Publishers allowed artists and writers to push the limits of children’s book art by challenging taboos.
By the late 1930s children’s book design was in a few instances influenced by the New Typography in the form of sans-serif typefaces in asymmetrical compositions. In The Noisy Book (Harper Brothers, 1939) by Margaret Wise Brown, machine-inspired Futura set with skewed line breaks approximated the sounds of household appliances and larger machines. Yet during the 1940s and 1950s forums of the American Institute of Graphic Arts codified standards of legibility for children’s books to which most publishers adhered. Readability was vigilantly preserved, and change in children’s book typography during the early postwar era was marked by little more than the occasional switch from typefaces like Janson or Garamond to Futura or Akzidenz or Grotesque rather than adoption of constructivist, dadaist, and futurist experimental typography. Picture books were usually composed of classical book types that were rarely integrated into the art. Even an avant-garde masterpiece like Bruno Munari’s Alfabeteire (Giulio Einaudi, editor, 1960), with illustrations that are dadalike collages of “found” letters, the sans-serif body text is discretely set apart from the images.
Yet certain anomalies did influence the field: Funny Folks from Gardentown (Whitman, 1938) by Tony Fraioli sidestepped typographic convention with quirky hand-drawn letterforms that complemented his witty anthropomorphic drawings of fruits and vegetables set against black backgrounds (which, incidentally, librarians considered lugubrious). Hand-drawn letterforms subsequently became more common (although black backgrounds have not). Cursive lettering for The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant (1933) was once criticized for being inaccessible to young readers who were unable to decipher script. Yet referring to this and even earlier cursive books dating back to the late nineteenth century, James Fraser suggested that “brighter children tried to puzzle it out or asked adults to help with difficult words until they got it.” Over time, handwriting became a common means to teach script. Typewriter type, another un-childlike letterform, was associated with the adult world until Typewriter Town (E. F. Dutton, 1960) by William Jay Smith, a playful experiment using the typewriter characters to create images. Influenced by Lewis Carroll’s mouse’s tail, it was also consistent with contemporary typewritten concrete poetry for adults. In Little 1 (Harcourt Brace, 1962) by Paul and Ann Rand, typewriter type was boldly used to complement the improvisational collages and rhythmic text. As an integral part of the book’s visual personality it also made typewriter type more acceptable.
From the 1950s to the 1980s children’s book design was largely overshadowed by developments in children’s book art. Even books by progressive artists Maurice Sendak, Tomi Ungerer, and Leo Lionni did not unhinge typographic convention. “Typography should be seen and not heard, because reading is functional and should not be tampered with,” said Lionni, whose more than forty books are set only in Century Schoolbook. He insisted that the defining element of a picture book is the picture, not the type. “The picture is the story, the type conveys the narrative.” Yet this began to change in the late 1980s when type design became more integral to the entire children’s book as the author/illustrator became more of an active participant in the design process and the computer forced the widespread reevaluation of typographic principles in all print media. In the late 1970s, experimental typography gave adult-oriented print communications more playful veneers; constructivist, futurist, and dadaist.
Berthold’s 1924 Hebrew Type Catalogue
Hebrew was prohibited in Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, effectively curtailing a rich tradition of Jewish publishing. As a result, those scholars and authors who could, emigrated to England, France, and the United States, while a particularly larger number also resettled in Germany (in part owing to the shared linguistics of German and Yiddish). As Berlin’s Jewish community swelled in the 1920s, the city became a wellspring for Jewish book and periodical publishing with various ambitions, most notably the eight-volume Encyclopedia Judaica; the last volume was published in 1933, the year Hitler was appointed German Chancellor. Another impressive series, the twelve-volume Weltgeschichte des Jüdischen Volkes, sold over 100,000 copies. In 1931, Salaman Schocken founded the prestigious Schocken Verlag, a leading Jewish publisher that produced fiction and nonfiction books, as well as the acclaimed annual Almanach of Jewish literature. The firm had released over 225 titles by 1938, when German Jews were forced into exile after the Kristallnacht pogrom (night of broken glass). (Salaman had already left Germany in 1934 for a new life in Palestine, leaving his manager in charge until he could publish no longer. Later, in the 1980s, over twenty years after Salaman died, Schocken became an imprint of the American publisher, Pantheon Books).
With this critical mass of Jewish culture emerging during the post-Russian Revolution and post-World War I years, it made sense that one of Germany’s most venerable and largest type foundries, H Berthold AG, (founded in Berlin in 1858, with outlets in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Riga), would rigorously develop, produce, and market a relatively wide selection of Hebrew typefaces and ornaments designed both for secular and religious applications. By the late 1910s, Berthold had already adopted standard fonts used for text and display, based on original “Sephardic” faces cut in the 16th century by French punch-cutter Guillaume Le Bé (known for a keen interest in Hebrew and Arabic lettering). They also offered latter-day variations: Frank Rühl (designed by Cantor Rafael Frank in 1909 for CF Rühl Schriftgießerei in Leipzig, which was bought by Berthold in 1918), Merubah, Margalit, Rashi, and Miriam. Berthold also seriously invested in the production of new faces in the European or “Ashkenazi” style, including Stam, Stam Book, Rahel, and Rambam (all with and without vowels), which were commonly used in European and American commercial, book, and newspaper printing. These types were made available in various weights through general Berthold specimen catalogues, which featured also other non-western alphabets. But in 1924 a dedicated Hebrew catalogue was produced that perfectly complimented Berthold’s routine promotional materials for sheer precision and graphic splendor. In hindsight, knowing that barely eleven years later Jews would be ostracized and the so-called “Jewish lettering” outlawed by the Nazi state, this catalogue becomes all the more poignant.
At the time of what some have called the “Hebrew Renaissance” in Germany, which took hold throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the catalogue was nothing less than a joyous celebration of Hebrew and Yiddish culture.
At the time of what some have called the “Hebrew Renaissance” in Germany, which took hold throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the catalogue was nothing less than a joyous celebration of Hebrew and Yiddish culture. The specimens were vibrantly rendered in the dominant Art Nouveau and Art Moderne (Deco) graphic mannerisms used by European printers for all kinds of commercial purposes. Yet these graphics also exuded a decidedly Jewish style. The man responsible for the catalogue’s creation, Joseph Tscherkassky, was the manager of the Oriental department of H. Berthold AG. The department was to cater to the growing printing market in Europe and abroad. Born in the Ukraine in 1879, Tscherkassky was proprietor of his own self-named foundry in Kiev, where he created Hebrew fonts for secular use. Yet little is known about his early life, the success or failure of his foundry, or when, in fact, he immigrated to Germany—although his reasons must have been tied to the fortunes (or misfortunes) of the Revolution. Type historian Stephen Lubell, author of Joseph Tscherkassky: Orientalist and Typefounder, published in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch in 1996, writes that Tscherkassky was interested in the traditions of both Hebrew and Arabic types. This interest and research resulted later in an equally exquisite Berthold companion catalogue dedicated to Arabic faces.
“Tscherkassky attempted to give the type specimens a very oriental character combined with his visions of the new Hebrew typography,” writes Lubell about the man who might arguably be called the Jan Tschichold of Jewish type. How many typefaces he commissioned, designed, or whether he even desi
gned the complete type catalogue is not categorically known. But it is certain that Tscherkassky, at the behest of Berthold’s directors, Dr. Oskar Jolles and Erwin Graumann, was responsible for providing Jewish publishers and cultural organizations with a well-stocked library of fine types.
Nothing was spared in the production of the catalogue, which opens both left to right (with text set in Roman) and right to left (with text set in Hebrew). In addition to its intricately embossed, reddish-brown covers with hints of gold leaf printing (actually quite biblical in appearance), the endpapers are a cleverly repeating l’pattern of interlocking Stars of David with the Berthold logo in Hebrew. Inside the bountiful offerings include numerous examples of calligraphic text and display faces along with assortments, decorative initial capitals, dingbats, fleurons, and borders. The typefaces are mostly printed in black, yet the ornaments and a major section devoted to specially designed applications are saturated in vibrant colors. A few spreads of sample book title pages show the blend of classical and modern influences, while the majority of customized designed samples, including menus, theatre programs, and letter and billheads, are illuminated as though contemporary Medieval manuscripts. There is also a noticeable arts and crafts influence in some pre-Raphaelite illuminated initials. But the over-arching stylistic trope is streamlined Egyptian borrowed from the Pharaoh’s tombs. One of the specimens features a quotation from Martin Luther about the ancient Hebrew language, which Lubell correctly observes is “a curious and somewhat disconcerting quotation given Martin Luther’s other statements about Jews.”
“His catalogue of Hebrew and Jewish Types,” writes Tscherkassky in his seven-language preface (including Arabic), “the first of its kind should redress a great deficiency hitherto existing in Hebrew printing matters.” This correctly presumed great interest on the part of publishing houses and bibliographic societies to preserve and propagate the Hebrew alphabet and language. “During my long years as owner of the type-foundry Joseph Tscherkassky in Kiew [Kiev] I had no chance of carrying out the long entertained idea of perfecting the Hebrew types,” he adds. “Only by assistance on the part of the firm H Berthold AG the largest type-foundry in Germany I was able to realize my plans to this great extent.” He continues in a salutary tone, it took “long years” of toilsome preparatory work to examine the Berthold stocks of Hebrew types with the aid of leading Jewish type experts and typographers, and “I hope I have found the best and most perfect as regards to form, shape and technical make.” He ends by dedicating the catalogue to Dr. Jolles on the celebration of his twenty-fifth jubilee as Director. Dr. Jolles, incidentally, though trained as an economist and banker, was an avid Jewish bibliophile, the force behind Berthold-Drucke private press monographs used for publishing work of Hebrew type designers and other type matters—and so the perfect advocate for Tscherkassky’s work.
The Berthold Hebrew catalog was largely responsible for spreading the gospel of type throughout central Europe, but it was not the only vehicle. Also in 1924, Berthold produced a booklet of Hebrew types designed by Leopold Kurzböck and Anton Schmid, according to Lubell. And in 1925 Berthold also printed a limited edition of ten verses from the “Book of Ecclesiasticus.” Still, Tscherkassky’s catalogue was the flagship for Hebrew lettering for many years. Although he was not able in 1924 to predict the campaign to rid Europe of Jewish culture (even though Hitler’s beer hall anti-Semitism was audible), he predicted a resurgence of Yiddish in everyday life, thus a growing market for books and other commercial printing. The year 1924 also marked the founding of The Soncino-Gesellschaft (the Society for the Friends of Jewish Book) in Germany, which according the Lubell was critical of the catalogue in its official newsletter. Although grateful to Berthold for making the effort, the society took issue with the nuances of its design. “Yet once again one must add with regret, that the creation of a completely satisfactory, well-conceived and classical Hebrew type has not yet been achieved,” wrote a reviewer. Similar sighs of classical angst were also heard when, in 1925, Tschichold edited an issue of the magazine TM, devoted to radical modern “Elementare Typographie.” Tscherkassky was understandably disappointed by the response.
While Tscherkassky’s contribution was considerable, the market for commercial Hebrew type did not grow as rapidly as anticipated. This may have been one reason why in 1930 he moved to South America to manage a Berthold branch in Brazil. Lubell assumes he was demoted from his position in Berlin, but nonetheless the move saved his life. Three years later in 1933 he was fired in a move that prefigured the widespread dismissals of Jews from German professions. He started a new printing company, which became the largest packaging printer in South America. Although Joseph Tscherkassky seemed to have abandoned his overt interests in Hebrew types, Berthold’s 1924 Hebrew Type Catalogue, while rare today, is a crucial historical document in light of the fate that befell the Jews of (and so-called Jewish lettering in) Europe.
LANGUAGE
Depero: Futurista
FORTUNATO DEPERO
Redefining the spiritual and material world fell to visionaries, “men of talent and memorable fools,” who led the shock troops of modernism. Inspired to action, the Italian Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) cosigned the “Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe,” a manifesto aimed at world renewal by “cheering it up” through the overhaul of everyday objects—interior decoration, clothing, publicity, mass communications, postal art. Depero was a significant part of the late first and second stages of Italian futurism, an early and exceedingly influential European avant-garde movement that altered the process of artistic production and the role of the artist in society. Futurism’s founder, poet F. T. Marinetti, proclaimed in the 1909 Futurist Manifesto (published in the Parisian newspaper, Le Figaro): “United, we must attack! We must create with absolute faith in the imperishable richness of the earth! There can be no nostalgia! No pessimism! There’s no turning back! Boldly, let us advance! Forward! Faster! Farther! Higher! Let us lyrically renew our joy in being alive!”
Marinetti espoused a permanent artistic and political revolution. He rejected traditionalism in favor of “the new religion of speed,” mythologizing the machine—the automobile and later the airplane—as a totem of the modern spirit. Technology, though somewhat primitive in Italy, was the savior of mankind, and futurism was the avant-garde of the masses. At age twenty-four, Fortunato (meaning good luck) Depero was already artistically formed, with a distinct stylistic personality. While he shared Marinetti’s belief in “art action,” Depero was engaged in considerably more playful pursuits. And, although he followed the movement’s political dictates, his personal politics were based on aesthetics. “In Depero one rediscovers applied art, the happening, kinetic art, dadaist provocation, abstract painting: to sum up, a heritage of so many new directions of art,” wrote Italian art historian Giorgio Ruggeri. Much of Depero’s design prefigures today’s postmodern and new wave eclecticism in its form and color.
Depero was an indefatigable proponent of futurism. He wrote for newspapers, promoted the futurist book, founded and directed the machine art magazine Dinamo, organized personal exhibitions, and worked in the theater as a set and costume designer. He was commissioned by Diaghilev to make a set and costumes for Le Chant du Rossignol. He invented an “onomalanguage,” a free word, free sounding, expressive verbal rigamarole. He represented the futurists at the 1925 Paris exposition of modern decorative and industrial art, exhibiting his life-sized mechanical men. He produced futurist radio programs. He decorated cabarets, bars, restaurants, and dance halls. With his wife Rossetta, he opened the Casa d’Arte Futurist in Rovereto, Italy, where he made wooden constructions, furniture, and costumes for a mass clientele. He designed futurist clothing, vests, and jackets. And in 1923 he moved to New York for three years where on West Twenty-third Street he opened Depero’s Futurist House, selling everything from paintings to advertising graphics, and propagating the futurist “style” to a culture that thought of all European modernism as “futurist.”
Depero triumphed with book design and production. During the 1920s the “book-object” was seriously practiced as a futurist art form—the marriage of futurist layout and typographical experimentation. For the 1927 Biennale Internazionale delle Arti Decorative in Monza, Italy, Depero designed a book pavilion built entirely out of giant block letters. It was a grand architectural achievement, but not as historically important as his bolted art catalog, which, along with Tulio D’Albisola’s famous tin book Futurist Words Set Free: Tactile Thermal Olfactory, is emblematic of futurist applied arts. Depero: Futurista, as it was called, is a lavish compendium of his own design work (including many advertisements he had designed for Campari) covering the years 1913 through 1927. Depero was predisposed to an “Aztec deco” sensibility that was influenced by set-back skyscrapers. Depero’s use of bright colors and collaged colored papers was a startling contrast to the rather conservative realism that then held sway. Reproduced in letterpress, it was bound, in machine age fashion, by two stainless steel bolts.
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