Monday the 4th December was the last day of the Monotype-sponsored 'The Wolpe Collection' exhibition at the Type Archive and I was determined to see it before it closed. The show was occasioned by the release of new, digital versions of Albertus, Pegasus, Sachsenwald, and Fanfare and Tempest Titling, 'remastered' by Toshi Omagari of the Monotype Studio. Exhibits included some fascinating and unfamiliar photos of Rudolf Koch's Offenbach Werkstatt, of which Wolpe was a member in the 1920s, several splendid examples of his artwork for Faber dust-jackets, and some of the original 12" drawings for Albertus, made in the Monotype Drawing Office in the 1930s.
Two items caught my eye in relation to the Oxford printer Vivian Ridler's collection of Wolpe line blocks, the subject of my forthcoming book. The first was artwork for the dust-jacket of Walter de la Mare's Collected Poems (1942) for which Wolpe made also twelve drawings as decorations, which are featured in my book. The other was original artwork for the Wolpes' New Year's Card for 1942, the line block of which is among the Ridler collection. Unfortunately it was too badly corroded to print from, but the image appears in the V. & A. catalogue, Berthold Wolpe: A restrospective survey, entry 152.
Some book decorations by Berthold Wolpe, discovered in a collection of line blocks belonging to his friend Vivian Ridler is published by S.P.Tuohy in association with the Perpetua Press, Oxford, and is due to appear early in 2018. It is crown octavo (185 x 123mm), 40pp, printed in 10/12pt Monotype Bell on Zerkall mouldmade paper by the Evergreen Press and bound in full cloth by Ludlow Bookbinders. The edition is limited to 250 copies and is priced at £35 pre-publication, £38 thereafter. Orders should be sent to: S.P.Tuohy, 45 Warwick Street, Oxford, OX4 1SZ. Email: sptuohy@hotmail.com.
