The Nature of Type Design in the 19th C, Part Two

Back cover of the 1898 Strong Seed & Plant Co. catalog seen above.

Yesterday, in Part One I reported on the proliferation of seed catalogs during the later half of the 19th century and how they came to reflect the nature of hand-lettering styles of that era. Today I am featuring a collection of seed catalog cover designs from "America's Attic", in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution which consists of 10,000 seed and nursery catalogs dating from 1830 to the present. They not only are important historical documents from a botanical perspective, but they also provide a window into a remarkably rich history of type design, illustration, and printing in the 19th century. The designers of these ornate covers were master lettering artists and it is clear the concept of minimalism was not in the vocabulary of their day.
      Most of these early catalog covers in the mid-19th century contained very decorative typography with colorful illustrations and printed with chromolithography and wood engravings. Typically the artist would combine some decorative lettering, often drawn on a curved path, with other text on horizontal baselines. Ornamental frames and devices were also used to contain some of the lettering designs at times, as seen in the artwork of the cover directly above. Alternatively, the text might be incorporated within the illustration or it may be the only treatment that carries the entire design, as in the case of the 1872 Vick's catalog seen above.
      The Smithsonian's digital archive of these seed catalogs are an incredibly valuable resource of 19th century hand-lettering and design. The site is well-documented and represents 258 catalogs with 500 individual images for endless exploration. Most of the collection was donated by Mrs. David Burpee in 1982.

Lettering For The Trades

Lovely lettering sample book published in Rotterdam in 1900 for signpainters, stonecutters, lithographers and architects. Kindly shared on Piet Schreuder's Flickrstream.   

Halloween Treats

Cloudland, a witches' waltz from the Spellman Collection of Victorian Music Covers at The University of Reading. 

Paganini's Witches' Dance from M. Ryan Taylor's collection of Halloween Sheet Music at Thirteen for Halloween. With exception of the following photo, all other songsheets below are from the Thirteen for Halloween collection. Below is a photo of the another edition of the same sheet music as above, but from my own collection which is litho printed only one color.  No publishing date on it, but the songbook containing it is dated 1907. Loving the rustic lettering on this one, but how hard is it to kern stick letters?

Electro Man here in the Superhero costume could be a dead ringer for Stephen Colbert in tights...

And just 'cause it's witchcraft, I give you Sinatra's Witchcraft songsheet from the Frank Sinatra Impersonator Blog. Happy Halloween from Letterology!

Lettres

Lettres by Jean Loisy, published in 1948 by Arts et Métiers Graphiques in France, and kindly provided by Michael Newhouse on Flickr. I love this cover design at top, but am seriously angsting over the lack of kerning in between that last pair of lettres. Many more interior pages filled with inspirational hand-lettering examples from 60+ years ago can be seen on his Flickr site.  

A Look Back to the Future of Type

The Book Border ornaments seen above, appeared in an 1891 issue of the New Zealand newsletter, Typo, a monthly journal and literary review published by Robert Coupland Harding, considered by many to be New Zealand's first and most eminent typographer. The book borders were originally designed by Harding and produced by the Johnson foundry of Philadelphia in 1879. Soon after, they received worldwide recognition by job printers and typographers who would customize them by inserting their own type inside the book borders.
      Typo was first published in 1887, and lasted just one decade. Harding was a scholar and critic of typography and printing, and did most of the writing for each issue while composing them at the case. He was among the first to argue the merits of a standardized system of measurement for typefounding and papermaking, and soon gained international praise for his reviews of new type designs and specimen books. 
      Harding was considered a visionary by many, and was very concerned about the future of the printing craft at the threshold of the 20th century. The Linotype and Monotype machines were replacing typesetters at that time and he had no love for the typewriter "which had dislodged calligraphy" he claimed. "The typewriter of today is only a germ of greater things to come" he wrote in an 1894 issue of Typo, and "there would be no place for the typefounder at the close of the 20th century". His suggestion that "a pile of thousands of sheets will be printed (from type-written or other copy) by a single electric flash" was by no means an incredible one. He believed the large printing houses would likely become silent factories by the middle of the 19th century, without type, presses or ink. Despite his many dim predictions for the future of the printing craft, he still felt confident that moveable type would remain. No doubt he'd be very pleased to see the current resurgence of the letterpress printing craft if he were alive today, however he might be very surprised to learn we are not all reading and writing in shorthand as he falsely forecasted. The time-honored roman character lives on, in every typestyle imaginable—and so many others that are not.