Kräuter-Elixier (“herbal elixir”). The center-aligned typography shows three sizes of Eckmann-Schrift (1900). The long s (ſ) appears only in the sch trigraph (“verschiedener”, “geschätztes”). Contrary to the traditional rules, it’s not used for “wirksamen” or “Bestandteile”.

Labels for the use in pharmacies and drugstores, printed by Fr. Melsbach, Sobernheim. Established in 1832, the Melsbach company is still in the business of pharmacy supplies. Several labels found in a Melsbach album from 1886 are reproduced in the October 1966 issue of Gebrauchsgraphik and show predominantly lettering. The labels featured in this post were made about twenty years later, around 1905, and are typographic, i.e. they were made with the use of fonts.

See more pharmaceutic labels in altpapiersammler’s album on Flickr.

Lenilaxin uses a typeface that was sold by many foundries under various names, incl. Viktoria (Theinhardt), Phönix (Poppelbaum), and Medea (Flinsch; later continued by Bauer). The smaller text is in one of the light cuts added by German foundries to their Bradley adaptations, see Original-Altgotisch. The price is in Korinna (1904).

Peru-Kognak is set in Nelson, the German name for Cosmopolitan (1895) The roman is Schelter & Giesecke’s Romanisch (1889).

The label for Thymian-Keuchhusten-Saft (“Thyme syrup for whooping cough”) pairs Eckmann with Original-Altgotisch and a condensed grotesk.

Frangula-Elixier ft. more Eckmann for the name. The text is set in two weights of Berthold’s Secession. The price info uses Korinna.

Keuchhusten-Elixier ft. Liane halbfett (1909). “Gebrauchs-Anweisung” is in a condensed grotesk. The instructions are set in Tauchnitz-Antiqua, a stylistic variant of Schelter-Antiqua. distinguished by different forms for ‘dkvwxyAKMRUVWX’ (and probably also ‘Y’), in most cases replacing curved diagonals with straight ones.

Lenilaxin combines Schelter-Antiqua with two grotesks. All type is reproduced in negative.

Label for neutral iron protein, or Liquor Ferri albuminati neutralis, “self-prepared according to the regulations of the pharmacist association of the City of Braunschweig”.

Most text is set in the halbfett and mager styles of Secession, which was jointly released by Bauer & Co. of Stuttgart and H. Berthold AG of Berlin around 1898. The instructions for use (“Wenn vom Arzte …”) are in Wettin, an Art Nouveau face designed by Heinz Keune for Schelter & Giesecke in 1902.

“Selbstbereitet” is in an unidentified wide grotesk in the vein of Schelter & Giesecke’s Breite magere Grotesk, or Venus by the Bauer foundry in Frankfurt, while “nach Vorschrift des” uses Korinna (Berthold, 1904). “Apothekervereins …” and “Leicht verdaulich …” are set in an enge and a schmale Steinschrift, i.e. an extracondensed and a condensed grotesk, which have not been tracked down.

See more pharmaceutic labels in altpapiersammler’s album on Flickr.

This pencil was as Christmas giveaway by Neue Bilderbühne, a cinema in Nuremberg, Germany, established in 1921 and destroyed in World War II. The roman is Corinna, first cast by Berthold in 1904. In the early 1970s, it was brought to new life by Ed Benguiat and Victor Caruso at Photo-Lettering, Inc., and issued in 1974 as ITC Korinna, with a tamed down ‘R’, among other adjustments.

Detail