The Chapbook Style

When Will Bradley started working at Cambridge Press, he would often visit the Boston Public Library and peruse the collection of colonial American chapbooks housed there. It is easy to see why a typehound would delight in the typesetting done for these cheaply printed books that were peddled by traveling chapmen. This particular example is actually British. One of the things I find interesting is the mixed posture of the letters in the word ELEANOR.

This flourished fraktur capital letter M was pasted into a sketchbook of romantic lettering that some wonderful British gentlemen put together during the nineteenth century. Exuberant hand-drawn scripts became popular after Gutenberg's innovative moveable type was introduced, 1450's. Scribes no longer were needed to copy texts, so they could go hog wild inventing letterforms for the new middle class to copy (in order to look and feel more upper class, of course.)

Allner does it again.

Another great Walter Allner cover for Fortune magazine. 1952.

Boundless bindings.

M and I found these in a tiny tiny tiny little antique bookshop in Florence, Italy. These are bound with handprinted florentine papers and the leather strips are hand stamped and applied afterward.

Keep Calm.

I love mashups like this.

Retronaut

I am now the biggest fan of the website Retronaut. Check out this cool pair of shoes from the 1930's.

What I Want for Christmas.

Fortune magazine cover, January 1944, with an illustration by Peter Vardo representing city planning. I wish magazine covers were this risky still.