Category: Berthold
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Footnotes C: Retracing the origins of Akzidenz-Grotesk
Above. part of a spread from Footnotes C. Footnotes is a typographic journal published in Geneva. Its most recent issue includes my article “The godfather: retracing the origins of Akzidenz-Grotesk.” In the photograph above, you can see an 1896 specimen of Schattierte Grotesk typeface, which the Bauer & Co. type foundry at Stuttgart published the…
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Research update: Distribution of sans serifs in German-speaking foundries during the nineteenth century
Four sizes of a Grotesque are reproduced above from the Berlin-based Wilhelm Gronau typefoundry’s 1891 catalogue. The foundry began carrying this typeface at the end of the 1850s, while the business was named after Eduard Haenel. An identical product – potentially even the source of these letters’ matrices – was sold by the Dresler foundry in Frankfurt,…
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Berlin locations of the old Ferd. Theinhardt foundry
When Theinhardt purchased this house at Linienstraße 144 in 1860, he added a new building behind it. Then his typefoundry operated here for almost thirty years. After he sold the business off, his successors never changed the foundry’s name. It always retained the “Ferd. Theinhardt” name. In 1849, Ferdinand Theinhardt (1820–1906) became an independent punchcutter and…
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German, Swiss, and Austrian typefaces named Royal or Akzidenz
This is another post related to the history of Akzidenz-Grotesk. Contrary to Günther Gerhard Lange’s statement in a 2003 interview with Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin in Typografische Monatsblätter, the Royal-Grotesk typeface was not a product Berlin’s H. Berthold AG acquired in 1908 when they purchased the Ferd. Theinhardt typefoundry. Instead, Royal-Grotesk had already been created at Berthold…
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Distribution of sans serif typefaces across German-speaking foundries in the 19th century
Above, a spread from an H. Berthold AG type specimen catalogue. The photograph is © Boris Chauvet. This spread is likely from Berthold’s c.1900 export catalogue, or one of the additions to it produced in c.1903 or c.1907. See note [1] below. Hey Internet, this is my website. Some of you have told me that you missed…
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The Emil Gursch typefoundry’s 1901–1918 building
The image above is a rendering of the Emil Gursch typefoundry’s factory building at Gneisenaustraße 27 in Berlin, as it would have appeared in 1917. Reproduced from Das Haus Berthold, p. 77. This article is the second in a series of posts looking at the remains of various Berlin typefoundry factory buildings. Although I mention…
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The 1869–1978 headquarters of Berthold today
The illustration above shows appearance of the H. Berthold AG factory in Berlin in 1909. Parts of that factory still stand today in the Mehringhof, a series of structures located behind the street-facing buildings at the intersection of Mehringdamm and Gneisenaustraße. The part of Berlin where this factory was located has been known as Kreuzberg since…
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How they made fonts in 1986
This video isn’t exactly new, but Karsten recommended it to me today, and I loved every second. It documents type design at Berthold, particularly the development of a Bodoni for photo-typesetting. Quite interesting to see is Günter Gerhard Lange and his large (all-female?) letter-drawing office. The dated graphics and music are an added plus. The…
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