#bauer type foundry

[lisamarie-vee]

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Typography Tuesday

ANNA SIMONS and WILLY WIEGAND

Here are some calligraphic initials by the German calligrapher and type designer Anna Simons (1871–1951), paired with a proprietary typeface designed by German type designer and fine press publisher Willy Wiegand (1884-1961) for his Bremer Presse. From 1918 to 1934, Simons designed over 1400 initials and titles the press. Weigand himself designed the typeface used for the press, known today as Bremer Antiqua, designed in 1911. The typeface was cut by Louis Hoell and cast at the Bauer type foundry, and is based on the fonts of incunabula printers Adolf Rusch and Johann and Wendelin de Spira.

The examples shown here are from an Italian edition of Dante's La Divina Commedia printed in Munich at the Bremer Presse in 1921. Every initial designed for this book by Simons is unique, as can be seen here in the examples of A, P, and Q. Our copy is a gift from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).

View more posts on the designs of Anna Simons.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

On this day, November 21 in 1694, the French writer, historian, and philosopher François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire was born in Paris. To commemorate this birthday milestone, we present a 1928 Random House edition of Voltaire's magnum opus Candide (originally published simultaneously in five countries in 1759), with illustrations by the notable American artist and illustrator Rockwell Kent. 

This edition, the first title published under the Random House imprint, was printed in an edition of 1470 copies on French rag paper by the Pynson Printers of New York under the direction of typographer and book designer Elmer Adler, with type designed by Lucian Bernhard and paragraph designs by Rockwell Kent; both cast by the Bauersche Giesserei, Frankfort. Our copy is signed by the artist.

Happy birthday anniversary, Voltaire!

View other posts on works by Voltaire.

View other posts with illustrations by Rockwell Kent.

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[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

On this final #Typography Tuesday of 2021, as we transition from December of one year to January of another, we present those two months as typographically represented in The Bauer Almanac for 1939, published in New York by the German Bauer Type Foundry (Bauersche Giesserei). It was printed in Elizabeth Roman and Italic types designed by the noted German designer  Elizabeth Friedländer and released by Bauer in 1938. The woodcuts are by Karl Vollmer who had been a student of the German grand-master designer Rudolf Koch. Friedländer herself had been a student of the German artist and type designer Emil Rudolf Weiss, who designed Bauer’s noted Weiss family of typefaces starting in 1927.

Bauer’s owner Georg Hartmann, who had opened the New York office in 1927, commissioned Friedländer to design her typeface, which was originally named Friedländer-Antiqua, but had to be renamed Elizabeth, since Friedländer, a recognizably Jewish name, was inadvisable after Hitler came to power in 1933. The Bauer firm, the stock of which is still directed by Georg Hartmann’s great-granddaughter Vivian Harmann, was originally established by type designer and punchcutter Johann Christian Bauer in 1837 at Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Today the range of Bauer typefaces is extensive and notable. The Frankfurt headquarters itself is long closed, but Bauer still has a presence in the Barcelona company Fundición Tipográfica Neufville which holds the rights to Bauer typefaces that Vivian Hartmann manages as Neufville Digital.

View other posts on typefaces by Elizabeth Friedländer.

View other posts on the Bauer Type Foundry.

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Typography Tuesday

THE GROTESKS

San-serif typefaces, that is, letter forms that do not have serif extensions at the end of strokes, go by a variety of alternate names, but the most common is Grotesque, or in German, as we prefer, Grotesk. There seems to be some difference of opinion about the origin of the term, but the moniker was established in the 19th century, and the majority opinion seems to be because san serifs appeared so unseemly and poorly formed compared to the serif letter forms that Europeans had been used to reading for nearly two millennia. Wikipedia, citing Monotype Corporation, says that the term originates from the “Italian grottesco, meaning ‘belonging to the cave’ due to their simple geometric appearance,” which makes little sense to us.

While serif typefaces remain predominant for most printed material, san-serifs have become most prevalent for digital display and public signage. San-serifs or Grotesks were used sparingly and for specific usages and effects for a century, but the second half of the 20th century saw a huge expansion in design and application. This week we feature some of the most recognized Grotesks designed before 1960, from the prolific, Milwaukee-born designer Morris Fuller Benton’s 1908 News Gothic, through the ultra-ubiquitous Helvetica designed by Max Miedinger in 1957, to our own favorite san serif, Hermann Zapf’s 1958 Optima. These specimens are drawn from our copy of American type designer, historian, and theorist Stephen Coles’s The Anatomy of Type, published in 2012 by Harper Design. From top to bottom they are:

1.) News Gothic, designed by Morris Fuller Benton, released 1908. Originally designed for American Type Founders (ATF), Coles notes that "this is the archetypal American sans serif" and "became the most popular sans in the States for several decades." The version shown here is Bitstream's updated design. 2.) Futura, designed by German designer Paul Renner and released by the Bauer Type Foundry in 1927. Influenced by Bauhaus design experiments, Renner began with straight lines and circular shapes, modifying it to the classic typeface we know today. The version shown here is one of many redesigns, this one by Marie-Thérèse Koreman. 3.) Gill Sans, designed by English artist and designer Eric Gill and released by Monotype from 1928-1932. This much utilized san serif is itself beholden to Edward Johnston's type for the London Underground. The lower-case g is distinctive, and Gill himself described it as "a pair of spectacles." 4.) Helvetica, conceived by Eduard Hoffmann and designed by Max Miedinger, released by the Haas Type Foundry as Neue Haas Grotesk in 1957, and renamed Helvetica in 1960 by the Stempel Type Foundry. Since its release, Helvetica has become the most widely known typeface because of its commanding ubiquity, and is both heralded and reviled for its universal utility. The version shown here is a 1980s redesign called Neue Helvetica designed for Linotype. 5.) Univers, designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by Deberny & Peignot in 1957, the same year as Helvetica. Much like Helvetica, Univers embodies Beatrice Warde's imperative that "type should be invisible." The design is spare and neutral, "delivering readable text while drawing very little attention to itself." 6.) Optima, designed by Hermann Zapf and released by D. Stempel AG in 1958. This is our favorite because the flares that Zapf utilizes create a san serif with the character of a serif font. Coles calls it "elegant serenity" and "tranquil beauty" but also "the stuff of the establishment."

View our post on Edward Johnston’s London Underground type.

View our post on Helvetica.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

[duardius]

happy 275th!

happy birthday johann wolfgang von goethe, born 28 august 1749.

dust jacket from the 1944 edition of goethe's works designed by tschichold for verlag birkhäuser, basel. dust jacket frame composition with fleuron (leaf) designed by emil rudolph weiss for the bauer type foundry [Weiß—fraktur, bauersche gießerei, frankfurt am main, 1913, p32]. publisher’s device also by tschichold.

[duardius]

bauer bookplate

simple & tasteful typographical ex libris from the library of the bauer type foundry, frankfurt, germany. set in their weiss types.

i acquired the bauer type foundry library’s copy [after indeterminate journey] of that indispensable reference: A Treatise on Title Pages by theodore low de vinne; being the 1914, 2nd edition issued posthumously by the oswald publishing company, nyc. john clyde oswald, publisher of American Printer, after de vinne’s death obtained rights of publication to several de vinne publications, notably «The Practice of Typography» series. the 1914 oswald edition of A Treatise on Title Pages has a canceled title-page, & so was made up from sheets still standing at the de vinne press. the weiss types did not issue until 1928—cf. ‹vase 2›—thus giving terminus post quem for the volume’s entry into the bauer library.

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

This week we focus on the Weiss family of typefaces as presented in The Weiss Family, a three-pamphlet publication produced in New York by the Bauer Type Foundry in 1931. The Weiss font was designed by the German painter, typographer, and designer Emil Rudoph Weiss and produced in 1926 by the Bauer Foundry in Frankfurt, Germany. An accomplished type designer, Weiss nevertheless did not consider himself a professional typographer, but rather a painter, even though he spent time studying letter forms with the noted German calligrapher and type designer Anna SImons, and went on to create numerous fonts for Bauer. In pamphlet two he writes:

I am, first and foremost, a painter. . . .Quite autodidactically, without being taught and without misgivings, I began to write and design letters myself. . . . I remained, however, a painter; and I really wished to be simply and solely a painter! And so it is that all the labour that I have devoted to type design and the book has been done, as one might say, with the left hand; it has been done by an artist, by an amateur rather than a professional.

The Weiss family of typefaces is based on Chancery hands of the late 15th and early sixteenth centuries, particularly those used by northern Italian type designers of the time. The font has sloping serifs and a top-heavy design, producing a striking elegance that is quite useful in book and advertisement design. The three pamphlets in The Weiss Family emphasize this utility, as seen in the examples shown here. The first pamphlet is essentially a specimen book, the second displays Weiss types used in fine book printing, and the third shows Weiss types used for advertising and in display.

Our copy of The Weiss Family is another gift from our friend Jerry Buff.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.