Martine at the Lyttelton Theatre poster

Howland Open in use on a poster for a performance of Jean-Jacques Bernard’s Martine at London’s Lyttelton Theatre in 1985. First shown in Paris in 1922, the play is about Martine, a melancholy peasant girl who is in love with a married man from a higher social class.

Designer Richard Bird placed the protagonist into a rural scene snagged from Claude Monet’s painting Les Coquelicots (“Poppies”, 1873). Howland was advertised in The Inland Printer issue from April 1892 as “companion series to De Vinne” (and vice versa). The design by the Dickinson Type Foundery is distinguished by the unusual long middle bar in E – referenced and caricatured by Ellmer Stefan in Errata – as well as by the sagged bowl in R (attention, though: Howland offered several alternates). The Open style followed in 1894. Here it’s used in caps filled with color, and paired with ITC Benguiat. A phototype adaptation of Howland Open was available in London at the time from Face Ronchetti. The poster was printed by J&P Atchison.

Via V&A’s Theatre and Performance Collection