The Penrose Annual, Vol. 41, title page
Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth and tagged with “originell” and “aktuell”. License: All Rights Reserved.
The title page to the 1939 Penrose Annual, Volume 41 in the annual series of the publication that charted developments in printing and the graphic arts. Published by Lund Humphries of London and Bradford, West Yorkshire, the typography and binding was designed by Francis Meynell and the script lettering used for headings came from Caslon, Monotype, and Soldans.
8 Comments on “The Penrose Annual, Vol. 41, title page”
In the case of the title page shown here, the type probably wasn’t provided by either Caslon, Monotype, or Soldans.
Soldans was a London-based service that imported typefaces by foundries in continental Europe to the British Isles. In 1939, this included Bauer, Klingspor, Ludwig & Mayer, and Deberny et Peignot. Thirty years later, in 1968, Soldans was still in business, and represented Bauer, Ludwig & Mayer, Nebiolo, Amsterdam, and Berthold.
Walther Schnippering’s script type siblings originated at Schriftguss in Dresden, which was not represented by Soldans. Chances are the foundry delivered to the United Kingdom directly. There, Originell was known a Pentape, and Aktuell as Penflow.
Not sure if the manicules are from Schriftguss as well. This 1922 specimen does show such pointing hands, but they are of a different design.
These look to be the manicules designed by Will Bradley for ATF.
That’s wonderful information, thank you!
I’ve put together a new typeface entry for Will Bradley’s Chap-Book Cuts etc. and added it to this Use accordingly.
Very nice! Thank you, Nick. I’ve added a sample for it, showing the Chap-Book Directors, the Chap-Book Guidons, and a couple of selected Chap-Book Cuts.
Some of these had a second lease of life. The four manicules, for example, pop up in the library of dry transfer manufacturer Chartpak. They are shown as parts of series nos. 6644 and 6606 in a 1981 catalog:
That one Chap-Book manicule with the big frilly cuff in particular seems to have been adapted/used quite a bit in the 1950s and ’60s. I also remember seeing auto-traced versions of it in quite a few digital fonts that came through MyFonts when I was working there.
Here’s a photo of that manicule in metal type:
In the comments of that photo, Alan from the Rambling Urchin also shared this other use:
Fernando Mello shared a pic of what appears to be a poster from the 2022 Brazilian election, by the “desenhos pela democracia” (drawin for democracy”) campaign. It prominently featured Bradley’s manicule.