Damn Everything but the Circus
Damn Everything But the Circus is a 1970 book compiling Corita Kent’s Circus print series of 1968. The title comes from a poem by e.e. cummings:
Damn everything but the circus!
…damn everything that is grim, dull,
motionless, unrisking, inward turning,
damn everything that won’t get into the
circle, that won’t enjoy, that won’t throw
its heart into the tension, surprise, fear
and delight of the circus, the round
world, the full existence…
The main type appears to have once been Playbill — either in wood or metal. I say “once been” because, as far as I know, Kent rarely used fonts directly. Instead, she photographed, enlarged, cropped, and otherwise manipulated printed material, making the previously used type and images into stencils for screen printing. The original 23×23-inch prints (see circus alphabet: d, everything coming up daisies) were reproduced for this book using standard offset lithography.
November 20, 2019 was officially deemed Corita Day in Los Angeles in honor of what would be Corita Kent’s 101st birthday.
Process material for the print, w what every woman knows.
4 Comments on “Damn Everything but the Circus”
Playbill is also dubbed Trylon in other markets. One example is a shaded style but in uppercase, as seen in an Typefounders of Chicago catalogue from 1962:
Thanks, Jay. As with most American metal typefaces, Mac McGrew has the answer to this:
Trylon Shaded now has an entry.
Looks like it could be from the wood type version especially from the texture seen in that paste-up at Hammer/UCLA. American Wood Type Mfg. Co. had the rights to manufacture Stephenson Blake & Co. Ltd. wood type in the US from 1952 onward, and Acme Wood Type had their own version as early as 1950.
That’s good info!
James is too polite to mention it, but he authored The Virgin Wood Type Bible:
I recently received my copy and can recommend it to anyone interested in wood type.