Here are some more specimens from The Curwen Press Miscellany, edited by Curwen Press typographer Oliver Simon (1895-1956) and published in London for the Curwen Press by the venerable Jewish publishing house Soncino Press in a limited edition of 275 copies in 1931.
This time we focus on type borders and ornaments by frequent Curwen collaborating designers, including graphic artist Edward Bawden (1903-1989) and artists and wood engraver John Nash (1893-1977).
Our copy The Curwen Press Miscellany is a gift from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick (1946-2022).
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These initials were designed by noted Dutch book and type designer Jan Van Krimpen (1892-1958) in 1925 for use by Harold Curwen's Curwen Press. The alphabet shown here appears in The Curwen Press Miscellany, edited by Curwen's typographer Oliver Simon (1895-1956) and published in London for the Curwen Press by the venerable Jewish publishing house Soncino Press in a limited edition of 275 copies in 1931.
Our copy, a gift from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick (1946-2022), is from the collection of the English book collector Major John Roland Abbey (1894-1969) with his bookplate designed and engraved by Sir Henry John Fanshawe Badeley (1874-1951) in 1920.
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The Curwen Press was found in 1863 by Rev, John Curwen, originally to print music. His grandson Harold Curwen took control of the business in 1916 and was soon joined by Oliver Simon in 1920, transforming what was essentially a family job-printing business into a notable fine-press publishing enterprise. The two made a great impact on the typographic world of the 1920s, with their well-designed types and borders, fine illustration work, and their attention to design and color. The Press maintained its reputation for quality until it closed its doors in 1984, with its considerable collection passing to Cambridge University Library, including much of its distinguished stock of type. Much of the credit for rescuing the types from the melting pot goes to Ian Mortimer, artist, designer, printer, and proprietor of I. M. Imprimit in London.
The selection displayed here of borders and typefaces from the Curwen Press were compiled and proofed from the original types by Ian Mortimer, printed offset by Adrian Lack at the Senecio Press, and were inserted as part of John Dreyfus’s article “The Curwen Press Collection in Cambridge University Library” in Matrix 5, Winter 1985, pp. 23-33. All the borders shown here were commissioned by Curwen for its exclusive use. The typefaces also include some exclusive designs, such as Curwen Sans designed by Harold Curwen, initials by Jan Van Krimpen and Percy Smith, and some typefaces particularly associated with the Press, such as Walbaum.
Borders and typeface names, along with their designers are printed beneath each specimen. Besides Curwen, Van Krimpen, and Smith, other designers of note whose designs are displayed here include Albert Auspurg, Henry Ball, Edward Bawden, Harry Carter, Rudolf Koch, and Paul Nash.
Matrix 5 was printed in October 1985 by John and Rosalind Randle at the Whittington Press in Andoversford, Gloucestershire, in an edition of 715 copies, and is another fine donation from our friend Jerry Buff.
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We return to Printing of To-Day: An Illustrated Survey of Post-War Typography in Europe and the United States, printed at the Curwen Press in 1928, and published by Harper and Brothers in New York. and Peter Davies Limited in London (a publishing house founded in 1926 by Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of the Llewelyn Davies children befriended by J. M. Barrie, and whose name was the source for Barrie’s Peter Pan).
This week we feature specimens from the section “Printing in England,” by British printer typographer Oliver Simon (1895–1956), the managing director of the Curwen Press and co-founder of the influential typography journal The Fleuron. Simon writes:
The majority of books in England are set by Monotype or Linotype machine. . . . The Monotype machine is, in my opinion, better adapted to printing the finest quality. . . . Moreover, the Monotype Corporation has a better selection of type faces to offer printers than its rival, although . . . both corporations fall short of what might be expected of them. . . .
There are no CONTEMPORARY Book-types worthy of note: printers are in advance of typographers. It is not easy to believe that there are not designers who could do good work if encouraged. . . . To-day, the two type corporations. . . have for all practical purposes a monopoly! Is it too much to ask them to commission modern types? . . . The plates that follow . . . may give a hint of what English printing will achieve in the near future if printers and publishers will have faith in their own age.
Fortunately, Simon would see his desired outcomes achieved during his lifetime. Once again, as image captions are still not appearing in the Tumblr dashboard, we list them here from top to bottom:
1,) Title page for Ernest Gimson: His Life and Work, printed in Caslon types by the Shakespeare Head Press, with an illustration by F. L. Griggs.
2.) Title page for Robert Graves’s Welchman’s Hose printed in 1925 at the Curwen Press for The Fleuron in Monotype Imprint.
3.) Page from Pompey the Little printed in Caslon with a wood engraving by David Jones at the Golden Cockerel Press.
5.) Page from William Meinhold’s Sidona the Sorceress, with an illustration by Thomas Lowinsky, published in Monotype Garamond by Ernest Benn for the Cambridge University Press.
6.) Opening page for Poor Young People, printed by the Curwen Press for The Fleuron in Monotype Caslon and illustrations by Albert Rutherston.
7.) Title page from Two Poems by Edward Thomas, designed by Percy Smith, and printed in 1927 at the Curwen Press for Ingpen & Grant in Caslon and Stephenson Blake open capitals.
8.) Opening page from Horati Carminum Libri IV, with illustrations by Vera Willoughby and Koch Kursiv type, printed by the Curwen Press for Peter Davies.
9.) Title page for Passo Domini printed in Caslon with wood engravings by Eric Gill at the Golden Cockerel press in 1926.
10.) Page from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, printed in Caslon at the Golden Cockerel Press with wood engravings by Eric Gill.
11.) Half title and text page from The Receipt Book of Elizabeth Raper, with illustrations by Duncan Grant, printed at the Kynoch Press in Monotype Baskerville and Stephenson Blake open capitals for the Nonesuch Press.
12.) Title page from The Poems of Richard Lovelace, printed in Fell types at the Oxford University Press in 1925.
View examples of Continental printing from Printing of To-Day.
This week we focus on the type designs of the noted Dutch type and book designer Jan van Krimpen (1892-1958) as presented in Twentieth century type designers by Rampant Lions Press proprietor Sebastian Carter, published by Taplinger Publishing Company in 1987. Van Krimpen spent nearly his entire working life at the great Haarlem printing house of Joh. Enschedé en Zonen beginning in 1923.
His first design for Enschedé was his Lutetia in 1925 (shown here in roman, italic, and open capitals just below his portrait), named after the Roman name for Paris and cut by the German punchcutter Paul Helmuth Rädisch. This established the long working relationship between the two. In 1928 Lutetia was recut for the Monotype Corporation to van Krimpen’s specifications, also beginning a long and important relationship between van Krimpen and Monotype. Lutetia was so successful that Enschedé made van Krimpen their house designer, which he remained until his retirement in the 1950s.
Van Krimpen did accept commissions from others besides Enschedé, such as the titling for Oliver Simon’s graphic design periodical Signature (1947) and the decorated capitals for Simon at the Curwen Press (1929), shown here with van Krimpen’s Open Capitals (1928) in between. His next typeface for Enschedé was his 1928 Romanée typeface, named after an encounter with a particularly good bottle of Burgundy, for which he designed an italic over 20 years later in 1949. He produced his Romulus type face in 1931 at the suggestion of Monotype’s Beatrice Warde. It is shown here just below the Romanée in roman, italic and open capitals, along with an alternate italic, a cursive Cancelleresca Bastarda suggested by Monotype’s Stanley Morrison.
Perhaps van Krimpen’s most noted typeface is his Spectrum, originally designed for the Spectrum publishing company of Utrecht between 1941 and 1943, and later adapted for Monotype setting in 1955. Shown here also are Juliana (1952-8) and Molé Foliate (1960) designed by van Krimpen’s colleague and successor at Enschedé, Samuel Louis (Sem) Hartz, although there is some dispute over how much credit Hartz should get for the Molé Foliate, as another colleague Pieter Wetselaar appears to have had a considerable hand in its design. The portrait of Jan van Krimpen shown here is by Sem Hartz.
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Mixed Emotions - You Want Love (Maria Maria) (1987)
Mixed Emotions – You Want Love (Maria Maria) (1987)
1986 schrieb Drafi Deutscher You Want Love, das er seiner Plattenfirma EMI anbot, die für diesen Song einen Interpreten suchen sollte. Bei den Aufnahmen mit Oliver Simon kam Deutscher aber auf die Idee, das Stück mit diesem im Duett aufzunehmen.
Die Single wurde schließlich unter dem Namen „Mixed Emotions“ im September 1986 auf den…
