The Machine Age
THE MANUAL OF LINOTYPE TYPOGRAPHY.
William Dana Orcutt (1870–1953), Edward E. Bartlett (1863–1942). Brooklyn, NY: Merganthaler Linotype Company, 1923. Quarto.
The method of producing printing types remained remarkably unchanged from Gutenberg’s time until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The only significant revisions to the process would come in the late nineteenth century, with the invention of the pantographic punchcutting machine, eliminating the need for handcut punches; and mechanical type composition from keyboarded copy. The first practical method to gain a foothold in industry was the Linotype machine invented by Ottmar Merganthaler in the 1880s.
LENDER: The Grolier Club
TYPE SPECIMEN BOOK.
American Type Founders Company. Jersey City, NJ: ATF, 1923. Octavo.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century there were dozens of type foundries throughout the United States. The success of the Linotype machine, and shortly thereafter the Monotype machine, was an existential threat to these businesses. In response, in 1892 most of these independent type founders merged to form the American Type Founders Company (ATF).
To promote their wares, ATF printed some of the most elaborate (and heaviest!) type specimen books ever seen. These culminated in the huge 1923 volume. 60,000 copies of the 1923 volume were printed, at a cost of $300,000 (approximately $4,500,000 in 2020 dollars!)
LENDER: The Grolier Club
THE FLEURON.
Stanley Morison (1889–1967), Oliver Simon (1895–1956). London: The Fleuron (nos. 1–4), and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press & Garden City: Doubleday (nos. 5–7), 1923–1930. Seven volumes. Quarto.
In the early decades of the twentieth century there was considerable investigation in the realm of typography. The Fleuron, with its well-researched, insightful articles dealing with typography from the 1500s to the present day, came as a welcome addition to an audience eager for information, advice, and examples. The volumes were substantial in size, hard bound, and profusely illustrated, including many tip-in examples displaying beautiful typography – each issue was more of a book than a periodical.
The Fleuron lasted only for seven volumes, but its influence on typography remains substantial and its contents provide an overview of typography in the early twentieth century.
LENDER: The Grolier Club
FOUR CENTURIES OF FINE PRINTING.
Stanley Morison (1889–1967). London: Ernest Benn, 1924. Folio.
An extraordinary individual, Stanley Morison made his mark on typography as a type designer, book designer, newspaper designer, and also as a major historian of the arts of printing and calligraphy. Four Centuries of Fine Printing, a survey of masterpieces of the art of typography in the roman letter from the 1500s to 1914, was among Morison’s first major books.
Four Centuries of Fine Printing went through several iterations, including a reduced-size “student edition” again published by Benn in England, along with an American edition published by Farrar Strauss and Company in 1949, and later re-issued by Barnes and Noble.
PROVENANCE: Inscribed by the author. Library of the Grolier Club
MODERN FINE PRINTING.
Stanley Morison (1889–1967). London: Ernest Benn, 1925. Folio.
Following on the success of Four Centuries of Fine Printing, Morison again worked with the publisher Ernest Benn on Modern Fine Printing. Like its predecessor, Modern Fine Printing is a large folio filled mainly with illustrations of book pages. However, this volume contains only examples from 1914–1925, organized by country.
LENDER: The Grolier Club
THE GOUDY TYPE FAMILY.
Frederic W. Goudy (1856–1947). Elizabeth, NJ: American Type Founders Company, 1927. Quarto.
Frederic W. Goudy was one of the most successful and prolific American type designers of all time. The most essentially “Goudy” of all of Goudy’s numerous typefaces may be Goudy Oldstyle, made for American Type Founders in 1915. The design of this typeface is quite original and beautifully rendered. Goudy Oldstyle enjoyed enormous popularity, mainly as an advertising (display) type. Building on the success of the original roman and italic styles, ATF issued numerous variations on the theme, including a bold, cursive (the italic with swash alternates) and a “handtooled” (inline), variant.
PROVENANCE: The Library of the Grolier Club and Florence E. Duvall
DIE NEUE TYPOGRAPHIE.
Jan Tschichold (1902–1974). Berlin: Bildungsverband der Deutsche Buchdrucker, 1928. Octavo.
By the mid-1920s a new design ethos was sweeping much of the Western world. No longer would backwards-looking pseudo-Greek-temple columns or ornate decoration do for buildings, typography, or other areas of design; nor would the short-lived art nouveau be deemed appropriate for the lean, modern, electrified machine age. A modern look which embraced the machine and unpretentiousness of contemporary life was called for. No institution became more closely associated with this modernist movement than the Bauhaus.
Tschichold was never part of the Bauhaus, yet his manual of new typography became the manifesto for radically modern graphic design.
LENDER: Jerry Kelly
THE PRINTING OF GREEK IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Robert Proctor (1868–1903). London: The Bibliographical Society, 1900. Folio.
No less an authority than Nicolas Barker has called Robert Proctor “the greatest student of Greek typography of the last century, a man imbued with the revolutionary zeal of William Morris.” The summary of Proctor’s knowledge of early Greek typefaces is presented in this comprehensive book. Proctor felt the Aldine style set the study of Greek back generations, yet it was the Aldine model that was followed in the overwhelming majority of Greek types for centuries to come, from Garamond to the twentieth century.
LENDER: The Grolier Club
CATALOGUE OF SPECIMENS OF PRINTING TYPES BY ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH PRINTERS AND FOUNDERS.
Turner Berry, A.F. Johnson (1884–1972). 1665–1830, London: Oxford University Press & Humphrey Milford, 1935. Quarto.
In the fifteenth century Italy dominated the field of typeface design; in the sixteenth century the French reigned supreme; and for a good part of the seventeenth century Dutch punchcutters were considered the finest in the world. By the eighteenth century, however, the British typefounders were producing many of the best types available. The 165 years between 1665–1830 covered in this book can be more aptly considered the first golden era of British type manufacture.
This book is included in our hundred books famous in typography not because it exerted any great effect on typographic study or practice, but rather because it documents a very important and influential era in typographic history.
PROVENANCE: Annotated by Daniel Berkeley Updike, printer and type historian, later Jerry Kelly
FUTURA: THE TYPE OF TODAY . . . AND TOMORROW.
Paul Renner (1878–1956). Frankfurt am Main: Bauer Typefoundry, c. 1930. Octavo.
Like Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner was never a member of the Bauhaus, though many associate him with that famous institution.
Renner’s Futura design was different from other sans serifs in existence at the time, such as Akzidenz Grotesk and News Gothic: instead of a box-like mechanical approach, Renner based his font (especially the capital letters) on classical forms. The result was a unique take on the sans serif theme, and an instant success. And while other sans serif typeface designs have come and gone, Futura has endured.
LENDER: Jerry Kelly
LAYOUT IN ADVERTISING.
W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1856). New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1928 (revised edition 1948). Octavo.
William Addison Dwiggins was born in Martinsville, Ohio, in 1880. As a young man he studied lettering with Fred Goudy at the Frank Holm School in Chicago.
The title of this manual, Layout in Advertising, clearly states what it’s about. It includes a section specifically concerned with type, yet how much one might learn about the subject is debatable. Ironically, Dwiggins himself would later move away from advertising in favor of book design work. He was also an important type designer (creating Electra, Caledonia, Metro, and other typefaces for the Linotype Corporation of Brooklyn, NY); as well as being a puppeteer, and an articulate polemicist.
LENDER: Jerry Kelly
BIFUR.
A.M. Cassandre (1901–1968). Paris: Deberny & Peignot, 1928. Octavo.
A. M. Cassandre was the nom de plum of the advertising artist Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron. Poster designs, for which he always created unique lettering by hand, counted among his major works. Upon seeing Cassandre’s poster named “Au Bucheron” in 1925, the Parisian typefounder Charles Peignot commissioned the Bifur typeface.
The design involves extremely simple geometric shapes. There are two versions, a one-color type and a two-color variant. The concept was novel, functional and truly innovative.
PROVENANCE: From the library of Aaron Burns, typographer and founder of ITC; later Jerry Kelly
TYPE DESIGNS: THEIR HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT.
A[lfred] F[orbes] Johnson (1884–1972). London: Grafton & Co., 1934. Octavo.
A.F. Johnson was “Keeper of the Books” (librarian) at the British Museum, which would later spin off its book holdings into the British Library. In this modest volume Johnson imparts a great deal of knowledge about the evolution of type, from Gutenberg up to modern sans serifs and early-twentieth-century advertising typefaces. Type Designs is something of a “mini-Updike,” but that is not to say that Johnson does not have original thoughts about the development of type – he most certainly does.
LENDER: Jerry Kelly
TYPE SPECIMEN FACSIMILES 1–15.
Stanley Morison (Introduction), John Dreyfus (Editor). London: Bowes & Bowes and Putnam, 1963. Folio.
When it comes to delving into the history of type, not much is as useful as a type specimen. One could look at types used in printed books and other matter, but in type the fonts used would be worn and often not very well printed. Type specimens virtually always present type in a pristine state, and type founders were careful to print their wares as well as possible.
Typographic scholars realized the importance of such items, and therefore in the mid-twentieth century a group in England set about to produce a collection of facsimiles of the most important type specimens, intended to span several volumes. Only two were published, but they formed a key resource for all interested in the deeper study of typefaces.
PROVENANCE: Inscribed by the editor John Dreyfus to Jerry Kelly
AN ESSAY ON TYPOGRAPHY.
Eric Gill (1882–1940). London: Sheed & Ward, 1931 (printed by Hague & Gill). Octavo.
Eric Gill was a major artist in several disciplines, including calligraphy, wood-engraving, type design, and typography. He was also a prolific author. His Essay on Typography is a manual of the art, in the vein of earlier books by Moxon and Fournier. The book is also a prime example of Gill’s then novel typographic ideas put into practice: it is set in basically a single size of Gill’s own Joanna type, flush left/rag right.
An Essay on Typography is printed letterpress by Gill and his son-in-law, René Hague. The illustrations and diagrams were cut on wood by Gill.
PROVENANCE: Inscribed by bibliographer Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt to the printer Joseph Blumenthal of Spiral Press fame, later Jerry Kelly