A Glimpse of Klimt

A late happy birthday to Gustav Klimt who would have been 150 years old this year, 2012, on July 14th. In Austria they are celebrating the great contributor of the Vienna Secession all year round.

Gustav Klimt was born just outside Vienna in 1862 and was a student of School of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1876 to 1883. Trained in architectural painting, most of his early works were fairly conservative and most his commissions were for interior murals (Huffington).

In the late 1890's Klimt's work began to explore more symbolic motifs that were more "unconventional" for the times. His allegorical paintings were often seen as borderline pornographic and radical by critics (Huffington).  A good number of his drawings, paintings, and studies could still be considered pornographic by some as a lot of his focus was on the female nude. The majority his works were highly decorative and used gold leafing to a great magnitude.

Gustav Klimt - Water Serpents

His notable and recognizable work is the painting called The Kiss.

The Kiss, has been put on wallets, bags and even a print offered by Ikea. The painting shows a woman embraced by a man giving her a kiss, but some have argued the awkwardness of the angle of the woman's head, looking as if she has a broken neck.

It seems that Klimt had a sense for the macabre as some of his works explored allegories on life and death.

Gustav Klimt – Die hoffnung II

Gustav Klimt – Death and life

He became president of the Vienna Secession at the age of 35 in 1897 (Neue Galerie), leading a revolt against the Viennese Creative Artists Association (Meggs) and his highly stylized artwork leading an expressive way. He left the Secession in 1905, after a dispute with Josef Hoffman.

Later in life Klimt was often commissioned to do portraits liked to live secluded in his robe and sandals. He died  February 6, 1918 (Neue Gallerie).

Gustav Klimt, Vienna 1917
Photographer: Moritz Nähr (1859-1945)
Vintage silver print
Neue Galerie New York 

 

 

 A slide show of early photographs of Klimt can be found here:
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/14/gustav-klimt-birthday_n_1672351.html#slide=1224274
Sources:
Neue Galerie
Meggs History of Graphic Design
Huffington Post

He said, "Let's go Dutch." She said, "I don't like your type."

The image above is figure 10-32  of Meggs' History of Graphic Design, fifth edition. It is the first page of A. Roland Holst's, Deirdre en de Zonen van Usnach (Deidre and the Sons of Usnach), which was printed by, the Dutch typographer, Jan van Krimpen in 1920 at the Van Scherpenzeel in The Hague (Fridrichs). What interested me about the image was the beautiful woodcut image on the left page. It has elegant curvilinear lines that have a very organic feel balanced with almost solid black areas with very hard edges. The image contrasts very well against the large red capitals with a sweeping line coming off the O in the second line of the title text. It is what made me mark the image on my first flip through the book.

Open Roman Capitals

I really enjoyed the image as it seemed like a great transitional piece that marked the crossing over from The Arts and Crafts Movement to Art Nouveau, and I wanted to research the artist. Unfortunately, my results only returned the name B. Esser in which there was little to no information to be had within my immediate reach. However, I have found  quite a bit on Jan van Krimpen and will give some tidbits on his work.

Jan van Krimpen (1877-1958) was a type designer and typographer from Gouda, Netherlands who developed type for the Enschedé Foundry (Meggs). His list of fonts include Lutetia, Romanée, Open Roman Capitals, Romulus type family, VAn Dijck Roman, Haarlemmer, Sheldon, and Spectrum which are all cut type or designed for mono-type (Wikipedia). He was "originally been trained as a visual artist, but later on trained himself in calligraphy and the art of bookbinding, to publish his first book in 1917, the Sonnetten by his friend Albert Besnard (KB). His published books ave excellent examples of his types and capitols and his typography had a minimalist approach as he believed that typography had a beauty in itself.

Reproduced Spectrum

 Therefore, there are little to no use of images or flourishes in the books he has designed yet uses subtle embellishments on capitols. The rest of the text would remain plain. The capitols, van Krimpen would design and cut himself (KB).

Penthesileia. H. Marsman. Arnhem, Hijman, Stenfert Kroese en Van der Zande, 1925. 15, [1] p., 25 x 18 cm. (Palladium). Printed on the hand-press of Joh. Enschedé en Zonen. Edition of 160 copies. This copy has been printed for the KB. 163 D 28, p. 4-5

A. van Schendel, Verdichtsel van zomerdagen, Maastricht, Boosten & Stols

Jan van Krimpen's binding design of Aruthur van Schendel's Verdichtsel Van Zomer Dagen (1925) shows his elegant solutions by using a single flourish on the descender of the capital G into the negative space below.

Printers mark for The Halcyon Press

The printers mark for The Halcyon Press displays van Krimpen's Open Roman Capitals type used in a ligature. "First applied in R. M. Rilke, Les roses. De mark is used in (nearly) all publications of the Halcyon press as well as in a periodical of the same name, published in 1940-1942. In the early publications of the press the mark is printed with a double rectagular border" in 1927 (John Friedrichs).


Sources:
Meggs History of Graphic Design
The Early Work of Jan Van Krimpen, John Friedrichs 2011
Jan van Krimpen, Wikipedia
KB Koninklijke Bibliotheek. National Library of the Netherlands 

Letters Get Togethers

Specimen sheet By William Caslon  1732

My original topic was going to be on William Caslon because his cut type was the first in English and was used in the Declaration of Independence. But, as I began my research I noticed something curious about his fonts… ligatures. Ligatures are two or more letters connected together in succession and, in our day and age, are nearly only seen in trademarks, logos, or as a design aesthetic, and not as a part of the written language or built into the font itself. So be it, my research began to take a tangent into  ligatures came from.

The example to the right is a specimen sheet of William Caslon's letters and if you click on it you can see it in a large view. When you look through the sheet, you can see a lot of the various ligatures. For instance, in the second column, the third section down, you can see that Caslon cut ligatures for the letter combinations of ct, ft, ff, fq, fu, and ae. 

The John Baskerville specimen sheet also shows examples of ligatures such as the ae, the ft, and fl.

14th-century manuscript: Watriquet de Couvin's Fabliaux divers... (Paris, ca. 1330), a book of secular medieval French poetry.

Our Meggs book has countless examples of ligatures through out the images of typography yet also in illuminated manuscripts. It could look as if early typographers were merely mimicking the handy work of scribes. Scribes often ran the letters close together as a space saving device. Typographers, similarly created ligatures as a space saving device. "With the invention of Metal Movable Type in the 15th century, ligatures flourished and were a great time saver when setting type. For example, instead of having to set an “f” and an “i”, a single ligature block could be used instead. That may not seem like a great time saver, but when you’re setting an entire book 0f 40,000 words in movable type, then it could certainly make a difference" (I Love Typography).

So what happened to ligatures. According to I Love Typography, the inventions of typewriters and desktop publishing did away with them in the search of simplification. However they still do exist and see them more than we acknowledge.

Sources:

ilovetypography.com Decline and Fall of the Ligature

Bowdoin.edu Perkinson Shines Light on 15th-century Illuminated Manuscripts

Stamp and date here please.

Akkadian, about 2250 BC

The early development of visual communication of man is surely an in-depth and interesting one. But, one of my main interests delves directly in to the creation of personal identities and how different civilizations of early Eastern and Western worlds tackled this problem. In today’s world, an individual simply put’s their signed signature on pieces of paper to signify ownership or approval of something. Yet, to make a signed piece a paper legally binding, it needs to be notarized or, more simply put, stamped by a notary official.

Uratian, 8th century BC

The idea of stamping something to signify ownership or approval is not a new one and in fact predates back to 3500 BC. Both, developing Western and Eastern civilizations created certain systems of stamping. Early Mesopotamians created a stamp-cylinder seal to imprint into clay as China developed a relief printing stamp using cinnabar ink called a chop. 

Stamp-cylinder seals were originally carved in stone with an image around and on the bottom of the cylinder that could be depressed in clay, and was often used as a stamp to certify documents and provide a way to prevent forgery (Meggs). The use of these cylinder seals continued until 300 BC (The British Musem).

Chinese Bronze Chop

Similarly, the Chinese developed the chop, a relief print usually carved into jade or ivory, during the third century to use as a way to certify a documents as well as art works (Meggs). They often served as a simpler way of a signature due to the complex nature of the written Chinese language. Chops are still used today.

But stamps and seals continued to evolve from the two originals. Egyptian scarabs containing the the cartouche and hieroglyphic carvings were often a seal of he owner and worn as signet ring Meggs. The signet rings had the ability to leave an impression having the same ability to endorse legal documents. "Herodotus (I, 195) mentions that everyone in Babylonia carried a seal, and the same remark would apply with equal truth to Egypt" (Newberry).

		Egypt, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18
		1570 BC–1298 BC

Egypt, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18

 

1570 BC–1298 BC

Lost Colony Signet Ring, 1585

  Signets transcended time. The Lost Colony Signet ring was discovered by David S. Phelps of East Carolina University in 1998 and dates back to back to 1585 (East Carolina University). This evidence shows the signet ring was used throughout the Medieval period. They were used in wax seals on legal documents and on letter envelopes.

Seals and stamps are still used today to show a legal binding document. If you have ever had to get a document notarized you should see a stamp similar to the one below.

 

Sources

Meggs

The British Museum 

Scarabs; an introduction to the study of Egyptian seals and signet rings, with forty-four plates and one hundred and sixteen illustrations in the text - Newberry, Percy Edward, 1869-

The Virtual Egyptian Museum

East Carolina University