A Fountain of Blackletter Text

A very unusual title page from a German text, dated 1676. It is said to be an early example of concrete typography, and it can be yours for only $450 on eBay. 

Ode to Mom

These typographical songsheets of American ballads go out to all the Mom's who taught us the ABCs. They are all from the Duke University Collection of Historic American Songsheets from the 1850s to 1920s. These elaborately designed title pages with decorative flourishes and hand-lettering were the style of that day and skilled artists were employed to design and print them as lithographs. All of the motherly music sheets featured here happen to be from the 1850s.

 
This dour ballad above is from the mid 19th century, and has a lovely decorative cap I. Sorry to offend any balladiers out there, but I just cannot understand who wrote this stuff or why it was ever popular. I cannot imagine any of these sentimental ballads measuring in any way up to the elaborate hand-lettering featured on their lovely lithographed title pages. They are really works of art. I suppose many of the songs were written in hard times during the American Civil War era, but did they have to be so dreadful? This music was popularized during that time by a well-to-do class who had a piano in their parlor, and took apparent pleasure from singing many of the virtuous melodies. Publishers eventually began to sell nicely bound catalogs of this sheet music with custom-stamped names to patrons who could afford them. I have found several of these large books in years past and intend to display some of the images from them on another day. They are quite wonderful type specimens for study.

This song title above is pathetic, but the typography is exquisite.


Lovely type, grim title. Even so, to all mother's here with us and in spirit! We celebrate you!

A Trip to Clownland

This charming little book from 1916 has one of my favorite cover designs and title pages from a children's book. It also contains many nice 2 color line art illustrations and several beautiful chromolithographs of circus images which were all created by Boston artist, Will F. Stecher (1864-1940).
:: From the Letterology Archives.

Lessons in Reading & Writing

Chapter titles from the 1884 Monroe's First Reader.
:: From the Letterology Archives.

The Illustrated Alphabet of Birds

The ABC Birds tin got me thinking about bird alphabets so I did some poking around. At first glance I came upon this wonderful children's book, The Illustrated Alphabet of Birds, first published in 1851 by Wm. Crosby and H.P. Nichols. I love the title page typography. I also found a version where someone adapted the book and created a nice feather alphabet to accompany it. You can see a few samples above and check out the entire book here. If anyone knows who may have designed the feather letters, I would love to know. The Baldwin Library of Children's Literature in the Department of Special Collection at the University of Florida's Georgre A. Smather Libraries has a complete digital copy available of the original text for viewing here.

Book Scraps

This dispatch is about a mysterious title page from an early 19th C scrapbook that turned up in the Peter Harrington rare book shop in London last year. This scrapbook was typical of the kind often purchased from stationers of the day by wealthy young women. Long before the term scrapbooking became popularized as a verb, it was a fashionable activity in that day, for young people to fill them with prints and ephemera. The books were often nicely bound blank pages with the exception of a title page intended to be removed by the owner. This particular scrapbook was produced in 1829, according to the title page, and it was lovingly filled with ephemera dating from the late 1700s to the mid-1850s. What is most unusual about this book is not only having the title page still intact, but it is truly a typographic wonder. Most likely it was printed as a steel engraving and it included very tiny bits of hand-lettered text amongst all of the decorative flourishes of the designer's hand. (Be sure to click on the title page to view full enlargement.) I love how it states that it is expressly designed to divert the anxious, amuse the studious, cheer the gloomy and employ the idle. Isn't that why we have reality TV now?