Paul Shaw Letter Design

1 September 2024

Handsome Typos: An Improved (but Still Incomplete) History of Baltimore Type Foundries 1795–1895

Detail of front binding of Mengel’s Type-Foundry Specimens of Printing Types, Rules, Cuts, and Printing Material (Baltimore: John G. Mengel and Company, n.d. [1891]). Note that this is entirely lettered. Image courtesy of Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
The standard account of the history of type foundries in Baltimore is Maurice Annenberg’s Type Foundries of America and Their Catalogs (1974). Annenberg lists four inter-related foundries (Baltimore Type Foundry, Chas. J. Cary & Co., John Ryan & Co. and John …
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28 August 2024

Liberty Is Desirable: Nationalism, Patriotism, and Jingoism in 19th Century Type Specimens

On August 8, 2024, I gave a talk at the Letterform Archive on Liberty Is Desirable: Nationalism, Patriotism, and Jingoism in 19th Century American Type Specimens. The video is now available at Vimeo.
Eight Line Pica Condensed from Specimens of Printing Types and Ornaments Cast by Johnson & Smith (Philadelphia 1834). Image courtesy of Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
A Note on the Title
The original title of this talk was Reading Type Specimens: From Cicero to Spoonie Diddel, Ladies …
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19 April 2024

3 Lectures in London June 2024—Type Specimens, W.A. Dwiggins and Bartolomeo Sanvito

In June 2024 I will be in London to deliver three talks on three wildly disparate topics, a reflection of my varied interests over the past 40+ years: W.A. Dwiggins, Bartolomeo Sanvito, and type specimens. The thread that binds these topics is letterforms. Sanvito was a calligrapher; Dwiggins was a calligrapher, lettering artist, and type designer; and type specimens—of course—display typefaces (among other things).
Patent Shaded Four Lines Pica and Patent Shaded two Lines Double Pica from D. …
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3 January 2024

The Frank Holme Chronicles no. 3—Never Idle: The Tragically Short but Jam-Packed Life of Frank Holme (Chicago, November 16, 2023)

On November 16, 2023 I gave a talk on the life of Frank Holme (1868–1904) at the Palette and Chisel Academy of Art (formerly the Palette and Chisel Club) in Chicago entitled Never Idle: The Tragically Short but Jam-Packed Life of Frank Holme. The talk was co-sponsored by The Caxton Club. The location was chosen because Holme was an integral member of the Palette and Chisel Club in the early years of its existence, when it is was still …
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3 January 2024

The Frank Holme Chronicles no. 2—Just for Fun: The Short but Thrilling Life of The Bandar Log Press (New York, October 25, 2023)

I delivered a talk on Frank Holme (1868–1904) and The Bandar Log Press for The Typophiles on October 25, 2023. It was titled Just for Fun: The Short but Thrilling Life of The Bandar Log Press, a reference to the first book published under The Bandar Log Press imprint. Earlier in the year my article “Frank Holme and The Bandar Log Press” appeared in Parenthesis 44: Journal of the Fine Press Book Association (Spring 2023), pp. 36–41.
Spread from …
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2 January 2024

The Frank Holme Chronicles no. 1—Frank Holme and The School of Illustration (Chicago, December 3, 2020)

My first talk about Frank Holme (1868–1904) was scheduled to take place in Chicago in late October 2018. It never happened because I was severely attacked in midtown Manhattan in broad daylight a week earlier. The talk—Frank Holme and The School of Illustration—was eventually delivered via Zoom on December 3, 2020. It was sponsored by the Society of Typographic Arts.
The main room of The School of Illustration located at 26 Van Buren Street in Chicago. Holme is standing in …
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2 June 2023

The Enduring Fascination of Bartolomeo Sanvito Renaissance Scribe—A Zoom talk 7 June 2023

The Enduring Fascination of Bartolomeo Sanvito, Renaissance Scribe
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 at 10 am PDT / 1 pm EDT
A free on-line talk via Zoom sponsored by the Friends of Calligraphy.
Caius Julius Caesar, Commentari de bello Gallico et civile c.1464–1466 (Biblioteca Ambrosiana A 243 inf, f. 10). Written out by Bartolomeo Sanvito.
Bartolomeo Sanvito
Bartolomeo Sanvito was born in Padua in 1433. He was trained in gothic cursive and his earliest dated italic script is from mid-1454. His first known work, a copy …
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25 May 2023

Grolier Club talk—The Greatest Type Specimen Ever Made: The 1882 Bruce Foundry specimen

p. 39 from Specimens of Printing Types Made at Bruce’s New-York Type-Foundry (New York: George Bruce’s Son & Co., Type-Founders, 1882).
…probably the largest, most complete and finest typographical specimen book ever produced.—La Cygne Journal (La Cygne, Kansas) April 29, 1882
Specimens of Printing Types Made at Bruce’s New-York Type-Foundry (New York: George Bruce’s Son & Co., Type-Founders, 1882)
Although it is neither the most colorful nor the most visually sumptuous type specimen, the 1882 Bruce type foundry specimen is arguably the …
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22 April 2023

From Depero to Rotella: Italian commercial posters between advertising and art—an exhibition at the Center for Italian Modern Art

View of the exhibition From Depero to Rotella at the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA).
At the kind invitation of curator Nicola Lucchi, I will be doing a tour on April 28 of the exhibition From Depero to Rotella: Italian commercial posters between advertising and art, that is currently on display at the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) in New York. The exhibition, which focuses on Italian posters from the 1920s to the 1970s, includes a number …
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17 March 2023

Demonology & | witchcraft!!! | Printing: An online research session into the history of Philadelphia type foundries 1823–1844

Six Lines Gothic Condensed and Six Lines Gothic from Specimen of Printing Types and Ornaments by Rob & Ecklin, Letter Founders (Philadelphia: 1836). Image courtesy of RIT Libraries Digital Collections.
Letterforms Study Group via Zoom / Friday April 7 at 2 pm Eastern Daylight Time
fee $15

In this online type history research session I will retrace my recent research into the history of the Robb & Ecklin type foundry of Philadelphia, its partners Samuel Ecklin and Alexander Robb, and their relationship to …
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9 February 2023

Mad, Bad (but Good to Know): A survey of type specimens offline and online

Sonoma Plaza (Bear Flag Republic) from Historia: A Type Specimen (Berkeley, California: Emigre Fonts, 2010), pp. 20–21. Design by Rudy VanderLans.
Mad, Bad (but Good to Know): A survey of type specimens offline and online
Type@Cooper
13 February 2023
This is a list of the type specimens included in my Type@Cooper talk. Those that have been digitized and available online are marked in red. Where multiple digitized versions of specimens exist I have chosen either the one with the best visual quality or …
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18 March 2022

Nachlass Jan Tschichold (Deutsche National Bibliothek Leipzig)

“Exhibition of new German Writing Art” (1920). Calligraphy by Johannes Tzschichhold [Jan Tschichold]. Image from Nachlass Jan Tschichold, Deutsche National Bibliothek Leipzig.
In October 2021 I stumbled on the digitized collection of Jan Tschichold’s work that was uploaded to the Deutsche National Bibliothek Leipzig website several months earlier. It is a remarkable collection. I was especially struck by finding a lot of Tschichold’s early calligraphic work, much of it in various forms of blackletter. That discovery led me to …
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19 May 2020

The Swiss Grid exhibition at Poster House: A virtual tour

The Swiss Grid exhibition at Poster House, the new poster museum in New York, opened on February 27. Curator Angela Lippert had asked me to lead a tour of the exhibition for Type Directors Club members on March 23, but it was cancelled Governor Cuomo imposed a lockdown on New York Stare, the week before in response to the coronavirus pandemic. As a substitute Angela and I semi-violated the lockdown on March 17. We met at the deserted …
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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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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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13 February 2016

Poggio Bracciolini, an Inscription in Terranuova & the Monument to Carlo Marsuppini: A Theory

NOTE: This is the text of a short talk that I gave at the CAA Calligraphy/Epigraphy Session of the College Art Association 104th Annual Conference in Washington, DC on February 5, 2016. The session, officially entitled Forming Letters: New Research in Renaissance Calligraphy and Epigraphy, was chaired by Debra Pincus and included presentations by David Boffa, James Fishburne, Roberta Ricci, Philippa Sissis and myself with William Stenhouse as the respondent. Jonathan J.G. …
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