Däntl im Tal ad
Johann Baptist Däntl’s hardware store was established in 1839. In the early 20th century, it offered metal goods, home and kitchen appliances, furniture and building hardware. At the time this promotional card was printed, the household supply store was doing business as Däntl im Tal, referring to its address on the Tal, a street in the old town of Munich.
The name and the line above (“The long-established Munich household specialty store”) are rendered by hand in unadorned and relaxed blackletter styles. The list of items is set in three columns, center-aligned, in an unconnected brush script typeface. Devised by Stuttgart-based sign painter and poster designer Julius Kirn, it was issued in 1938, under two different names: while Weber in Stuttgart had it as Bison, Trennert in Altona issued it as Blizzard. Note the ligatures for ch and ck. There are at least three digital interpretations: Brush 738 by Bitstream, Blizzard by URW++ (sharper, a tad lighter, and more tightly spaced), and RMU Bison.
All other text is set in Wilhelm Pischner’s Neuzeit-Grotesk (1932), Stempel’s second and more down-to-earth attempt at a Futura competitor, after their Elegant-Grotesk from 1928. Neuzeit-Grotesk can be recognized by its flat-top 3. It here is used in the fett and Kursiv styles. The presence of the latter helps with dating this card: the italic wasn’t added before 1953, by Arthur Ritzel.
