Feldheim, Gotthelf & Co. catalog
The first page of a large 480-page catalog advertising goods offered by Feldheim, Gotthelf & Co., an Australian importer of “British, Continental and American Merchandise”. Founded in the 1850s, the company entered a period of growth starting with a new warehouse in 1892. This catalog, published around 1905, offers an extensive window into essentially the entire breadth of goods available to Australian households at the time. The company entered a period of decline a few years later due to partners retiring from business, and in 1924 began the process of shutting down the company which concluded in 1927.
The catalog is set in a smorgasbord of period typefaces. The shown page features Facade for the company’s name, followed by Maltese Shaded, Condensed Sans Serifs Italic (see Condensed & Elongated Sans Serifs), Grotesque No. 4A, and Reed’s Runic Extended (for “Sydney”). “On Sale” is in DeVinne Ornamental and the list of items in De Vinne. The caps used for the name and location shown integrated in the red border are from Concave. Some of the typefaces used for smaller text are yet unidentified.
1 Comment on “Feldheim, Gotthelf & Co. catalog”
Thank you, Calvin! That’s also a great little window into which typefaces were imported into Australia at the time. The majority appears to be of British origin, but there are American designs as well, such as Facade, which originated at the Boston Type Foundry around 1882.
No point to show or identify all the typefaces used in the catalog. But I’d like to add two more interesting ones that appear on page vii: the company name is in Enchorial, an all-caps sans with concave stems issued by the Caslon foundry in 1883. Boston Type Foundry showed this design in 1889 as London Series.
The line below, “Sole Agents for Australasia”, is set in Saint John. Like Bradley, it’s based on the lettering by Will H. Bradley. Conceived by the Inland Type Foundry in St. Louis (and released a few months earlier than Bradley), it was also carried by Caslon in England.