instead had separate small pieces for the dots, which could be mounted on top of AOU. This step required some fiddling, and hence it was skipped here.

The paper was now published under the title Die rote Fahne, in this first issue still largely using the ready-to-print composition of the Lokal-Anzeiger — and the same fonts, of course. In the 1910s, the standard letter for German newspapers still was blackletter. The headline (“Berlin under the red flag”) is in König-Type schmal fett. The deck (“Police headquarters stormed.—650 prisoners released.—Red flags at the castle”) uses a Fette Fraktur. Both typefaces had been used by the Lokal-Anzeiger at least since 1910. For the new nameplate, the revolutionists decided on Eckmann-Schrift. Was it for its winding Art Nouveau F that looks like a blowing flag? Or maybe because it was the only type available at the press in a big enough size? First cast two decades earlier at the peak of the Jugendstil craze, Eckmann is not exactly a forward-looking choice. The line below, “Ehemaliger Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger — 2. Abend-Ausgabe”, features Fette Gotisch. The small type used for “Preis” and “Pfennig” in the top right corner looks like Bernhard-Fraktur.

Source: www.klingspor-museum.de Scan: Hans Reichardt for Klingspor Museum. License: All Rights Reserved.

Detail from Berthold’s specimen Nr. 278 showing the bold condensed member of the König-Type family designed by Heinz König and issued by the Emil Gursch foundry in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 1907–1910. This typeface was still being used by the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger in the 1940s and even in November 1944, after the paper was merged with the Berliner Morgenpost.

Of the two proclamations of a republic on 9 November, the one by Philipp Scheidemann was successful, and the Social Democrats emerged victorious. The Spartacist occupants were evicted from the office by troops loyal to the government two days later, but Die Rote Fahne continued publication, as the central organ first of the Spartacus League and, from 1 January 1919, of the newly founded KPD, the Communist Party of Germany. “Zentralorgan der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands (Spartakusbund)” is set in Mainzer Fraktur. The nameplate introduced in the third issue is now spelled with a capital R and uses a display cut of the same face.

Source: zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de Scan: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. License: All Rights Reserved.

Die Rote Fahne, Nr. 16 from 16 January 1919. The exceptional situation and urgency is reflected typographically by the dissolution of the columns, resulting in unusually long lines.

In the issue from 16 January 1919, the editorial staff addresses their readership with a big headline in the schmal halbfett (bold condensed) style of Offenbacher Schwabacher: “An unsere Leser!” The Spartacist uprising had been crushed, and more than 150 insurgents killed. The day before, the bigger part of the print run of Die Rote Fahne had been seized, and the office occupied by soldiers. Some journalists were arrested while others managed to go into hiding. The remaining staff members accused the counterrevolutionaries:

Workers! Friends! Following the physical murders, the “socialist” government of blood-stained Ebert-Scheidemann goes on to assassinate the spirit of the revolution, too, depriving it of its organ, ... its advertising and weaponry.

At that time the issue went to print, the editors Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, whose names are listed in the center of the masthead, had already been murdered.

Source: zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de Scan: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. License: All Rights Reserved.

Detail with nameplate and masthead in Mainzer Fraktur.

Scan: Hans Reichardt for Klingspor Museum. License: All Rights Reserved.

Detail from Berthold’s specimen Nr. 278 showing Mainzer Fraktur fett. This face probably originated at the Stuttgart-based foundry Bauer & Co., which was acquired by the H. Berthold AG in 1897. It was issued in 1901, “initiating the new movement in the creation of Fraktur types” — Friedrich Bauer.

A few pages from Eaton’s 1894 184 page (!) spring/summer product catalogue for “shoppers by mail”. On the back of their catalogue, Eaton's is described as

A chain of stores. A village of busy people, all under one roof, including over 1,200 Employees. An Organisation representing Half a Hundred Different apartments, each complete in itself, making a perfect “Chain of Stores.”

Among the typefaces are Rubens, used for the headline on the front cover; Grotesque No. 7 with its nearly-closed-loop capital C from Miller & Richard’s Sans-Serifs & Grotesques type series that inspired Klim Type Foundry’s Founders Grotesk; and De Vinne, used for headlines throughout the catalogue.

Many pages in the Eaton’s Fall & Winter 1907 Catalogue, including the one titled “CANDY SECTION”, have their titles in a very round and simple looking font – Gothic No. 545. An interesting detail is seen in the top right corner, where the word “filled” (set in Times Gothic) makes use of a ligature in an otherwise widely spaced word.

The “MEN'S OVERCOATS” page draws a lot of attention to the center list of prices, giving the numbers a lot of weight in comparison to the product descriptions.

Published by Eugen Diederichs in 1900, Der Schauspieler marks the very first use of Eckmann for a book. The text titled “The actor, an artistic problem” is a study by theater actor and stage manager Max Martersteig (1853–1926), originally written in 1893. The softcover edition was printed between 20 September and 20 October 1900 by Breitkopf & Härtel, who are listed among the first printing companies to have acquired the typeface in an early specimen. The entire book is set in Otto Eckmann’s typeface and also features some of the accompanying ornaments and border elements.

The copy depicted above is shown in the exhibition about book art currently on display at the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg. The colors of the banderole appear to be the same as used for a similar blurb on a specimen by the Rudhard’sche Gießerei, suggesting that the book was used by the foundry as a promotional item for the new typeface.

Title page. The D in “Der” is different from the one in “Diederichs” (see also the cover and the banderole).

Eckmann has alternates for D, H, I, and T. In 1904, Eugen Diederichs moved from Leipzig to Jena.

Spread from the interior, with drop cap and ornaments. In the last two lines of the right page, two floral elements from Eckmann-Schmuck appear inline. They seem to be used in place of dashes.

Like most blackletter types, Eckmannschrift has no italics. Tracking is used for emphasis, see “Intuition” (left) and “darzuſtellen” (right), among other words.

The text ends with a tapering column (Spitzkolumne in German).

The colophon ends with a variation of the traditional greeting used by German printers and typesetters: “Gott grüß die neue deutsche Kunst!”

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by altpapiersammler and tagged with “eckmann”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Brochure for non-fiction books from the Leipzig-based Verlag B. G. Teubner (1811–2008). “From nature and humanities. Collection of scientific and generally understandable depictions from all areas of knowledge”. Aus Natur und Geisteswelt was published from 1899 on and spanned 240 volumes. This brochure is probably from the late first decade of the twentieth century.

Back and front covers for Bradley: His Book, Vol. 1, No. 1

Will Bradley, an illustrator, printer, and type designer, was one of the most prominent followers of Arts & Crafts ideas in the US. This self-published magazine was a sort of portfolio piece featuring his work by himself and friends, and helped promote the products and services of his clients: makers of paper, ink, and type.

In January 1896, Will Bradley formed the small Wayside Press in Springfield, Massachusetts. One of his most ambitious projects was the publication of Bradley: His Book. In the prospectus, Bradley describes it as: “a little magazine of interesting reading, interspersed with various bits of art, and privately printed at the Wayside Press[,] Springfield, Mass.”

When Will Bradley began to seek out new clients after relocating to Springfield, Massachusetts, he discovered an abundance of paper mills. Bradley used the Mittineague Paper Company’s Strathmore Deckle-Edge Book Paper in the first issue of Bradley: His Book, along with the products of two other paper companies that had commissioned advertisements for the issue. Mittineague was the first client of the Wayside Press in 1895 and continued the relationship even after merging with the Woronoco Paper Company and reincorporating as the Strathmore Paper Company in 1911. The company’s sample books often featured reprints of Bradley designs. — Alexander Johnston and Jaime Margalotti

Like other Arts & Crafts printers, Bradley favored dense pages and dark printing, with Gothic ornamentation though in a more naturalistic mode. The type (Jenson Old Style from ATF) is a typical turn-of-the-20th-century Jenson: heavy with exaggerated features. The book also features Bradley’s namesake typeface, released by ATF at about the same time, and another revival of Gothic styles.

Ad for American Type Founders’ Co. for which Bradley designed typefaces, including Bradley.

“A New Era in Fine Printing” ad for Mittineague Paper Company

Prospectus for Bradley: His Book, ca. 1896.

Photo: Greg Yerbury. License: All Rights Reserved.

Receipt found in Stafford Archives connected to St Michael’s School in Penkridge Staffordshire, printed by John March, Tower-Hill, in ca. 1800. Having looked at a Caslon specimen sheet, the blackletter seems to be the Two-Line Great Primer Black, with the text set in roman and italic styles, maybe from the Great Primer or English sizes.

Taken from the flyer announcing the sale of discount type produced by the Penhallow Printing Company in Lowell, Massachusetts. It features Celtic No. 3 and Ornamented No. 1526. The text face is similar to the many “old style” romans available at the time, such as No. 20, revived by Monotype as Bruce Old Style. The italic sans serif is also unidentified, but is in the vein of Fann Street’s Italic Grotesque.

Ad for a correspondence course in “practical art of living, logical thinking and free rhetoric”, edited by F.A. Brecht.

This is the front page of the Patrie publication, when Borden was Prime Minister of Canada. Along with Windsor and Cheltenham, and an unknown fat face are several Sans-Serifs & Grotesques (Miller & Richard), including Sans-Serif No. 6 or No. 8. The textura used for “La Patrie” is likely custom. Engravers Old English or Wedding Text come somewhat close.

Ad in The Press 1898–1948 — “by Distinguished Contributors from All Sections of the Press. Published in its Golden Jubilee Year” by The Newspaper World.

W S Crawford’s were one of the UK's most influential advertising agencies during the 20th Century — due to its founder, W Crawford and its long-lived artistic director Ashley Havinden. Based in London's High Holborn their stylish office at 233 High Holborn survives with its art-deco exterior now sadly knocked about a bit as a branch of a fashion chain — only the stainless steel numerals ‘233’ mark the facade out. The lettering and layout of this advert is very Havinden.

Source: magazines.iaddb.org International Advertising & Design DataBase. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: magazines.iaddb.org License: All Rights Reserved.

Launched in January 1930 as a quarterly supplement to weekly trade magazine Advertising & Selling, Advertising Arts helped introduce Modernism to mainstream American design, and specifically advocated for the “Streamline” style that was associated with industrial design. Lucian Bernhard contributed a variety of content to the publication, including an article on textile design and this April 1930 cover which employs his Bernhard Gothic, released a few months earlier.

Incidentally, his Bernhard Fashion typeface is also advertised in this issue. It was another design created for ATF, a partnership which is noted on the issue’s Contributors page.

Source: magazines.iaddb.org International Advertising & Design DataBase. License: All Rights Reserved.

Bernhard also showed off Bernhard Gothic in this two-page ad for Bartlett Orr Press.

The International Advertising & Design DataBase hosts complete digitized issues of several Advertising Arts issues.

This is a fairly early use of Futura in the US where it wasn’t pervasive until it was copied in the 1940s by domestic foundries besides Intertype. Futura and Bodoni, however, was a common combination throughout the 1930s–50s. Note the ellipsis (on both pages) to separate thoughts without breaking lines so everything can stay in a tidy, justified text block.