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.

23 July 2020

Blue Pencil

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 420—Mars in the House of Death (1939)

According to its back jacket flap copy, Rex Ingram (1892-1950), the author of Mars in the House of Death, was a dockworker, assistant to sculptor Lee Lawrie, silent film director, and movie studio owner before becoming a novelist. [1] The novel, Ingram’s first (and only one), is about a bullfighter and his tragic romances. Kirkus Reviews called it a “romance of the Gothic-impossible variety”. [2] W.A. Dwiggins designed the book for Alfred A. Knopf from jacket to colophon. [3]
Jacket (spine …
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23 July 2020

Blue Pencil

Blue Pencil no. 47—Hanging Hitler

Cover of War Production Drive: Official Plan Book by War Production Board (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942).
“Get Straight on This War” from War Production Drive: Official Plan Book by War Production Board (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942), p. 4
I was looking for information on paper restrictions during World War II in the United States when I stumbled across this pamphlet entitled War Production Drive: Official Plan Book published by the War Production Board (WPB). The WPB was established January …
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20 July 2020

Blue Pencil

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 365—Voyages to Vinland (1942)

Voyages to Vinland: The First American Saga translated by Einar Haugen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942) includes translations of material from Hauk’s Book, the Flatey Book, and AM. 557 (a manuscript in the Arnamagnean Library in Copenhagen) that concern the Viking voyages to the eastern seaboard of the North American continent in the 11th century. [1] The book was designed by W.A. Dwiggins. It is not among his most famous works in the field, though its jacket is included …
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LEGACY OF LETTERS

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CODEX, the journal of letterforms

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