The Shape of What Remains is an exhibition project presented by Aea: Culture Initiative at the Venice Design Biennial. The exhibition takes its title from American writer Lisa C. Taylor’s novel about the slow return to life after tragic loss. It consists of six compartments shaped by the lived experiences of émigré women – all of whom, for various reasons, had to leave their homes and are processing this loss through creative practice.

Silvia reconstructs an old house. Lisa collects antique objects once broken and repairs them. Professional painters Kimia and Alisa improvise music in a makeshift studio. Nanka cultivates a garden on uncertain ground. Olena discovers her grandmother’s tapestry, abandoned midway.
Sarah, in a foreign city, walks its hills, studying vanishing native flora.

Spectral by Production Type is in charge of the exhibition’s typography (including the exhibition booklet that the visitors have to bind by themselves, while the name of the art show is set in a slightly modified version of TXT Long Hand by Illustration Ink.

The exhibition booklet was left unbound so that visitors could pick the stories they wanted to take home and bind the booklet themselves in the exhibition space (all binding materials were provided).

August Bagel’s printing firm offered book production, artistic printing, lithography, but also publishing and distribution. In addition, it had an in-house bookbindery as well as a paper mill.

This ad from 1909 makes early use of Ehmcke-Antiqua. Designed by Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke, the typeface was first cast by Flinsch around 1908. Caslon in England had the design as Carlton and Neufville in Spain as Antigua Cervantes. In the 1970s, Letraset made a revival using Caslon’s name, see Carlton. Here it’s used exclusively in capitals, stacked and justified, with compact umlauts, (some) tightly spaced CH pairs, and the non-ligning numerals.

August Bagel (1838–1916) took over the company from his father, Peter August Bagel (1809–1881), who had established it in Eggerscheidt and moved it to Düsseldorf in 1878. Bagel’s publishing range included school books, maps and illustrated books. Bagel is still in business today, now focusing on official gazettes for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. They also produce postage stamps.

The Book Block / O Miolo do Livro is a manual on industrial bookbinding, compiling the most common techniques and what you can do with them. Built for quick consultation. Thoroughly illustrated. Available in a Portuguese and an English-language edition. Published by design studio 0. itemzero and printer Gráfica Maiadouro.

Uivo is used throughout.

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

Small ad for Julius Hager in Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik, Vol. 41, 1904.

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

Eckmann was very hot in the first few years after its release in 1900. At the time, It seemed everyone wanted a piece of Jugendstil action, and Otto Eckmann’s design, cut by the Rudhard’sche foundry in many sizes, was probably the most comprehensive embodiment of German Art Nouveau as a typeface. Evidence of its popularity can be seen in the advertising section of the major printing annual Archiv für Buchgewerbe where the type makes a frequent appearance. In the 1904 edition there is a page showing Eckmann used by two different companies, side-by-side: Julius Hager and Georg Büxenstein.

Julius Hager was a prominent, Leipzig-based book binder with a long history. Earlier ads from the company featured another typeface that was trending in the decade before Eckmann, Bradley.

Source: www.billerantik.de License: All Rights Reserved.

Full-page ad from the 1902 edition of Die Graphischen Künste der Gegenwart, a compilation of Jugendstil art and printing.

Extra binding (German: Ganzfranzband) on brown pigskin leather, 34×24.5 cm, with title lettering from the original Hesse Antiqua brass stamps in gold, Frankfurt/Main 1947.

When Gudrun Zapf von Hesse (*1918) introduced herself at the Bauer type foundry with a portfolio of book arts and lettering work in early 1946, foundry director Georg Hartmann (1870–1954) offered her to maintain an in-house bookbindery at the Frankfurt-based factory. The previous year, Hartmann had turned 75 and the foundry’s private press began printing an anniversary book in his honor: Georg Hartmann. Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag. It was set in a variety of different typefaces, printed and numbered at a limited edition of 100, and issued by the in-house publisher Der Goldene Brunnen.

At Bauer, Gudrun Zapf von Hesse watched the punch cutters as they carved out the faces of letters from metal blocks using gravers and files. She soon cut her own alphabet from brass and mounted the punches on wooden handles so she could use them to letter-stamp titles on leather book covers and spines. By 1947 she finished the alphabet that was later known as Hesse Antiqua (a name given by her husband). Its very first use was on the cover and spine of the Georg Hartmann monograph no. 1/100 as a unique specimen presented to Hartmann himself. Zapf von Hesse produced a second specially-bound version that features her lettering on the spine, different from the first: the name in gold with blind-stamped years. This copy remains in the designer’s possession.

Technically this isn’t a “font in use”—rather lettering in action—, but these are the original letterforms that were eventually translated into a digital typeface in early 2018, at the occasion of Gudrun Zapf von Hesse’s 100th birthday.

Half-leather binding (German: Halbfranzband) on auburn morocco leather (spine) and handmade paper (cover), 34×24.5 cm, with title lettering in gold and blind-stamping from the original Hesse Antiqua, Frankfurt/Main 1947. Below is a reproduction of the title with the same spacing, typeset in the digital Hesse Antiqua for comparison.

Jackson used on the storefront of Vienna’s long-established bookbindery supplier Nebel, founded in 1906. In order demonstrate the amenities of hot foil stamping – one of the main branches of business – they had changed their logotype to Jackson’s bulky letters in the 1970s. A few years back, the originally orange painted signage was replaced by the same type of construction.