Paul Shaw Letter Design » The Definitive Dwiggins

The Definitive Dwiggins

The Definitive Dwiggins is devoted to surveying the life and work of W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1956), an American graphic designer, illustrator, type designer, calligrapher and letterer, marionette maker, and author. It is born of admiration often bordering on astonishment, but it is emphatically not hagiographic. Instead, it seeks to understand not only Dwiggins and his work, but to place both in historical context. It aims to discover his influences and sources of inspiration, to uncover the stories behind his designs, to try to discern his thinking about each aspect and element. The Definitive Dwiggins promises to correct existing scholarship on Dwiggins; challenge the myths that have built up around him; and, in doing so, create a fuller, more complex, and ultimately more authentic portrait of a fascinating figure in the history of graphic design.

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14 November 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 87—Happyland

The Young Idea: A Magazine of Character Study, Questions of the Hour, Field Work in Botany, Birds and Insects. Sample page from 1905.
The Round Robin: An Illustrated Magazine; Good Reading for Boys & Girls vol. XXVI, no. IV (April 1913). Cover design signed WV.
From The Young Idea to Happyland
At the beginning of 1913 Lawrence A. Rankin (1887–1955) took over The Young Idea, a monthly children’s magazine which had been in existence for twenty-five years. He renamed it The …
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16 October 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 170—Cuba Libre Smoker; a correction to The Definitive Dwiggins no. 169

In the addendum of The Definitive Dwiggins no. 169—”Der Professorverein” I identified a photograph in the John Francis Holme Collection at the University of Arizona as having been connected to the Second Saturday Evening Saturnalia of Der Professorverein of the Frank Holme School of Illustration at The Monroe restaurant on October 27, 1900. [1] I was wrong. I recently came across another copy of the photograph in a scrapbook prepared by members of the Palette & Chisel Club in Chicago. All …
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15 October 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 190 addendum 2—Even more on Henry King Hannah

A few weeks ago I discovered a new Dwiggins item. It is the masthead of The Hartford Agent, designed in the spring of 1909 for the Hartford Insurance Company at the behest of the Siegfried Advertising Agency. [1] Most likely it was commissioned by Henry King Hannah who was working for the agency in 1909 and handling the Hartford Insurance Company as a client. The first issue of The Hartford Agent was published in June 1909. Dwiggins’ lettering appears both on …
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16 September 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 190 addendum—More on Henry King Hannah

I recently realized that The Definitive Dwiggins no. 190: Henry King Hannah and Frederick Siegfried is missing an item. I overlooked a bookplate that W.A.Dwiggins designed for the lHannah. It is undated, but was surely done either in 1905, the same year that Dwiggins designed the cover of Hannah’s The Bible for the Sick, or in 1906. The style of illustration is similar to one that Dwiggins used for a music title commissioned by D.B. Updike in February 1907. [1]
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18 August 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 93—Laurance B. Siegfried

Laurance B. Siegfried was a first cousin of W.A. Dwiggins on his mother’s side. He was born February 18, 1892 in Montclair, New Jersey to Addison H. and Mary (née Hetrick) Siegfried. Laurance was the youngest—by over a decade and a half—of three children, the other two being Mary (born 1869) and Frederick (born 1876). A little over two years later, on April 17, 1894, his mother died. [1] Seventeen months to the day after that his father died …
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18 August 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 190—Henry King Hannah and Frederick Siegfried

Several members of W.A. Dwiggins’ family on his mother’s side—the Siegfrieds and Hannahs—played roles in his professional career. I have already detailed the substantial place that his first cousin Laurance B. Siegfried (1892–1978) occupied vis a vis Dwiggins in The Definitive Dwiggins no. 93. This post focuses on Henry King Hannah (1865–1920), Laurance’s brother-in-law, and his older brother Frederick.
Henry King Hannah was born in 1865 in Georgetown, Ohio in the southern part of the state to William Henry …
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8 August 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 177 addendum no. 2—Christ with Us

Title page of Christ with Us by Edwin Markham. Manuscript designed and lettered by W.A. Dwiggins (1905). Image courtesy of Special Collections, Boston Public Library.
Christ with Us by Edwin Markham, p. [2]. Manuscript designed and lettered by W.A. Dwiggins (1905). Image courtesy of Special Collections, Boston Public Library.
On Christmas Day 1905, as a gift for his mother Eva, W.A. Dwiggins wrote out and bound a manuscript copy of “Christ with Us” by Edwin Markham (1852–1940). [1] The poem had …
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8 August 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 184—The Phillips Brooks Calendar

Cover of The Phillips Brooks Calendar 1908. Design and calligraphy by W.A. Dwiggins; published by Alfred Bartlett. Image courtesy of Dartmouth College, Rauner Library.
Alfred Bartlett (1879–1926) was, along with Daniel Berkeley Updike of The Merrymount Press, the most important client that W.A. Dwiggins had in the early stages of his career. [1] For him Dwiggins designed greeting cards, motto cards, dodgers, letter leaflets, postcards, and stationery. He also contributed illustrations, ornament, and lettering to various small books, the second …
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20 June 2019

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

Facsimile of “The Wefferes” page. Reproduced in Four Episodes from the York Mysteries of the Fourteenth Century (Boston: The Tavern Club, 1906). Photograph by Eric Frazier.
When I posted The Definitive Dwiggins no. 178 a few months ago I was unaware that I already had the answer to the “mystery” of The York Mysteries in a folder of material from the Bruce Rogers / Pforzheimer Collection at the Library of Congress. [1] Among the ephemera that Rogers collected is …
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4 May 2019

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

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

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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23 April 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 177—Rotunda Sketches

There is a small scrapbook in the original W.A. Dwiggins Collection at the Boston Public Library. Among its miscellaneous contents are five small sheets of paper bearing undated outline drawings of rotunda alphabets. [1] Three sheets contain sets of capitals, one has a mix of capitals and minuscules, and one has minuscules only. Two alphabets are sketched on notepaper from The Carolina hotel in Pinehurst, North Carolina while one set of letters has been drawn on the reverse of an …
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14 April 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 171—Der Bohemeverein

W.A. Dwiggins spent his adolescence in Cambridge, Ohio. He returned there in the spring of 1903, following his studies at The School of Illustration and a brief stint working in a studio with his lettering teacher Frederic W. Goudy. A year and a half later, in the fall of 1904, he left—with his new bride Mabel—for Hingham, Massachusetts to work with Goudy at his relocated Village Press. During the short time he was back in Cambridge Dwiggins designed and typeset …
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12 April 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 169—”Der Professorverein”

W.A. Dwiggins attended The School of Illustration in Chicago from November 1899 until sometime in 1901. [1] The school’s short existence, which lasted from September 1898 until July 1904, was tumultuous. In the early years it grew rapidly with its success most visibly marked by a mushrooming faculty which its founder Frank Holme (1868–1904), tongue in cheek, referred to as “Der Professorverein.” This article is a look at the faculty of The School of Illustration, its growth and its make-up.
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11 April 2019

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 180—The Epworth League

The Epworth League, founded in Cleveland in 1889, was created as a Methodist counterpart to the YMCA, with the intent to serve as an outreach and activity program for young people. Its object was “to promote intelligent and loyal piety among its members”. [1] the League grew rapidly in the 1890s with chapters throughout the country. The first International Convention was held in 1893 at Cleveland; after that they were biennial with the fifth taking place in San Francisco in …
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