Paul Shaw Letter Design » Tours & Events

21 August 2019

Images of Tipo Cibo Vino (Legacy of Letters 2019)—Part 4: Le Corderie

Possibly the highlight of Tipo Cibo Vino was a day of cooking and beverage lessons from chef Cristina Colle and her husband Mauro Drago, the owners of Le Corderie, the restaurant established by the Tipoteca. Mauro instructed us in how to properly make coffee (cappucino, espresso, and iced coffee) and Italian cocktails (the Americano, Negroni, and Ugo); and led a grappa tasting. Cristina taught us how to make baccalà mantecata, risi e bisi, and tiramisù. And we got to eat …
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20 August 2019

Images of Tipo Cibo Vino (Legacy of Letters 2019)—Part 3: Cimiterio Brion

Our visit to Altivole to see architect Carlo Scarpa’s masterpiece, the Cimiterio Brion, was not part of the original Tipo Cibo Vino itinerary as there was no time to fit it into the Veneto day. But the Legacy of letters participants were unanimous in their desire to see the cemetery, so Patricia and I figured out a way to squeeze it into the schedule. Our visit ended just as a massive thunderstorm swept through the area.
July 7, 2019 | Altivole
Cimiterio …
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19 August 2019

Images of Tipo Cibo Vino (Legacy of Letters 2019)—Part 2: The Veneto

During the first three days of Tipo Cibo Vino we looked at manuscripts, incunabula, Futurist books, and posters. Although we ate terrific food and drank Aperol spritzes, Negronis, and lots of prosecco at lunch and dinner—and beer in Trento—we had not yet begun the official “Cibo Vino” part of the tour. That all changed with our gastronomic tour of the Veneto, orchestrated by Sandro Berra.
July 6, 2019 | Farra di Soligo
Cantina Marchiori
Peter Kruty listening to Sara Marchiori explaining the …
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18 August 2019

Images from Tipo Cibo Vino (Legacy of Letters 2019)—Part 1: Treviso, Venice, Rovereto, and Trento

The first iteration of Tipo Cibo Vino, the 2019 Legacy of Letters tour and workshop, was a smashing success. The ten participants and one companion had a marvelous time touring cultural and gastronomic sites in the Veneto, taking cooking and beverage lessons from Cristina Colle and Mauro Drago of Le Corderie restaurant, and then working collaboratively on a letterpress book at the Tipoteca under the guidance of Peter Kruty and Sayre Gaydos of Peter Kruty Editions. The experience was so …
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21 September 2018

Legacy of Letters 2019: Tipo Cibo Vino

Tipo
Wood type at the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione in Cornuda. Photograph by Patricia Vining (2012).
Cibo
Food stall in Venice. Photograph by Patricia Vining (2012).
Vino
Display of antique grappa bottles at the Poli Museo del Grappa in Bassano del Grappa. Photograph by David Wolske (2013).
Tipo Cibo Vino
Legacy of Letters 2019
Letterpress workshop with Peter Kruty Editions
Tipoteca
Cornuda, Italy
July 3–13, 2019
$3850 [$3300 early bird discount]
space limited to 12 participants*
CONCEPT
The 2019 edition of Legacy of Letters will have the theme Tipo Cibo Vino. Our guest artists will be …
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14 September 2018

By the Numbers no. 2 addendum—Fat Face in Chicago

Obviously people had difficulty in seeing the address above the doorway. The only solution was to design the house number in a Fat Face so large that it had to be positioned vertically. It looks great except for the screen at the lower portion of the door. I think the numerals are made of steel.
House number in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Photograph by Paul Shaw (2005).

13 September 2018

By the Numbers no. 1—third addendum: New York didone stencil

The painted address of the Project Find Clinton Senior Citizen Center (originally known as Harborview Terrace) in New York employs didone stencil letters associated with Le Corbusier. The building was designed by Herbert Mandel in 1977. Whether he was responsible for the decision to use the Le Corbusier stencils for the supergraphics or they were the idea of a hired graphic designer is unknown. Either way, they look terrific—even covered in grime and with their paint peeling.
535 West …
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7 September 2018

By the Numbers no. 1—second addendum: Mantova

In searching through my archive of Legacy of Letters photographs I found this wonderful example of a didone address in Mantova with the old house number carved beautifully in stone—the 5 is especially charming—and a newer house number in enamel. The numerals of the latter are condensed. The 3 is notable for its horizontal top.
House number in Mantova. Photograph by Alta Price (2011).

7 September 2018

Legacy of Letters 2010 Day by Day—A Photographic Scrapbook

This is a day-by-day photographic record of the Legacy of Letters 2010 Tour led by myself and Alta Price.* The participants were David Hackett, Howard Holtzman, Jonah Koppel, Lucia McCreery, Jill Overley, and Carlo Scherer. The capitalized items are the places that we visited in each city on that date. Unfortunately, we do not have photographs documenting every place that we visited during the tour.
June 14 | PADUA
ORTO BOTANICO DI PADOVA
Legacy of Letters participants (left to right: Paul, Carlo, …
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8 January 2017

Chronology of Lettering Walks

This is a list of all of the lettering walks I have led or co-led since the beginning of Legacy of Letters in 1997. There are additional cities that I have not led walks in, but have the capability to do so. They include Amsterdam, Berlin, Leiden, London, Mainz, New Orleans, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Rochester (New York), Toronto, Troy (New York), Tulsa, and Washington DC. I have led walks for institutions, organizations, design schools, businesses and individuals. For more information about …
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6 January 2017

Legacy of Letters Tour & Workshop 2017 Itinerary

Legacy of Letters Tour & Workshop 2017 : Letterpress Printing with Erik Spiekermann
The upcoming Legacy of Letters Tour & Workshop will begin in Turin (Torino) before visiting Rovereto and Padua. It will conclude in Cornuda, home of the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione, where Erik Spiekermann will lead a five-day letterpress printing workshop.
For the first time the Legacy of Letters tour will visit Torino, the home of the House of Savoy, in the Piedmont region of Italy. Camillo Benso, Conte di Cavour (commonly known …
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21 August 2016

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 36—Knopf Colophons

Recently, I gave a talk at The Book Club of California titled Beyond the Spine: A Closer Look at the Book Designs of W.A. Dwiggins for Alfred A. Knopf. While preparing the talk a few months ago, Jennifer Sime, the executive director of the club, asked me if I could prepare an article on short notice for the club’s quarterly newsletter. I jumped at the offer because it gave me an opportunity to write in depth about the colophons in …
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23 June 2016

Legacy of Letters 2017—Erik Spiekermann at the Tipoteca

If you don’t recognize this face you haven’t been paying attention to graphic design, information design, typography and type design for the past three decades. This is Erik Spiekermann. He was trained, in the true German printing tradition, as a compositor before working at H. Berthold GmbH under the legendary Gunter Gerhard Lange. For Berthold he both designed typefaces (the revivals of Berliner Grotesk and LoType for instance) and type specimens. In 1987 he also wrote the wonderfully …
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19 May 2016

Lettering Walk in Newark

Flaking gold leaf business address in Newark. Photograph by Paul Shaw (2005)
Detail of the cast lettering on the facade of The Federal Trust Company building (1926) in Newark. Photograph by Paul Shaw (2005).
CooperType is holding the second annual Typographics conference between June 13 and 23. To complement the tours scheduled for Sunday, June 19, I will be leading a lettering tour of Newark, New Jersey.
Sunday, June 19
10 am to 2 pm
$25; $20 for students
maximum …
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24 April 2016

Typefaces vs. alphabets: The case of a parochial school in the Bronx

Cover of The Speedball Text Book: Lettering and Poster Design for Pen and Brush (14th edition) by Ross F. George (Camden, New Jersey: C. Howard Hunt Pen Co., 1941). Courtey of Lee Littlewood.
On April 17 I led a lettering walk for the Type Directors Club in several north Bronx neighborhoods: Norwood, Williamsbridge, Wakefield and Woodlawn Heights. In Williamsbridge we looked at the lettering on the facade of Immaculate Conception Church on Gun Hill Road (at Holland Avenue). The name …
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21 March 2016

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 24—Talks on Dwiggins

For the past fifteen years I have been giving talks on W.A. Dwiggins as a means of spreading the discoveries I have made about his life and career while my magnum opus remains in gestation. Below is a chronological list of the talks I have already given, including some in which Dwiggins is a player but not the main subject. They cover a wide range of topics since Dwiggins had a multi-faceted career. There are many other topics* that I …
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