Hands-On History of Type: Crystal Goblet vs Dada 2021
This class will take place on:
- Tues, July 6th, 3:00–5:00pm ET
If Bodoni & Didot are “modern” everything that came after must be “postmodern.” This series of workshops, Zoomed from Purgatory Pie Press, will investigate the last two centuries of innovative letterpress, type design and type making – pantograph/router wood type, increasingly automated metal casting. The rise of postering, advertising and their evolving styles/rules. Type setting and word spacing styles. Demonstrations, discussions, resources.
In this session of Hands-on History of Type, Dikko Faust will focus on the fight (but not to the death) between narrow definitions and regulations concerning “readability” vs multiple avant-gardes European, Euro- and Afro-American, posing different ways of reading.
Required Materials
- Unidentified type in students’ collections, if any.
- If you have examples to share, please bring them.
In-print suggested book list:
- Mac McGrew – American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, Oak Knoll
- Maurice Annenberg, etc. – Type Foundries of America and their Catalogs, Oak Knoll
- Rob Roy Kelly – American Wood Type 1828-1900 Liber Apertus Press
- Esther K Smith – Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, &c. Rizzoli
About the Instructor
Dikko Faust founded Purgatory Pie Press when he was doing grad work with Walter Hamady at University of Wisconsin in 1977. He taught Letterpress and Typography at the Center for Book Arts, as well as School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union, Princeton, Rutgers, and workshops throughout the US, Canada, England and Germany. In these workshops, he also offers his services as Type Detective, identifying UTF’s (unidentified typefaces). For recreational reading, he prefers old type catalogs. He did extensive research for Esther K Smith’s Rizzoli reprint of William H Page’s Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders &c. Purgatory Pie Press has exhibited at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Harvard University and many other art centers throughout the world, including more than a dozen Center for Book Arts exhibitions– starting with CBA’s 5 year anniversary exhibition.
All images courtesy of the instructor and The International Dada Archive at University of Iowa.