The Definitive Dwiggins no. 168—Teuerdank

Title page from Teuerdank by Maximilian I and Melchior Pfintzing (Nuremberg: Johannes Schoensperger, 1517).
Page from Teuerdank by Maximilian I and Melchior Pfintzing (Nuremberg: Johannes Schoensperger, 1517). Illustration by Albrecht Dürer.
In the 1974 Dwiggins Collection at the Boston Public Library there is a scrap of paper with some outlined bâtarde-like letters drawn on it. [1]No captions, no date. I have traced the letters to the Teuerdank, the book commissioned by Maximilian I as an epic retelling of …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 181—Three Folksongs from the Coast of Northern France

Work from early in the career of W.A. Dwiggins frequently looks very different from what casual observers envision as “the Dwiggins look.” This post is about one such instance, a set of five ornaments designed to fill out several lines of typography on the title page of some sheet music.
On New Year’s day, 1910 Daniel Berkeley Updike—not resting on the holiday—commissioned Dwiggins to design “line endings typographical.” (Elsewhere in his account books Dwiggins entered the job as “line endings Grasset.”) …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 165 addendum—Another B

On page 114 of W.A. Dwiggins: A Life in Design by Bruce Kennett (San Francisco: Letterform Archive, 2018) the author shows a cropped image of an insert for Beckett Paper from Direct Advertising vol. IV, no. 3 entitled “The Buckeye ‘Dummy’ Covers”. [1] “Dwiggins cleverly recycled the ornamental B from his Bartlett days, Kennett comments. Unfortunately, the decorative B, despite looking very much like the one Dwiggins designed for Alfred Bartlett in 1906, is not by Dwiggins.
The Buckeye …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 176—A Note on a Note in Towards a Reform of the Paper Currency

*The Society of Calligraphers of Boston, a group of experts whose authority in the realm of graphic art is unquestioned, goes on record with the opinion: “It is not possible to discuss the designs [for the paper currency] without heat. They infuriate you because you cannot get at them. They are beyond the reach of criticism. They are safe—as an idiot is safe anywhere, in any community, savage or civilized. They are made immune by hideous deformity.… The artistic value …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 175—An Irked Consumer

In The Definitive Dwiggins no. 9 continued—Toward a Reform of the Paper Currency I suggested that W.A. Dwiggins may have been spurred to write Toward a Reform of the Paper Currency by an article his friend Paul Hollister had contributed to the January 1930 issue of The American Printer. At the time I only quoted Hollister’s comments on the typographical quality of the new one dollar bill that followed the 1929 currency redesign instigated by Andrew Mellon, Secretary …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 33 addendum—An Archeress

Along with the archers surveyed in The Definitive Dwiggins no. 33, W.A. Dwiggins created at least one archeress. She appears on the title page of his short story The War Against Waak,(Hingham, Massachusetts: Püterschein-Hingham, 1948). The story is the fifth in the Athalinthia series that he began writing in the mid-1920s. [1] The archeress, labeled “Bellona”, is stenciled in magenta and rose. She faces to the left, seemingly oblivious to the presence of three men engaged in battle with spears and …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 28 second addendum—The Humanists’ Library

The source for the frame used on the front of the Humanists’ Library Second Series circular is a 1503 title page engraved on wood. It can be found in Bücher-Ornamentik der Renaissance by A.F. Butsch (Leipzig: G. Hirth, 1878–1881), Tafel 15. [1] W.A. Dwiggins, the presumed designer of the frame for The Merrymount Press, has not only eliminated the scene between the pillars, but he has also deleted all of the text and the three shields. More significantly, he …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 165—Proverbs 15:17

While preparing The Definitive Dwiggins no. 162 I stumbled across a familiar-looking ornate calligraphic B at the bottom of p. 210 of Early Venetian Printing Illustrated (Venice: Ferd. Ongania, London: John C. Nimmo, and New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895). Ongania took the B from Il Terzo Libro de Madrigali by Andrea Gabrieli (Venice: Angelo Gardano, 1589).
Page 210 from Early Venetian Printing Illustrated (Venice: Ferd. Ongania, London: John C. Nimmo, and New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895).
In 1906 W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1956) appropriated and revised …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 162—The Scribe

As a student at the Frank Holme School of Illustration in Chicago, W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1956) drew a monk writing at a sloped desk as an assignment in the decorative design class taught by Frederic W. Goudy (1865-1947). The presence of the words “Class of Decorative Design” in a ribbon and “School of Illustration” in a tabula ansata below the drawing suggests it may have been intended for the cover of a (fictional) catalogue for the school. A completed, colorized, and signed …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 33—The Archer

Although he never engaged in archery himself, W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1956) had an enduring interest in archers. The fascination seems to have taken hold when he was in his early 30s as archers are rare in his childhood and adolescent drawings, easily outnumbered by warriors with swords and spears, and soldiers with pistols and rifles. The only one I know of appears at the right in a Medieval battle scene drawn in pencil on a page from his father’s account book. …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 161—The New Colophon addendum

Recently Charles Nix kindly sent me an image of lettering that he had received as a gift. He was told that it was by W.A. Dwiggins for The Colophon vol. I, no. 1. In trying to confirm that it was indeed the work of Dwiggins I discovered that it was actually the lettering for title page of The New Colophon vol. II, part 8 (February 1950) rather than for the earlier incarnation of the periodical. The rest of the title …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 198—A Portrait of William Morris

Woodcut portrait of William Morris by W.A. Dwiggins from “The Poetry of William Morris” by Wallace Rice in The Blue Sky: A Monthly Magazine, vol. V, no. 1 (April, 1902). Image courtesy of Special Collections, University of Arizona.
W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1956) lived in Chicago from the fall of 1899 to the summer of 1903. During that brief time he was initially a student at the Frank Holme School of Illustration and then a studio mate of his mentor Frederic W. …
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The Definitive Dwiggins no. 116—The End of Childhood (1890–1895)

Wanderings
The unexpected death of Moses Dwiggins in January 1890 left his widow Eva, and their young son Willie, adrift in the world. Without her soulmate and source of livelihood, Eva stumbled about for the next five years, trying to achieve a stable life. Willie, only 9 1/2 years old at the time of his father’s death, was old enough to understand his mother’s grief, but too young to be able to do much about it.

This post is the next installment …
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