Blue Pencil no. 23—Jerry Kelly response to Zapfiana no. 1
Jerry Kelly responded on 5 December 2012 with this email detailing alleged errors in my recent Zapfiana no. 1 post. I have annotated his email (adding text to his excerpts from my post to make the context clearer), indicating where he is right and where I believe I am. The errors that he found in my post have been corrected.
Paul;
Truthfully, I did not want to spend too much time on a lengthy correction of the erroneous information in what you wrote. But per your request I’ll list just a portion of the errors below, to give some idea of the problems. I am purposefully skipping the notes, which I have gripes with too. More importantly, I am not addressing any difference of opinion between us; I am only listing pure facts which are wrong in you[r] piece. I believe I could defend my opinions and back them up with solid information, but I want to restrict this message to the facts, which are indisputable[.]
1] “[His career has spanned] three technologies of type making”
¶ at least four: foundry casting [Gilgengart, Hunt roman were only foundry cast], Linotype, phototype, digital type
[Kelly is right. I failed to distinguish between foundry and Linotype. I was thinking in terms of materials (metal, film, pixels) but expressed myself in terms of technology.]
2] “since 2000 eight more [books about Hermann Zapf] have followed along with a CD-ROM. ”
¶ probably more: a nice Japanese catalogue came out last year
[My online search of library catalogues for the Library of Congress, Columbia University, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and Rochester Institute of Technology turned up nothing relevant. Similarly, a search of the sites alibris.com, bookfinder.com, librarything.com, ranker.com, goodreads.com, GoogleBooks, or yesasia.com (a website with a section on Japanese books) came up empty as well. But a search of Worldcat did reveal the catalogue for the exhibition Meister der Schrift, Hermann Zapf: Kalligraph, Schriftdesigner, Typograph, Buchgestalter at the Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg (25 September 2002 to 10 January 2003) curated by Anne Isphording. The only reference I found about a Japanese catalogue was a single photograph on a Flickr stream that chronicled the installation of a 2011 exhibition of the calligraphy of Gudrun and Hermann Zapf at the Gallery Le Bain in Tokyo organized by Akira Kobayashi of Linotype and the Japan Letter Arts Forum. Asked about the details of this, Kelly has promised to get me them in a few days. But he has not provided information about any of the other books about Zapf that he says have been published in the past few years.]
3] “The book, designed by Zapf, is set entirely in 9 pt Didot Optima (no italic or other weights)”
¶ There’s much italic in About Alphabets, used for several ways of differentiation — it’s even used on the title page reproduced in this review!
[Mea culpa. The word “by” on the cover of About Alphabets is in italic and inside the book all titles of books and all foreign phrases are in italic. The point that I was trying to make, but failed to be clear about, is that Zapf did not use italic stylistically to distinguish the different parts of his story.]
4] “with the release of three photocomposition faces, Linofilm Venture (designed between 1960 and 1967), Optima Medium Italic (designed between 1963 and 1966) and Hallmark Textura (designed 1968–1969)”
¶ Hallmark Textura was never “released”; it was always a proprietary type for Hallmark. One might say Hallmark textura [sic] was issued, but not released[.]
[Kelly is making a subtle but important distinction. I have been arguing against the common use of the term “published” to describe typeface completion dates but have not distinguished between “released” (as in made available to the public) vs. “issued” (as in made available to a private customer). It is a useful distinction.]
5] “Certainly there has been nothing on a par with the monumental Adrian Frutiger Typefaces: The Complete Works (2008). Although the title About More Alphabets suggests that the new Typophile chapbook might fill this void, it turns out to be a much more modest book, one that is ultimately unsatisfying.”
¶ The Frutiger is [sic] book is referred to, in a rather questionable comparison, several times. As said in AMA [About More Alphabets], a book to this scale on HZ’s typefaces would be over a thousand pages and weigh more than twenty pounds [that’s a low estimate]. But more importantly, the title About MORE Alphabets says exactly what I mean: More alphabets, not a comprehensive review of every alphabet. I did [not?] mean About ALL Alphabets or About THE REST of the Alphabets, or About the COMPLETE Alphabets (like the Frutiger volume states], I meant About MORE Alphabets, and my book is certainly that.
[That a Zapf equivalent of the Frutiger tome would be 1000 pages and weigh 20 lbs or more is debatable. But why not attempt such a work? It need not be a single volume, but instead it could be a multi-volume endeavor with volumes dedicated to different technological phases of Zapf”s career: e.g. Foundry and Linotype; Phototype; and Digital Type. As for the intent of About More Alphabets, here is what Kelly says in his introduction (with italics added): “The Typophiles’ first chapbook on Zapf’s work, About Alphabets from 1960, dealt with most of his metal typefaces, while this volume of nearly five decades later considers a few of his major alphabet design projects since then, over a period of phenomenal change in the way letterforms are reproduced.” (p. 11). This implies that About More Alphabets would focus on typefaces done since 1960 since About Alphabets covered metal faces by Zapf prior to that year. However, About More Alphabets spends 28 pages (pp. 17–45) on metal typefaces and 36 pages (pp. 45–81) on other typefaces. That ratio of 7:8 seems to go beyond the notion of a “few” faces.]
[Kelly also says in About More Alphabets that, “Hermann Zapf has designed over 200 fonts [sic]—more than could possibly be covered in this small chapbook: if we devoted just a paragraph or two to each it would take several hundred pages just to touch on this body of work. Instead, this book will concentrate on several seminal types: not necessarily the most important—or popular—of Zapf’s fonts, but just a few that are somewhat representative of his work in the field of alphabet design.” (pp. 12–13). This comment is a bit confused. How can a typeface be seminal but not important? And if Kelly had intended to only talk about a few of Zapf’s typefaces then why does he touch upon so many?: Gilgengart I, Gilgengart II, Novalis, Palatino, Palatino Swash Italic, Michelangelo, Aldus, Heraklit Greek, Alahram, Sequoya, Pan Nigerian, Melior, Magnus Sans, Optima, Noris Script, Venture, Jeannette Script, Hallmark Textura, Firenze, Missouri, Comenius, Crown Roman and Italic, ITC Zapf Book, ITC Zapf International, ITC Zapf Chancery, Marconi, Zapf Renaissance, Vario, Aurelia, AMS Euler, Zapf Civilité, Zapfino, Palatino nova, Optima nova and Zapf Essentials. He illustrates 19 of these 36 typefaces in the text; and in the back of the book he shows 26 of them plus two other typefaces that go unmentioned in the text: Palatino nova Titling, Palatino Nova Roman, Palatino nova Greek, Palatino nova Cyrillic, Palatino nova Arabic, Palatino nova Sans, Optima nova Italic, Optima Nova Titling, Venture, Noris [sic], Medici Script, Hallmark Textura, Marconi Italic, Marconi Roman, ITC Zapf International Italic, ITC Zapf International Roman, ITC Zapf International Heavy, Zapf Essentials, Linotype Zapfino One, Linotype Zapfino Four, Aurelia Italic, Aurelia Roman, AMS Euler Fraktur Bold, AMS Euler Text, Zapf Renaissance Italic Swash, Zapf Renaissance Italic, ITC Zapf Chancery, Zapf Civilité—and Palatino Sans and Medici Script.]
6] “and orchestrated and designed both Spend Your Letters Lavishly! (2007) and Manuale Zapficum (2008)”
¶ Kelly is the author of Spend Your Letters Lavishly! and the author of the Foreword [really the only original text] for Manuale Zapficum[.]
[I will gladly credit Kelly as the author of both items. By using the term “orchestrate” I was trying to indicate that he was responsible for more than just the text of either since he curated the exhibition for which Spend Your Letters Lavishly! served as a catalogue and gathered the various contributors to Manuale Zapficum.]
7] “decision to cut Aldus solely in sizes below 14 pt Didot.”
¶ Aldus was cut in 12D and below, not 14
[Kelly has misread my statement which says Aldus was cut in sizes below 14 pt not in 14 pt. It was cut for Linotype solely in 6 to 12 pt Didot.]
8] “There are two problems with these statements: The first is that this new book did not need to cover Zapf’s entire career as a type designer—however desirable that would be—but only the period following the publication of About Alphabets.”
¶ Again, I have clearly stated that I meant to cover several of the major new typefaces since About Alphabets and add a bit to information about several of the earlier fonts [see “A” below][.]
[See my comment above about the balance between pre-1960 typefaces and post-1960 typefaces in About More Alphabets. Furthermore, Kelly never says in About More Alphabets that his intent was to add information about Zapf’s earlier fonts.]
9] “The second is that, despite his intent to discuss only a few of Zapf’s major type designs since 1960, Kelly ends up reprising his pre-1960 career as well as commenting on nearly all of his post-1960 typefaces. “
¶ incorrect: I only mention about a dozen of the numerous pre-196O [sic] types
[Yes, Kelly is right. He does talk about only 11 of Zapf’s pre-1960 faces out of a total of 57—a number that includes ornaments, borders, signs, figures-only typefaces, extensions to designs begun by others, and family extensions and conversions from foundry to Linotype—listed in About Alphabets. However, my point is that there is no reason for About More Alphabets to spend more than a page or two on that part of Zapf’s career in the first place since it has been covered in several other books.]
A] “Kelly does provide more insight into several other typefaces,”
¶ A good point: the real intention of this book [About More Alphabets] was to add information [and illustrations] that had not been published before. And a key point is that this is also true of the material for the pre-196O [sic] typefaces[.]
[I have acknowledged that Kelly provided new illustrations in About More Alphabets but nowhere does he explicitly state that one intent of the book was to do this. Furthermore, some of these illustrations are not reproduced very well so their value is lessened. His statement to the contrary, little new information is provided about pre-1960 typefaces and he does not announce that either as one of his goals. My complaint is that Kelly has not spent his pages well. He could have used those 28 pages on the pre-1960 typefaces either to talk more about the post-1960 ones (e.g. Venture or Missouri) or to talk more in depth about those he did select (e.g. the differences among Firenze, Medici Script and Zapf Renaissance Italic; and how the latter related to Palatino Italic).]
10] “Other than new images of some of the typefaces—early sketches of Palatino (1948), Melior (c. 1949) and Michelangelo (c.1950), proofs of the first trial cutting of Aldus (no date given), an undated drawing for the little known Magnus Sans, and a 1958 pencil sketch of Optima—this is largely ground already trod by Zapf himself in the original About Alphabets. Kelly adds little new information about the typefaces[…]”
¶ this simply is not true. Aside from much new information [the punch cutters [sic] inflluence [sic] on Palatino, the Koch/Morris issue with the Novalis sample—a sample which has never been published before; the originals of Heraklit [Greek] and Michelangelo—again shown in images never published before; some of the more eccentric characters in the original Paalatino [sic] design which never made it into the final version [again, never reproduced before]; the early unpublished drawing of Optima [more on that later], etc. I also add quite a bit of opinion about those typefaces. You may not agree with my opinion, but it certainly is unpublished before. You cannot, however, disagree with the new facts presented.
[Here are some of Kelly’s “facts” and “new information” in his own words:
“Despite the headline, [on the Specimen of the Novalis typeface, 1948 reproduced on p. 25 of About More Alphabets] this specimen is not a text on ‘The Work of Rudolf Koch’ as stated; it is instead actually written by Rudolf Koch on the work of William Morris. The mistake reveals a preoccupation with Koch.” (pp. 24–26)—where is the new information? Did anyone actually think that this type specimen was a real text about Rudolf Koch? And what does Kelly’s clarification tell us about Koch’s influence on Zapf’s design of Novalis?
“We can conjecture about how the changes may have developed for the Palatino typeface. Some of the revisions may have stemmed in a small part from the work done on the type by August Rosenberger, Stempel’s punchcutter, as was common in those days.” (p. 28) and “Zapf acknowledged his debt to Rosenberger, possibly because at least some small part of the enormous success of the Palatino type may be attributable to miniscule [sic] changes Rosenberger made when cutting the punches.” (p. 30)—this statement is full of “maybes”. There is no new information here. It has been well known by printing historians that punchcutters have minutely altered the drawings of type designers. See the relationships between Charles Malin and Giovanni Mardersteig or P.H. Rädisch and Jan van Krimpen.
The new images of Optima, Heraklit Greek and Michelangelo in About More Alphabets are welcome but they are not new information. And Kelly is not presenting new facts. If he were, I would be lauding him.]
11] “Magnus Sans in the text, his [Zapf’s] list of typefaces indicates that Magnus Sans was released in 1960.”
¶Magnus Sans was cut but never released
[Kelly is absolutely right. I knew this was a challengeable statement, but left it in my text to see if anyone would spot it. The discrepancy between the information in About Alphabets and the later Zapf books, including About More Alphabets, on this point can be explained by the publication date of the former. Presumably, when Zapf was preparing About Alphabets Magnus Sans had been planned for release. But something changed after the book was published and the typeface was not released. Later lists of Zapf’s typefaces (including mine in Zapfiana no. 3) corrected this mistake, though no explanation was ever given.]
12] In the same paragraph Shaw writes “Kelly adds little new information about the typefaces . . . . Some of his information contradicts that given in About Alphabets”
¶ Well, you can’t have it both ways: either I present new information which contradicts what has been said before, or I add little new information. In reality, I was well aware that I was contradicting some of the published information. I did so only when I was quite sure [mainly through discussions with HZ himself over three decades] that the new information was correct. I won’t delve here into why I believe some earlier published accounts are not accurate[.]
[If Kelly was aware that he was contradicting previously published information and that his new information was based on careful research and conversations with Zapf himself, he should have indicated this. He could either have made a blanket statement up front in About More Alphabets or pointed it out at each instance. But by not doing so, he shortchanges the reader who is unaware that Kelly is revising the historical record.]
13] “For instance, although Zapf only mentions the first trial letters (1957) and trial matrices (1959) of Magnus Sans in the text, his list of typefaces indicates that Magnus Sans was released in 1960. But Kelly says the type was never released (p. 45).”
¶ Magnus Sans was never released. See 11 above[.]
[See my mea culpa.]
B] “His discussion of the differences between ITC Zapf Book and ITC Zapf International is right on target.”
¶ Glad to hear it. I’d say there’s quite a bit of valuable new information on many others also[.]
[One of the difficulties of About More Alphabets is sorting out the new information from the repetitive or familiar information. The way in which the book has been conceived and designed—as a twin to About Alphabets—obscures Kelly’s moments of insight. For instance, his comparison of ITC Zapf Book and ITC Zapf International is not accompanied by an illustration of the two faces side by side (only ITC Zapf International appears at all in the book and that is in the back) nor does Kelly show examples of Zapf’s calligraphy to illustrate the effect of ink pooling at the joins of letters. Furthermore, it is not evident that, despite Kelly’s claim to the contrary, that the book contains “valuable” new information on many of Zapf’s typefaces. Insight is not information.]
14] “Furthermore, there is no mention of type piracy in the various talks that Zapf gave in the 1960s on the effect of photocomposition and computers on type design and typography.”
¶ From accounts I have heard I do not believe this to be true, but how can Paul Shaw say this? Was he at every HZ talk in the 196Os [sic] [impossible]? Every talk has not been published, and if a talk was published it was most likely edited down and revised.
[I was not at any of Zapf’s talks in the 1960s as I was a teenager then. I was referring to the talks by Zapf that were reproduced in print, though I did not express myself clearly on this point. However, if type piracy was in any of his talks in those years and then edited out of printed versions, it must not have been considered very important.]
15] “Kelly sees the name as a crucial component of the success of ITC’s strategy, but I believe that U&lc played a more important role.”
¶ If you read this in context a key point is being missed here: the context is a discussion of ITC’s success in their strategy for combating type piracy. U&lc had virtually no part in that strategy [though it did help the sales effort], while the naming issue was key to their combating type piracy; which I know from my discussions with Aaron Burns and Hermann Zapf.
[U&lc had a vital role in ITC’s strategy to combat piracy. See the many issues in which type piracy is discussed and readers are urged to join the fight. Several of these are itemized by me in Zapfiana no. 3]
16] “No European country protected typefaces prior to 1973.”
¶ Shaw is incorrect here. From Adobe: “The European Union and most countries that have strong traditions of respecting intellectual property generally allow the abstract designs of new typefaces to be protected by copyright.”And from other sources: “in many parts of Europe typeface designs are protectable” “you always have copyrights on whatever original work you make. At least in most European countries. Perhaps not in the US, as they seem to do these kinds of things differently for some reason. And then there is the Berne Convention, under which every country that agrees to this has to respect the copyright laws of other signatory countries. I.e. the US has to respect copyrights on type designs from other countries, but not those designed inside its own borders. In other words, as far as I know, if a type design is copyrighted in a country that signed the Berne Convention, that copyright is valid in the US. But I’m sure someone has found a loophole in that.”
[These statements from Adobe and unnamed other sources do not contradict my comment which specifically referred to the copyright situation prior to 1973. For further reading on the subject see the sources below.]
“Protection for Typeface Designs: A Copyright Proposal” by Terrence J. Carroll in Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal (vol. 10, no.1, 1994):
“…The Committee has considered, but chosen to defer, the possibility of protecting the design of typefaces. . . . The Committee does not regard the design of typeface, as thus defined, to be a copyrightable ‘pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work’ within the meaning of this bill….” [The “Committee” refers to the House Committee on the Judiciary whose report accompanied the 94th Congress’s H.R. 2233 (Copyright Act of 1976).]
“In 1973, a treaty allowing for the international protection of typeface design was adopted at Vienna. [FN188] France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, San Marino, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia signed the agreement. [FN189]” [Signing the agreement did not give it the force of law.]
There were protections for typeface designs before 1973 but they were not copyright protections. Instead they were protections achieved through patents or industrial design laws. And current copyright protection of typefaces is based on the protection of the software data comprising fonts, not on the protection of the typeface design itself. The Vienna Agreement was published in England and can be read online through an Austrian website. Click on the link below.
Vienna agreement for the protection of type faces and their international deposit, and Protocol concerning the term of protection, Vienna, 12 June-31 December 1973… (London: HMSO, 1974)
TUGboat 7:3 (October 1986), pp. 146-151:
“This 1973 Vienna treaty will become international law when four nations ratify it. So far, only France and West Germany have done so, and thus a design must be protected separately in each country. Even when the treaty becomes law, it will take effect only in those countries that have ratified it. ” 1986 post [Nothing has changed since this post other than some confusion over whether England became a signatory in 1988 when it changed its copyright laws.]
Typeface Protection: An Overview of Contemporary Laws Protecting the Works of Typeface and Font Designers by Matthias M. Edrich (December 2005)
Edrich is an associate attorney in Denver with Kutak Rock LLP. His article was written while a student at the Sturm College of Law, University of Denver. He says that 11 countries established the Vienna agreement and signed it, but that five countries must ratify it and only two have (France 1974 and Germany 1981).
17] “He [Kelly] does tantalize the reader with the information that “Robert Bringhurst has documented over one hundred legitimate varieties of the Palatino design. . . . But he does not indicate how many illegitimate versions of the Palatino design there are”
¶ I do not believe anyone would be able to count the number of illegitimate versions of Palatino, but the point being made here should be clear to any reader without that figure[.]
[My point is that someone should try. And since Kelly is not interested in this aspect of Zapf’s career, I have made a stab at doing so in Zapfiana no. 3.]
18] “Visually it mimics the type specimen portion of the original About Alphabets, though there are no sample settings of types accompanying the alphabet showings[.]”
¶ Frankly, I do not believe that the very few sample settings in About Alphabets add much to the display of the letterforms, but I understand the page-layout reason for them. I think the straight alphabet showings are preferable.
[This is clearly a matter of opinion between Kelly and I. It is also a common argument about the best way to display typefaces: show character sets or show settings. The former allows one to judge individual letterforms and the latter allows one to see how a typeface actually functions—and, in the days of metal, to also show the changes in a typeface due to optical sizing. Zapf had it both ways in About Alphabets.]
19] “He [Kelly] has set the book [About More Alphabets] in Comenius, an underappreciated face as he notes, but he could have been a bit bolder and used the equally little-known but more innovative Marconi which he calls one of Zapf’s most important typefaces.”
¶ I simply couldn’t disagree more. While I say Marconi is a very important typeface, I do not feel it is one of Zapf’s most beautiful. The technical restrictions at the time severely handicapped Zapf’s design. He overcame the problems admirably, but the resulting font [sic] is nowhere near as handsome as Comenius. For all Shaw’s griping about my adulation for Zapf’s designs, it should be noticeable that I did not call Marconi “handsome” or “lovely” or use some other superlative. Also, Comenius is very rarely used in a book, so I think the choice is bold. It was also bold to substitute many characters from other fonts, something which apparently went unnoticed by the reviewer.
[Marconi is indeed not beautiful, but so what. It is very legible and pleasant to read for text. If Comenius is such a handsome face (and clearly intended for text rather than display), why is it rarely used in a book? I am unclear as to what Kelly is referring to when he says “It was also bold to substitute many characters from other fonts….”]
20] “The images in About Alphabets are all tip-ins, printed on a deep beige colored paper that contrasts with that of the main text.”
¶ Incorrect: the shade of the paper the illustrations are printed on actually matches the About Alphabets text stock. See the 196O [sic] Cincinnati catalogue, where the text is printed on the same stock as the illustrations for About Alphabets. Actually, the paper color for text and illustrations in AA is the same, but the illustrations have an overall background of a screen of black, making for the appearance of a gray [not beige] paper.
[In my copy of About Alphabets, the illustrations are clearly glued in. The color of the stock is irrelevant. The 1960 Cincinnati catalogue* is a different publication and equally irrelevant.]

Tip in illustration between pp. 110 and 111. About Alphabets (1960).
*Hermann Zapf, calligrapher, type designer and typographer: An exhibition arranged and circulated by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio comp. Paul Standard (Cincinnati: Contemporary Arts Center, 1960)
21] “various members of Palatino’s extended family of Michelangelo, Sistina, Kompakt and Aldus”
¶ Kompakt is not part of the Palatino family
[Stempel presented Kompakt (a sloping roman, without an upright companion, intended for advertising use) as part of the Palatino “family” in an undated specimen (c.1960): “Nicht vergessen den kraftvollen Schwager Kompakt denn er bewältigt oft die schwierigsten Probleme, ohne dabei plump oder derb vorzugehen.” / “Not to forget the powerful brother-in-law Kompakt since he often masters the most complicated problems without acting crude or rude.” (Thanks to Indra Kupferschmid for the English translation.)]

Stempel typeface specimen promoting typefaces by Hermann Zapf (c. 1960)
22] “A book of this sort need not be the monumental tome that Adrian Frutiger Typefaces: The Complete Works is—though there is certainly enough material for such a work[.]”
¶ again . .. see nos. 5 & 7 above
[And see my response to Kelly nos. 5 & 7 above. Kelly is considered by many to be the world’s foremost Zapf expert and thus the person everyone expects to write such a massive book. But, if he is either unwilling or unable—and he does have many other commitments as a book designer, his principal occupation—to do it, then someone else should step up. (My Zapfiana no. 3 post is a small attempt in this direction.) At the very least Kelly could have provided an updated list of Zapf’s typefaces post-1983 in About More Alphabets.]
23] “If Zapf continues to be smothered in unabashed adulation he will end up like Frederic Goudy[.]”
¶ I couldn’t disagree more. Perhaps if Shaw were to re-read “About More Alphabets” he will understand why[.]
[In the course of preparing the original Zapfiana no. 1 review of About More Alphabets and this rebuttal I have read the book nearly five times. Each time I feel even more strongly that Kelly missed a major opportunity to produce a new book on Zapf that would cover his career over the past thirty years. Whether Blue Pencil readers agree with me or side with Kelly is up to them. But I feel that there has been a backlash against Zapf and his typefaces driven in no small part by excessive adulation of the kind that has made many turn a blind eye to Goudy’s considerable achievements.]
24] “Pencil sketch for Optima, before the final ink drawing, c. 1958.” This is another new image. However, the description incorrectly implies that these letters—which are solid and not outlines—are the basis for inked letters. They are not finished, as is evident from the tiny arrows along with an examination of weights (see the upper bowl of g, the curved tail of a, the juncture of u). Also, the capitals are missing W, X, Y and Z.”
¶ I own that sketch and there is clearly a debossed outline around the letters when they were transferred to another sheet for inking. Also, the arrangement is the same as the final ink drawing, except for one letter moved. The W, X, Y, Z figures and some other characters are on a second sheet which I have, but which is not reproduced [intentionally: my point is made with the one page containing most of the alphabet]
[I am not sure what point Kelly was making with the reproduction of one but not both of two related Optima drawings. The debossing he refers to is not visible in the illustration, a casual of the poor quality of reproduction in much of the book. Why couldn’t Kelly have taken the opportunity to discuss the sketch for a sentence or two instead of simply labeling it. Instead, he withholds information, only doling it out when challenged. This is the attitude of a collector not a historian.]
26] “The use of lead for ammunition not type during the war did not impact matrices. After the war the older matrices could still be used. If there was a shortage of lead it would have effected Palatino as much as any of those other typefaces.”
¶ When I mention using lead for ammunition rather than type Shaw says matrices are made from brass—which is true, but a minuscule amount of brass is used for matrix making, while tens of thousands of pounds of lead is used for type, which is why it was important for the Wehrmacht to divert the metal to bullet making, and why German typefounders needed to replenish the type supply after the war. Shaw just doesn’t get what I said, even though it is quoted it correctly.
[And Kelly does not get my point about how such a shortage would have affected Palatino as much as any older typeface. But, on the situation facing German typefounders during the war, see an upcoming note that is in preparation by Dan Reynolds. The situation is more complex than either I or Kelly describe it.]
There’s much more, and there are several aspects of AMA that relate to personal conversations with Zapf that I did not want to allude to specifically. I hope the above will suffice to point out some part of the misinformation [in] the review.
Jerry
[I welcome the rest of Kelly’s comments about my review (including its notes), especially any new information he has based on his conversations with Zapf.]