#bernhard cursive

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

This week we are showcasing a recent donation of the 1926 type design handbook Alphabets: A Manual of Letter Design, with Complete Alphabets of Varied Styles of Lettering by the American type designer and printing historian Douglas C. McMurtrie, published by Bridgman Publishers in Pelham, New York. Intended as an “elementary handbook,” it is mainly a type display book in which “all the good forms of letter design are represented, and the specimen alphabets should prove useful models to students of lettering.”

The usual suspects are included here, such as Caslon, Garamond, Bodoni, and Cochin, as well as a couple of Goudy typefaces, but we thought we’d display some of the less usual type designs. They are from top to bottom:

-- Greco Heavy, released by Richard Gans Foundry in 1925. -- Advertisers Gothic, designed by Robert Wiebking in 1917 for Western Type Foundry. -- Vanity Fair, designed by McMurtrie himself in 1923 and cast by Continental Type Founders for Condé Nast Press. -- Greco Adornado, released by Richard Gans Foundry in 1924. -- Cloister Black, designed by native Milwaukeean Morris Fuller Benton and Joseph W. Phinney in 1904. -- Bernhard Cursive, designed by Lucian Bernhard and released by Bauer Type Foundry in 1925. -- French Script, there are a number of typefaces called French Script; we are uncertain of the origin of the face displayed here.

Douglas C. McMurtrie (1888-1944) held a number of important posts in his short lifetime, including printing manager for the Columbia University Printing Office, the Arbor Press, and Condé Nast Press; editor of the prestigious Ars Typographica magazine; typographic director of the Cuneo Press; director of advertising and typography at Ludlow Typograph Company; and head of the WPA’s American Imprints Inventory.

Our copy of Alphabets is from the Art Department of Milprint, Inc, or the Milwaukee Printing Company which operated from 1899-1988, and bears its bookplate and ownership inscription.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts