#typophiles

Merry Christmas!

Or as they say in Spanish, Feliz Navidad! Today we celebrate the Christmas holiday with a festive book, Land of Two Christmases, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1965 with 360 copies held for distribution to the Typophiles. The text was written by Harriett Philmus Pitt and discusses the various Christmas traditions celebrated in Puerto Rico, where the books says it is celebrated in both the American and Spanish styles—though I would argue that Puerto Rico has a style all it's own! You can learn all about Christmas and related celebrations in Puerto Rico on the Discover Puerto Rico website.

The illustrations are by Erwin Schachner and were printed using photo-engravings of original linoleum prints. The text was set in Caledonia and letterpress printed on tan laid paper by Marbridge Printing Company, Inc. The book is printed in black and bright pink, making it quite festive though not what most would normally consider to be Christmas colors.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

View Christmas posts past.

It’s Fine Press Friday!

In the spirit of Christmas’s arrival in three days, we present a small Christmas-themed book entitled An Alphabet of Christmas Words, published in 1966. The book is a dictionary of holiday terms, with corresponding illustrations. Entries were selected and edited from the Oxford English Dictionary by American writer Helen McKelvey Oakley (1906-2003), who explains that her “interest [in this project] lies in seeing how The Dictionary treats [each term].” The accompanying illustrations are by Ursula Suess (b. 1924), a graphic designer, calligrapher, and artist. Most recently, her art was shown in a 2022 solo exhibition at the Tubac Center of the Arts in Tubac, Arizona.

An Alphabet of Christmas Words was offset printed in Times Roman on Mohawk Superfine Text paper by Hallmark Lithographers Inc. in an edition of 360 copies, published by the Oxford University Press and designed by Ursula Suess and the press's art director and vice president John Begg (1903-1974). Also included with this book are two small season’s greetings cards from the press; one has Begg’s name printed on it and the other has “from Ursel and Mutti” inscribed in black ink.

View more Fine Press Friday Posts.

Typography Tuesday

Yesterday and today I met with students in Typography classes at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD).to discuss the historical development of Roman letter forms and typography from the 5th century to the present. Of course I used materials from UWM Special Collections to demonstrate. Part of the discussion focused on the abysmal state of British typography from the 15th to 17th centuries because of rigorous state control over printing in the country. The main bright spot for British typography during this time was the renovation and reorganization of the Oxford University Press, and the acquisition by its director Dr. John Fell of not only distinctive Dutch typefaces, but also the punches and matrices in the early 1670s. The so-called Fell Types transformed British typographic expression, and when the laws that were hyper-controlling printing and typography in Great Britain were allowed to lapse in the mid-1690s, it opened a floodgate of innovations, including William Caslon’s designs for the first truly British national typeface in the 1730s.

Dr. Fell’s types, punches, and matrices are still preserved. This presentation is from the small letterpress book, The Roman Italic & Black Letter bequeathed to the University of Oxford by Dr. John Fell, printed from the Fell Types as a keepsake in 1951 for the Typophiles by Charles Batey, printer to Oxford University, in an edition of 475 copies. Our copy is a gift from our good friend Jerry Buff.

View more posts about the Fell Types.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

Typography Tuesday

We are huge fans of The Typophiles and thanks to our benefactor Jerry Buff we are acquiring quite a collection of their publications. Today we feature the seventh in the series of Typophile Chap Books, Roman Numerals, Typographic Leaves and Pointing Hands: Some Notes on Their Origin, History, and Contemporary Use by Paul McPharlin. It was published in 1942 in a limited edition of 395 copies for contributors and subscribers. It was designed by Fred Anthoensen, set in Linotype Janson, and printed at the Southworth-Anthoensen Press in Portland, Maine.

In his introduction Paul A. Bennett describes that this book was begun back in 1937 after they finished “Ampersanding”. The call went out that The Typophiles were researching Roman numerals and with the help of, among others, Lawrence C. Wroth, Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., Dr. Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt and Professor E. K. Rand, a significant amount of notes were collected. The collected research was sent to Paul McPharlin who began to do further research and editing. McPharlin saw within the Roman inscriptions interesting leaf imagery. Then he began noting the typographic leaves in early printed books where he also saw pointing hands, or manicules: “One thing leading to another, he uncovered points which seemed not to have been considered at all before.”

As book historians we are familiar with this process of one thing leading to another. In a similar vein, it was a pleasant surprise to find out that Paul McPharlin was another typographer who, like W. A. Dwiggins, enjoyed marionettes. We will feature more of McPharlin’s marionette work in the future. For now here is an image from Puppet Hands and Their Making with a Note on Feet: Theorem and Woodcuts, written and illustrated by Paul McPharlin.

Typography Tuesday: A Typophiles Commonplace Book

These are quotations from Typophile Chap Book 38, A Commonplace Book for Typophiles. It was published by the Typophiles in New York in 1961 and printed at the Grace Hoper Press, in an edition of 360 copies. Another gift from our benefactor Jerry Buff!

This book of quotes was compiled by Sherwood & Katherine Grover, both employees of The Grabhorn Press, who published a handful of commonplace books of their own as Grace Hoper Press.

Commonplace books were manuscripts kept by people as a way of recording quotes and ideas that they read and wanted to remember. Tumblr is a digital form of commonplace book and much easier to share than the hand-written variety.

Name of the typeface and origin of the quote:

Garamond. Headline of a French editorial replying to American criticism (1956). Janson. From the Japanese. Two-line small pica Ornamental Number 5. An Arabic Proverb. Lutetia. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Forum & Goudy New Style. Inkunabula. An Arabic proverb. Inkunabula. From Hamlet. Bauer Bodoni. Osmanli proverb

Typography Tuesday

Today we present yet another little treasure from the Jerry Buff donation: Graham Moss’s extract of a 1999 talk to the Typophiles in New York, I Am Not A Type Collector, with wonky late 18th-century or early 19th-century, wood-engraved, anthropomorphic initials and hand-set Verona types printed by Moss and Kathy Whalen at their Incline Press in Oldham, England.

Moss discusses how he is not sure how he ended up these funky, beat-up initials as he only acquires second-hand type if it is usable to set text in. As he notes, they probably would have remained unused in a bottom drawer forever had he not made this little keepsake for the Typophiles.

Our copy includes a signed presentation inscription from Moss to Jerry Buff. 

Typography Tuesday

These images are from the chapbook, “Ampersand: The Symbol Unique,” included in Diggings From Many Ampersandhogs, a collection of diverse chapbooks printed for the Typophiles. The lighthearted text in this example is about the fascination society has had with the ampersand symbol and its evolution. It was written by Morris Schreiber with artwork by Caldecott Medal  winner, Roger Duvoisin and printed by Duenewald Printing Corporation in New York in 1936.

Stay tuned for more from this collection.

Typography Tuesday

A few Typography Tuesdays ago we presented the chapbook, “Ampersand: The Symbol Unique,” from the Typophiles’ 1937 collection of member chapbooks and other printed ephemera, Diggings From Many Ampersandhogs. Well, there are so many delightful typographic artifacts in the collection, we thought we’d present a selection of a few more for this Typography Tuesday, including:

The Ampersand Machine by Albert Schiller. Advertising Agencies Service Company, New York.

Diggings from Many Ampersandhogs. Designed and illustrated by Rudolph Ruzicka. The Spiral Press, New York.

Why a Book on Ampersands? by Paul A Bennett. Mergenthaler Linotype Company, Brooklyn, New York.

The Ampersand: Sign of Continuity by Paul Standard. George Grady Press, New York,

Ampersand Reduced by Hortense Ansorge & Ernst Reichl. Set by The Composing Room, New York, and printed by. Ernst Reichl at H. Wolff, New York.