Otto Kaestner GmbH invoice and product catalog
Otto Kaestner G.m.b.H. Krefeld a. Rh. Messingschriftgiesserei und Gravieranstalt invoice. Probably printed by an “L. Schwann” in Düsseldorf. While the invoice does not include a date of printing on it, this particular invoice was issued to a customer on 12 December 1910. The invoice was typeset in various sizes of Peter Behrens’s Behrens-Antiqua typeface, produced by Gebr. Klingspor in Offenbach am Main.
This post is about an invoice from the Otto Kaestner GmbH, an engraver and founder of brass types that operated during the first few decades of the twentieth century in Krefeld. The typeface used to compose the invoice was Peter Behrens’s Behrens-Antiqua, which had been produced by the Gebr. Klingspor typefoundry in Offenbach am Main in 1907. I think that the line at the very bottom of the invoice reading “L. Schwann, Düsseldorf” is an attribution placed there by the invoice’s printer.
This invoice was not the only time that the Kaestner firm used a Klingspor typeface in its “corporate identity.” The firm produced several undated product catalogs. In one of them, the company header on the first page was set in the Eckmann typeface, designed by Otto Eckmann, which Gebr. Klingspor had published back in 1900 (when they still operated under the name Rudhard’sche Gießerei).
Title page for Katalog A: Messing-Schriften für die Vergoldungspresse, published by the Otto Kaestner G.m.b.H. Graviranstalt und Messingschriftenfabrik in Krefeld, Germany. The first four lines of type are set in Eckmann, designed by Otto Eckmann and produced by the Rudhard’sche Gießerei (later Gebr. Klingspor) in 1900. “Katalog A” is in Jefferson, or probably Flinsch’s copy named Atlanta. “Messing-Schriften” is Berthold’s Secession.
