Maelstrom covers
Maelstrom vol. 3, no. 2, autumn 1967. Cover collage by editor Fred R. Fry II
Maelstrom is an American quarterly periodical published by Fred R. Fry II. The covers feature 8th and 9th Centuries, 16th Century, and Henry the Eighth, alphabet samples published in The Book of Ornamental Alphabets, Ancient and Mediaeval by engraver Freeman Gage Delamotte in 1858.
The decorative quality of these typefaces is emphasized by the layout, which frames the central illustration with text. Repeated three times on the cover, the title presents a unique display with each iteration, playing with text alignments, type combinations, and reading orientations. Complementing this design, the secondary information is set in a yet unidentified typewriter typeface – possibly an Olympia model.
Some of the Maelstrom issues are accessible on JSTOR.
Maelstrom vol. 3, no. 1, summer 1967. Cover art by art editor Cassandra Scher
Maelstrom vol. 2, no. 2, autumn 1966, with Fernand Léger’s Clown, reproduced from Slapstick and Dumbbell as published by Joseph Lawren in 1924
Maelstrom vol. 2, no. 1, spring 1966
1 Comment on “Maelstrom covers”
Thank you, Juliette!
Strictly speaking, none of these letter styles are typefaces in the narrow sense. But we follow Gerrit Noordzij’s definition of typography as “writing with prefabricated letters”, and the words on these covers certainly are made with prefabricated letters: in the form of lettering from alphabet samples and typewritten text.
One of the alphabets compiled by Freeman Delamotte, the one he labeled “16th Century. Henry the Eighth. MS [manuscript]”, was turned it into a digital font. Henry8 by John B. Wundes adds numerals and punctuation. It was released only in 2007, so that’s obviously not the version used here. The designers of Maelstrom most likely sourced the letterforms directly from Delamotte’s book. Shown below are the respective pages from digitizations made by the Internet Archive: