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Typography Tuesday

OSWALD BRUCE COOPER

Almost every printing shop has at least one of the ubiquitous Cooper typeface families, a standard of the type cabinet, but few know the personality behind them, Oswald Bruce Cooper (1879-1949), known to those who worked with him as "Oz." Cooper designed about fifteen major typefaces, mostly for Barnhart Brothers & Spindler and American Type Founders, that inspired many knockoffs and redesigns.

His own obscurity is mostly due to his intensely private and introverted personality, but he was much beloved by those who worked with him, and when he died of cancer in 1949, his colleagues produced this festschrift in his honor, The Book of Oz Cooper, An Appreciation of Oswald Bruce Cooper, published in Chicago by the Society of Typographic Arts in 1949. It includes an unfinished autobiography, supplemented by his wife Mary Lou Foster; several memorial essays by his colleagues and friends, including Frederic Goudy and W. A. Dwiggins; and several essays on his typefaces. The preface notes:

The book is the work of men who knew him, worked with him, understood his strength, and his character, and loved him. They take pride in paying him this tribute. He lives in our hearts and memories; may this book bring him to others who could not meet and know him in his life on this earth.

Our copy is another donation from the estate of our late friend, Dennis Bayuzick.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.