#Artist & Alphabet: 20th Century Calligraphy & Letter Art in America | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

uwmspeccoll · 1 year

Photo

Typography Tuesday

Last Sunday we brought you a few highly decorative calligraphic designs from the 2000 exhibition catalog Artist & Alphabet: 20th Century Calligraphy & Letter Art in America, published by David R. Godine in conjunction with the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Society of Scribes and was printed in at The Stinehour Press in Vermont. On this #Typography Tuesday we present some of the more formal letterforms from this same volume.

Click or tap on the images for details.

View more Typography Tuesday posts.

#Typography Tuesday #typetuesday #calligraphy #letterforms #Artist & Alphabet: 20th Century Calligraphy & Letter Art in America #David R. Godine #American Institute of Graphic Arts #Society of Scribes #Stinehour Press #Jerry Kelly #Typography Tuesday

68 notes · View notes

uwmspeccoll · 1 year

Photo

Decorative Sunday

Kandinsky said, “Letters act as practical and useful signs, but also as pure form and inner melody.” This quote appears on a Society of Scribes 10th Anniversary Keepsake from 1984, one of the pieces featured in Artist & Alphabet: 20th Century Calligraphy & Letter Art in America.

The exhibition catalog was published in Jaffrey, New Hampshire in 2000 by David R. Godine in conjunction with the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Society of Scribes and was printed in at The Stinehour Press in Vermont. The exhibit and catalog were curated by Jerry Kelly (who was also the book designer) and Alice Koeth (who provided the title page calligraphy). The catalog includes an introduction from Donald Jackson.

While Artist & Alphabet contains a wide overview of the lettering arts of the 20th century, for this Decorative Sunday I have focused on the specimens that embody that spirit of what Jackson calls “spontaneously made, deeply personal pirouettes of the pen, blots and all.” These works show how letter forms can be utilized not just to convey information, but as a visual grammar in and of itself.

You can find more publications from Godine here.

View more Decorative Sunday posts here.

-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern

#Decorative Sunday #Artist & Alphabet #Artist & Alphabet: Twentieth Century Calligraphy & Letter Art in America #David R. Godine #Godine #American Institute of Graphic Arts #Society of Scribes #Stinehour Press #Jerry Kelly #Alice Koeth #Donald Jackson #calligraphy #letter arts #decorative art #decorative arts #decorative plates #olivia

204 notes · View notes