#baskerville type

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

Cinque stili di piombo per una misura di bellezza (Five Lead Types for a Measure of Beauty), letterpress printed in Verona, Italy by Alessandro Zanella (1955-2012) in a limited edition at his Edizioni Ampersand in 1988, presents five classic typefaces presented in typographic arrangements and representative quotes. The typefaces from top to bottom are:

Monotype Greek 90

Baskerville

Dante

Bembo

Bodoni

Spectrum

Born in Vicenza and raised in the Valdonega neighborhood of Verona, Alessandro Zanella became a student of American expatriate printer Richard Gabriel Rummonds (b. 1931) in 1976 and founded his own press, Edizioni Ampersand, in 1982, producing almost 200 titles until his unexpected death in 2012. Our copy of Cinque stili di piombo is another donation from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).

View other type specimen books.

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[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week, we present another book from the estate of our late friend, Dennis Bayuzick entitled On This Land. The book consists of a poem by Lenora Castillo with woodcuts created and printed in 1996 by Karen Kunc in an edition of 125 copies at the printer’s own Blue Heron Press with support from the Library Fellows of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C.

Both author and artist are from Nebraska, which is fitting because the poem is about becoming used to the landscape and nature of the state. Castillo begins her poem by discussing what Nebraska lacks: rivers, ravines, high mountains, and hills before continuing to describe what the state does have to offer: tornadoes, snowdrifts, and cottonwood trees. This progression represents the gradual acceptance of the “austere beauty” of the plains state, while the prints provide abstracted versions of the elements being described by the poet to enrich the viewer’s reading of the poem.

The prints are reduction woodcuts printed in five runs from two basswood blocks. The typeface is 14 point Baskerville printed on mould-made Nideggen paper along with a red flax cover pigmented with walnut.

View other posts with works by Karen Kunc.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

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– Sarah S., Special Collections Graduate Intern