Tulipes posters, Jardin botanique Genève
All-caps Flash for the poster signed by D. Wust-Calame, printing: Imprimerie du «Journal de Genève»
Drawing is a common practice in the field of botany to visually describe a plant. Allowing interpretation, even cheating, a drawer dare said, scientific illustration has didactical advantages over photography. From 1960, when Charles Baehni was director of the institution, and during more than 30 years, the Botanical Garden of Geneva in Switzerland employed a dedicated team of women for the task. Their names appear vertically, often along the stem of each illustrated plant: Line Guibentif, Saskia Pernin-Wikström, Suzanne Van Hove, Danielle Wüst-Calame.
Housed by the lake, on the first floor of the historical building called La Console, the “atelier de dessin et décoration” comprised a complementary team dedicated to decoration (advertising or graphic design nowadays).
The series of posters entitled “Tulipes” announces most likely outdoor “exhibitions” of the tulip flower in bold colours with various typefaces leading to a striking effect. Showcased below, these posters symbolise the porosity of practices, the warmth as well as importance of drawing by hand, from that era.
To conclude, when I was conducting my research for proper dates and names, working in this very institution as an in-house typographer, I spotted this remark in one article by Line Guibentif from 1984: “Made with simplicity and economy of means botanical illustration should be as easy to read as clearly typeset text.” (translated from French by the author).
Acknowledgments: Samuel Anderegg, Pierre Boillat, Patrick Bungener, Martin Callmander, Sylvie Dunant, Mona Mahmoudian, Raoul Palese, Nathalie Rasolofo, Rodolphe Spichiger, Gisèle Visinand
Letraset’s Desdemona for a poster signed “SaskiaW”. Note that the 9 is an upside-down 6.
All-lowercase Baskerville Old Face
All-lowercase Monotype Grotesque and Helvetica for a poster signed “Line G.”, printing: Imprimerie du Journal de Genève
![Hand-rendered (?) with non-standard forms for U (inspired by ?) and P. “Rocailles” is shown in an unidentified wide slab serif. Volta fett with a trimmed R leg and unbracketed serifs would come close [see also the comments]. This poster is signed “SaskiaW” and was printed by imprimeries populaires. Smaller text is in .](https://original.fontsinuse.com/fontsinuse.com/use-images/N273/273620/273620.jpeg)
Hand-rendered (?) Cooper Black with non-standard forms for U (inspired by ITC Souvenir?) and P. “Rocailles” is shown in an unidentified wide slab serif. Volta fett with a trimmed R leg and unbracketed serifs would come close [see also the comments]. This poster is signed “SaskiaW” and was printed by imprimeries populaires. Smaller text is in Helvetica.
Artistik for a poster signed “D. Wust-Calame”, printing: Imprimerie du Journal de Genève
More Helvetica, including stacked glyphs for the months for a poster signed “D. Calame”, printing: Blanc-Wittwer SA (not part of the Tulipes series, provided here as a bonus for the eyes)
1 Comment on “Tulipes posters, Jardin botanique Genève”
That’s a lovely series of posters! Thanks for sharing here, Mathieu.
I’m curious to find out more about the wide slab serif for the fifth poster. For the caption, I suggested that “Volta fett with a trimmed R leg and unbracketed serifs would come close.”
In the meantime, I’ve consulted a number of references, including the Swiss Lettera book series as well as Letraset catalogs – all of the other typefaces were available from Letraset, with some like Zipper and this specific version of Desdemona Solid being originals by the dry transfer lettering provider – but didn’t find anything that comes closer.
I’ve now done a direct comparison of the letterforms to those of Volta fett. This typeface was also available from Letraset at the time, under its export name, Fortune Extra Bold. Several key characteristics like proportion and weight as well as details like counters in A and R and curves in C and S are too close to be coincidental. The only real difference is the narrower O. I think the letterforms indeed started out with Volta.
Middle: Volta fett (glyphs from Bauer’s foundry version)
Bottom: overlay animation
Now the question is: did such a derivative exist as ready-made font, for example for phototypesetting? Or was it made ad hoc, maybe by cutting out the letterforms? One thing’s for sure: with scissors or X-Acto knives, sharp corners are easier to accomplish than bracketed serifs. Sadly we can’t ask the artist anymore: Saskia Pernin-Wikström passed in 2009.
For the time being, I have added Volta to the list of typefaces and tagged “lettering derived from typeface”.