Paul Shaw Letter Design

Sign for Savoy Taylors Guild Ltd., The Strand, London (c.1906).

Sgraffito on a wall in the Giudecca section of Venice.

Detail of a neon sign for a barbershop in Grottaferrata, Italy.

Detail of page from Les Ecritures Financiere, et Italienne-Bastarde (1647) by Louis Barbedor, a French writing master.

Detail of store sign for Cortese Frizzoti in Venice. The letters in black have been painted over a gold ground which covers a former store name in mosaic tile.

Medieval inscription in Round Gothic capitals. In the cloister of S. Giovanni in Laterano in Rome.

Capital E and G stencils from collection of Eric Kindel, Reading, England.

Ghost signs with printer’s fist on wall of Rue de la Commune in Montreal.

Detail of painted directional sign for Coney Island covering mosaic sign indicating Up Town Trains. 53rd Street station of the R line in Brooklyn.

Punches for punctuation cut by Giambattista Bodoni at the Museo Bodoniano in Parma, Italy.

Detail of cover of Warren’s Standard Printing Papers specimen book by S.D. Warren (1929). Design, ornament and lettering by W.A. Dwiggins.

4 May 2019

Blue Pencil

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 177 addendum no. 3—Ex Libris of Ella Grimes Rosemond

Bookplate for Ella Grimes Rosemond (c.1906). Design and lettering by W.A. Dwiggins. Image courtesy of Morrison-Reeves Library, Richmond, Indiana.
In preparing an upcoming talk on W.A. Dwiggins for the Hingham Historical Society I came across a bookplate that he designed for Ella Grimes Rosemond and immediately realized it belonged in the discussion about his use of rotunda (see The Definitive Dwiggins no. 177). In the 1974 Dwiggins Collection at the Boston Public Library, the bookplate is filed with other items …
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1 May 2019

Blue Pencil

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 177 addendum no. 1—The Ninety-first Psalm (1906)

Front cover of The Ninety-first Psalm: Reprinted from the King James Version (Hingham Centre, Massachusetts: Will Dwiggins, 1906). Design and lettering by W.A. Dwiggins; printing by the Heintzemann Press; binding by W.A. and Mabel Dwiggins. Image courtesy of Special Collections, Boston Public Library.
After posting The Definitive Dwiggins no. 177 regarding some rotunda sketches that W.A. Dwiggins had made c.1906–1907, I realized I had inadvertently overlooked a significant contemporary example of his work that belonged in the discussion. In …
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30 April 2019

Blue Pencil

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 178—The Mystery of the York Mysteries

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 177 focused on five sheets of rotunda sketches by W.A. Dwiggins contained in a small srapbook in the Dwiggins Collections at the Boston Public Library. [1] This post looks at two reproductions of a manuscript page headed “The Wefferes” pasted on a spread in the scrapbook. The reproduction on the left is printed in red and black while the one on the right is in black only (see below). [2]
Two reproductions of “The Wefferes” …
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LEGACY OF LETTERS

HELVETICA SUBWAY

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CODEX, the journal of letterforms

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