Thesis Open Access
Schriftkünstler: A historiographic examination of the relationship between handcraft and art regarding the design and making of printers' type in Germany between 1871 and 1914
Reynolds, Daniel John Andrew
DCAT Export
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:adms="http://www.w3.org/ns/adms#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:dctype="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/" xmlns:dcat="http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#" xmlns:duv="http://www.w3.org/ns/duv#" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" xmlns:frapo="http://purl.org/cerif/frapo/" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#" xmlns:gsp="http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#" xmlns:locn="http://www.w3.org/ns/locn#" xmlns:org="http://www.w3.org/ns/org#" xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#" xmlns:prov="http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#" xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns:schema="http://schema.org/" xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#" xmlns:vcard="http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#" xmlns:wdrs="http://www.w3.org/2007/05/powder-s#">
<rdf:Description rdf:about="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6634966">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Dataset"/>
<dct:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text"/>
<dct:identifier rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6634966</dct:identifier>
<foaf:page rdf:resource="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6634966"/>
<dct:creator>
<rdf:Description>
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Agent"/>
<foaf:name>Reynolds, Daniel John Andrew</foaf:name>
<foaf:givenName>Daniel John Andrew</foaf:givenName>
<foaf:familyName>Reynolds</foaf:familyName>
<org:memberOf>
<foaf:Organization>
<foaf:name>Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig</foaf:name>
</foaf:Organization>
</org:memberOf>
</rdf:Description>
</dct:creator>
<dct:title>Schriftkünstler: A historiographic examination of the relationship between handcraft and art regarding the design and making of printers' type in Germany between 1871 and 1914</dct:title>
<dct:publisher>
<foaf:Agent>
<foaf:name>Zenodo</foaf:name>
</foaf:Agent>
</dct:publisher>
<dct:issued rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#gYear">2020</dct:issued>
<dcat:keyword>typefoundry</dcat:keyword>
<dcat:keyword>typography</dcat:keyword>
<dcat:keyword>design history</dcat:keyword>
<dct:issued rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date">2020-03-10</dct:issued>
<dct:language rdf:resource="http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/language/ENG"/>
<owl:sameAs rdf:resource="https://zenodo.org/record/6634966"/>
<adms:identifier>
<adms:Identifier>
<skos:notation rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI">https://zenodo.org/record/6634966</skos:notation>
<adms:schemeAgency>url</adms:schemeAgency>
</adms:Identifier>
</adms:identifier>
<dct:isVersionOf rdf:resource="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6634965"/>
<owl:versionInfo>1,0</owl:versionInfo>
<dct:description><p>The visual appearances for most of the letterpress-printing typefaces published in&nbsp;Germany during the twentieth century are attributed to specific designers. Typefoundries,&nbsp;or the firms who manufactured those products, presented them as collaborations&nbsp;between individual artists and themselves as corporate entities. Only on rare&nbsp;occasions were the internal workers within the firms who produced the final forms of&nbsp;the products ever mentioned by name in publications about them, unlike the typefaces&rsquo;&nbsp;designers; however, from the earliest surviving drawings prepared by those&nbsp;typefaces&rsquo; designers, as well as from their written accounts about the type-design and&nbsp;type-making processes, it is clear that the work they submitted to the foundries could&nbsp;not have been implemented exactly as-is. In this research, I have analysed German&nbsp;typefounding in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the surviving&nbsp;process and production drawings made for products, as well as through accounts&nbsp;written by participants involved in these steps. The typefaces for which accounts have&nbsp;survived only represent a small fraction of those mentioned in the history that&nbsp;follows. To form that narrative, I have used a synecdochic approach, relying on these&nbsp;parts to describe the industry as a whole.</p> <p>A typefoundry&rsquo;s products did not necessarily all originate in-house; but inside of&nbsp;the firms who did collaborate with external designers, the initiative to do so must have&nbsp;come from the respective company owners and directors, who would have believed&nbsp;that products based on the work of external contributors could prove financially&nbsp;successful, enabling their businesses to grow, and strengthening their &ldquo;corporate&nbsp;identities&rdquo; or reputations. The various foundry owners and directors who did this may&nbsp;have been influenced by one another, but by 1900, it was not uncommon in German&nbsp;industrial manufacturing for businesses to collaborate with external artists and&nbsp;designers in this manner. Not all of the individuals who foundries collaborated with&nbsp;were &ldquo;artists and designers;&rdquo; for example, some were academics with experience&nbsp;reading and writing other scripts. Nevertheless, all collaborators must have been able&nbsp;to offer foundries knowledge that they did not already have institutionally, be that&nbsp;linguistic or stylistic. Many collaborating designers would not have been aware of the&nbsp;exact details regarding typeface manufacturing; they were not &ldquo;insiders&rdquo; in the&nbsp;process, and could only have been responsible for part of a product&rsquo;s final design. In&nbsp;some cases, I believe it was more likely that the firms&rsquo; punchcutter employees were the&nbsp;ones responsible for bringing the products to their final forms, instead of the external&nbsp;designers or foundry owners, directors, and other staff members. Yet at roughly the&nbsp;same time that the foundries were beginning to ascribe product authorship to specific&nbsp;individuals, these craftsmen &ndash; who as a professional group had been physically&nbsp;responsible for sculpting each typographic character to appear in print for centuries&nbsp;&ndash; were becoming redundant. New type-making machinery introduced from the 1870s&nbsp;onward helped to make them obsolete. Punchcutters were not part of typefoundries&rsquo;&nbsp;twentieth-century brand identities, even though they were integral employees within&nbsp;the organisations.</p> <p>By collaborating with external designers for the design of new printing types,&nbsp;rather than continuing to entrust these entirely to their internal type-making staff,&nbsp;German typefoundries supported the development of a new professional activity&nbsp;during the early years of the graphic design profession: typeface design. The work that&nbsp;external designers performed unfolded in an environment where it had already&nbsp;become commonplace for the manufacturers of various goods to entrust the appearance of their products to &ldquo;designers,&rdquo; a new professional denomination primarily&nbsp;made up of individuals trained in art academies or arts and crafts schools (Kunstgewerbeschulen).&nbsp;Many type designers also came from that milieu. Some of the individuals&nbsp;who designed printing types during the late nineteenth and early twentieth&nbsp;centuries also designed books and magazines, as well as tables and chairs, tea services&nbsp;and wine glasses &ndash; even whole buildings. During that time, most of the type-making&nbsp;workers inside of the foundries were anonymous to customers; they are also mostly&nbsp;anonymous to historians who investigated them later, including myself. Their&nbsp;anonymity was a result of the work they performed not being considered &ldquo;worth&nbsp;mentioning;&rdquo; it was just handwork, not art or design. Despite the individual craftsmen&nbsp;working inside typefoundries not being seen at the time as &ldquo;authors&rdquo; or &ldquo;coauthors&rdquo; of&nbsp;the final products, their potential contributions should be added into future explanations&nbsp;of typefaces&rsquo; origins. I hope that my research will cause other writers to use a&nbsp;more nuanced phraseology when it comes to the authorship of industrial-era foundry&nbsp;types&rsquo; designs. This kind of more-detailed specification may also be applicable to&nbsp;other industrial goods produced in Germany during its Imperial period, as well as to&nbsp;many of the typefaces produced in Germany and in other countries after 1914.</p> <p>I gathered the new information presented below, both so that it could be published&nbsp;for the first time, as well as to prevent its being forgotten; it should remain visible for&nbsp;future generations of designers and design historians to access. My findings may help&nbsp;enrich the design history discipline&rsquo;s understanding of the type-designing and&nbsp;type-making practices in operation within industrial typefounding in imperial&nbsp;Germany, explaining why German typefoundries during the late nineteenth and early&nbsp;twentieth centuries began to collaborate with external artists and designers, instead of&nbsp;continuing to develop new products entirely in-house.</p></dct:description>
<dct:accessRights rdf:resource="http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/access-right/PUBLIC"/>
<dct:accessRights>
<dct:RightsStatement rdf:about="info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess">
<rdfs:label>Open Access</rdfs:label>
</dct:RightsStatement>
</dct:accessRights>
<dcat:distribution>
<dcat:Distribution>
<dct:license rdf:resource="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode"/>
<dcat:accessURL rdf:resource="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6634966"/>
</dcat:Distribution>
</dcat:distribution>
<dcat:distribution>
<dcat:Distribution>
<dcat:accessURL rdf:resource="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6634966"/>
<dcat:byteSize>239433630</dcat:byteSize>
<dcat:downloadURL rdf:resource="https://zenodo.org/record/6634966/files/Reynolds Dissertation Druck 2020.pdf"/>
<dcat:mediaType>application/pdf</dcat:mediaType>
</dcat:Distribution>
</dcat:distribution>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
292
348
views
downloads
| All versions | This version | |
|---|---|---|
| Views | 292 | 292 |
| Downloads | 348 | 348 |
| Data volume | 83.3 GB | 83.3 GB |
| Unique views | 215 | 215 |
| Unique downloads | 307 | 307 |
Indexed in
- Publication date:
- March 10, 2020
- DOI:
-
- Keyword(s):
- typefoundry typography design history
- License (for files):
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International