Tints

[TREBLE (Phil)] Tints. Bishop Burton: Muttons & Nuts, 2024. [One of 20 copies printed]. 8vo. 208 x 130 mm. Pp. [16]. Cloth. New. £90 SOLD

‘For me, mixing small quantities of ink for relief printing has often produced inconsistent tints across print runs, and I end up wasting time and resources. This is a book showing a selection of eight ink colours, from Hawthorn Printmaker Supplies, and how to tint them using weighed-out ink in ratios of transparent white to base colour. I originally intended this to be a reference for myself but thought I would offer a few copies to others. The ratios shown are base colour, 3/1, 10/1, 30/1, 100/1 and 200/1. The sixteen page book is printed letterpress in 8 and 11pt Monotype Grotesque with 36pt square border units and bound in white Windsor book cloth with a letterpress printed title from laser engraved MDF in a split fountain gradient.’ (From the printer’s website)

WOLPE (Berthold) Some book decorations by Berthold Wolpe. Oxford: S. P. Tuohy in association with The Perpetua Press, 2018. 250 copies printed in Monotype Bell on Zerkall mouldmade paper. Crown octavo, 187 x 122 mm. Pp. xiii, [25]. 28 plates, one folding, most from the orig. zinc line blocks. Printed by the Evergreen Press and bound by Ludlow Bookbinders. Red cloth. Gilt titles in Albertus Light. New. £35

Printed letterpress from the original process line blocks, discovered in the typographic collections of Wolpe's friend Vivian Ridler, used for the illustrations to Walter de la Mare, Collected Poems, 1942, and F. Le Mesurier, Sauces, French and English, 1947. With notes and an introduction by Steven Tuohy.

Stempel

STEMPEL (D.) [Typefounders] Die Hauptprobe der Schriftgiesserei und Messinglinienfabrik D. Stempel. Frankfurt a. Main: [1927].

Thick 4to. 31 cm. Pp. xxviii, 1198 (irregularly paginated, with several alphabetical sub-series, 68a-q, etc.). Printed in black, gold and spot colours. Orig. half parchment, blue cloth sides, by the August Osterrieth bindery. Some minor marks to lower board but still an exceptionally well-preserved copy of this gargantuan type specimen published to celebrate the firm's thirtieth anniversary in 1925, but not finished until 1927. 'It is probably the most comprehensive collection of type faces, ornaments and specimen settings ever presented by a single company. At the same time, this vast volume is a museum of the typographical practice of the early twentieth century.' (Stempel, Chronik der Schriftgiesserei, 1955). Presentation bookplate. (NB 7.42 kg unpacked.) SOLD

Merry Christmas

MARTI (Walter) Typographie. Lucerne: Walter Marti, 1957. 4to. 30 cm. Pp. 134. Striking album of designs for a variety of mostly ephemeral printed matter, making extensive use of colour, geometric form, etc. Orig. printed boards. Wire spiral binding. A fine copy. SOLD

Fine Press Book Fair, 9-10 December, Oxford

 

F.H.Ernst Schneidler (1882-1956), Der Wassermann

Der Wassermann. Studienblätter für Büchermacher. Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann Verlag, [1945]. Edition of about 70 copies. Small folio. 4 vols. Loose bifoliums (largely), some in gatherings. Pp. 168; [iv], 156; 180; [iv], 144. Orig. cloth and board portfolios (worn but sound). Printed labels. A good set. Scarce. SOLD

Schneidler’s unfinished master-work – except for vol. 3, a collection of fragments, really - consists largely of illustrative material for a textbook of the graphic arts programme he taught and directed (with various specialist departmental heads) at the Stuttgart state academy of applied arts between the two world wars (and for a short time after 1946). The work is assembled mainly from sheets printed there between about 1925 and 1934. (Volume 3 appeared separately in 1934 but the work was not published as a whole until 1945.)

The material is gathered by subject. Vol. 1 consists mainly of studies in book typography; vol. 2 covers non-typographic lettering; vol. 3 is more focused and consists of designs for an edition of Horace: it is the only part of the work considered to have been completed; vol. 4 is chiefly devoted to illustration and ornament, with some packaging design.

The title is best translated as 'the water-carrier' and refers to the astrological sign of Aquarius whose characteristic personality traits Schneidler believed should be cultivated by the graphic arts student.

A small number of presentation copies of this work contain some extra sheets. This copy corresponds in extent to the Newberry Library copy described by Georgianna Greenwood below and was bought from Hoffmann at about the same time, in the early 1950s (Hoffmann’s original invoice is present). Fewer than a dozen copies of Der Wassermann can be located in European and North American institutional libraries and there seems to be only one in the UK, in Cambridge University Library.

Schneidler was the designer of the script typeface Legende and his powerful calligraphy provides some of the strongest material in Der Wassermann. More generally, the work reflects a continuing conservative tradition of graphic arts training (the ‘Stuttgart school’) and its negotiation with the forces of modernism.

Schneidler left a large body of graphic and fine artwork but he is perhaps best known as a teacher. Among his many notable students were Walter Brudi, Eric Carle, Albert Kapr, Imre Reiner and Georg Trump.

 

SOURCES

Georgianna Greenwood, ‘Der Wassermann by F.H. Ernst Schneidler, an appreciation’, in Alphabet: the journal of the friends of calligraphy, 26:1, Fall 2000. 32pp, with 31 illustrations selected by Paul Shaw.

Sandra Lauenstein, ‘Schindler’s opus magnum’, pp. 147ff, in Buch Kunst Schrift F.H. Ernst Schneidler, ed. by Nils Buttner et al., Stuttgart, 2013.

Der Wassermann is the subject of a small, Grolier Club online exhibition, with brief notes by Jerry Kelly:

grolierclub.omeka.net/items/show389

The first article in the first number (1949) of Herbert Spencer’s modernist periodical Typographica is devoted to Schneidler’s experimental calligraphy, though the examples reproduced there are more recent than those in Der Wassermann which curiously goes unnoticed in G. K. Schauer’s (somewhat opaque) accompanying text.

  

The Fleuron

The Fleuron, nos. 1-7 [all published]. Ed. by Oliver Simon [later] Stanley Morison. London: At the Office of 'The Fleuron' [later] Cambridge: The University Press. 1923-30. 7 vols. 4to. 28 cm. Insets. Plates. Illusts. Vol. 1 quarter cloth, the rest full cloth. Boards to vol. 1 foxed, some spotting elsewhere, but generally a nice, crisp set, vols 2 & 3 in the original dustwrappers (head of vol 2 chipped). £650

'For me, collecting volume VII of The Fleuron from Zwemmer's in the Charing Cross Road was as heady an aesthetic experience as my first sight of Venice. For others, too. That notable wood engraver, Reynolds Stone...told me of a similar experience. Entering the Cambridge University Press as a trainee...he discovered that one of the printers there...Mr Nobbs, had a complete set of The Fleuron. That journal of typography changed Stone's life, and it changed mine.'

Robert Harling, from his foreword to Grant Shipcott, Typographical periodicals between the wars, Oxford Polytechnic Press, Oxford, 1980.