IDA – Index of Names & Places

About Leo Wyatt

Posted on August 11, 2025 | by IDA

Leo Wyatt (1909–1981), engraver, lecturer, teacher.

Leo Wyatt business Card — A business card for Leo Wyatt.

Leo Wyatt led a life marked by hard knocks and hard work, lightened immeasurably by the devotion of his wife, support of his friends and, finally, America’s appreciation of his gifts. His career began in the relatively constricted centuries-old confines of commercial engravers, but he came into his own, inspired by Edward Johnston’s calligraphy revival and especially the work of John Howard Benson, Paul Standard and Reynolds Stone.

Removal to an orphanage at age 3 because his widowed mother could not afford to keep him suggests a Dickensian childhood, but Wyatt developed a good relationship with the headmaster in his new home and retained an affection for his somewhat feckless surviving parent. He was fourteen, when West End commercial engraver Dacier Baxter took him on as an apprentice for five years. Concurrently, he attended evening classes at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts on scholarship. Despite winning Goldsmiths’, Silversmiths’ and Jewelers’ Art Council competitions in 1927, 1928, and 1929, Wyatt was plagued by chronic doubt. He spent much of the pre-World War II years knocking about Great Britain, working (or not) in London, Leeds, Edinburgh and finally, Bristol.¹ In 1947, he and his family emigrated to South Africa, where he had “a very stimulating experience as the usual specialization that occurs in Europe does not exist [in South Africa]. That means that I have been tackling work usually carried out by half-a-dozen or so experts in their own spheres.”² Nevertheless, things were not easy. In 1952, he met “a kindred spirit,” Beatrice Warde, who was on a lecture tour. She “made it clear that she considered me capable of cutting first-class lettering and, from such a person, this was praise indeed.”³ The family returned to England in 1961, only to face a fresh round of health and financial problems. Beatrice Warde stepped in to recommend Wyatt for a position at Newcastle Polytechnic. Despite having no prior experience, he became a fine teacher and beloved mentor.

The steady income gave him more time to devote to the sort of work he wanted to do: bookplates and wood-engraved lettering. His work was discovered by American collectors and the public. (Rollo and Alice Silver gave him his first commission in the United States.⁴) His fans spread the word for him and he lectured widely across the United States, making the later years of his life extraordinarily fruitful and rewarding.

Letterhead by Leo Wyatt for Rollo and Alice Silver.

John Dreyfus eulogized Wyatt:

“He always sold himself short. He could perceive talents in others but seemed desperately to under-rate his own. His reputation will take care of itself. His superb craftsmanship, his high principles, will ensure him a permanent place in the history of his craft and a lasting affection in the hearts of those that knew him.” ⁵

Double fold seasonal greeting card from Betty and Leo Wyatt, 1980.

“First Lady of Typography” and Pride of Horace Mann

Posted on August 10, 2025 | by IDA

Beatrice Warde, 1900–1969, type historian, author, lecturer, publicity manager for Monotype Corporation, Great Britain.

“What I’m really good at is standing up in front of an audience with no preparation at all, then for 50 minutes refusing to let them even wriggle an ankle.”¹

Born in New York City, Beatrice Lamberton Becker, daughter of a journalist and a composer, found her calling at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, where she was introduced to calligraphy and became interested in letterforms. While at Barnard College, she met Frederic Warde, her future husband, and Bruce Rogers. Rogers helped her get a job as assistant to the librarian at the American Type Founders Company, Henry Lewis Bullen, a disciple of Theodore Low DeVinne. (“The reader does not want to see the printer but to hear the writer.”²). In 1925, she and Frederic moved to England, each to work with Stanley Morison. On the basis of essays written under the pseudonym Paul Beaujon, Monotype hired Beatrice as editor of its house journal and soon made her its dynamic and imaginative publicity manager. In this job that straddled both art and commerce, she continued to navigate the boy’s club of typography with charm and aplomb for the rest of her life. She had strong opinions, but was not inflexible. With a flair for metaphor and a sympathy, respect and affection for both the book trade and the advertising world, she demonstrated a true gift to galvanize the print industry around the nobility of its core mission: effective and aesthetic typography.

Most likely Beatrice Warde met Ismar David during one of her many lecture tours in the United States. Hortense Mendel David sent Warde a copy of the Genesis pages for Liber Librorum in 1956. As evidenced by Warde’s reply, the two women were on a first name basis. David and Warde certainly saw each other on the TDC’s trip to London and Paris in 1966.

Letter from Beatrice Warde to Hortense Mendel David, 1956.Ismar David papers, Box 4, folder 10, Ismar David papers, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.

A letter from Beatrice Warde to Ismar and Dorothy David, 1968. Ismar David papers, Box 7, folder 15, Ismar David papers, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.

Warde never abandoned the skills she learned as a teenager at Horace Mann, where “[t]hey gave me a lettering pen and taught me the great secret of calligraphy and good handwriting, the italic hand…”³ She customarily used her italic hand in a personal Christmas newsletter, which she had printed with space to address each recipient individually on what she called her “Eve of All Friends.”

A seasonal greeting from Beatrice Warde, 1966, addressed to Ismar David. Ismar David papers, Box 7, folder 15, Ismar David papers, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.

In 1967, after sending Warde his own greeting card with some photos he had taken of her with Ismar and Dorothy David, Burt Carnes made a copy of her reply and sent it on to the Davids.

Note from A. Burton Carnes to Ismar and Dorothy David, 1968.

A seasonal greeting from Beatrice Warde, 1967, addressed to A. Burton Carnes. Ismar David papers, Box 7, folder 15, Ismar David papers, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.

About Joyce Schmidt

Posted on July 29, 2025 | by IDA

Joyce Schmidt, 1942–1991, artist and papermaker, founder of Uncle Bob’s Paper Mill.

Mitnan keepsake — Botanical illustration of mitnan twig by Esther Huber on mitnan paper in black folder. Silkscreen by Jerusalem Print Workshop, 1983.

Los Angeles born artist Joyce Schmidt emigrated to Israel with her family in 1969 and settled in Be’er Sheva. On sabbatical with her husband in 1977, she studied paper making at the Long Island studio of Douglas Morse Howell. Howell grew his own flax behind his house in Oyster Bay and supplied paper to many of the prominent artists of the time.¹ Through Howell, Schmidt met Robert Leslie, whose long-time dream to bring papermaking to Israel dovetailed perfectly with her own and as the story goes, he wrote her a check immediately. Back in Be’er Sheva in 1978, Schmidt began to set up shop on the spare, unpartitioned second floor of an old Turkish railway station, already home of the city’s Visual Arts Center. With essential assistance from a local kibbutz and even Tony Eichenberg, who found a Hollander beater for the nascent operation, Schmidt founded the Uncle Bob Leslie Paper Mill in early 1979. Schmidt inaugurated a yearly international conference and gave workshops at the mill.² She pioneered, and with her colleague Nellie Stavisky wrote about, the use of thymelaea hirsuta (mitnan, a plant Bedouins had used for making ropes) as a fiber for making paper and is remembered for bringing the art and craft of paper making to Israel. Her impact continued to be felt long after her premature death, through her own work and that of her students.

In 1983, Ismar David junketed with The Typophiles to Israel, where Uncle Bob’s Paper Mill was one the many stops on their itinerary. In the spring of 1985, Joyce Schmidt visited him in New York, if a meeting at a dentist’s office can qualify as the venue for a visit for anyone other than the dentist. David designed a watermark for the mill.

Letter from Joyce Schmidt to Ismar David, May 22, 1985.
Also shown: Joyce Schmidt and Nellie Staviskly’s paper about the use of Thymelaea Hirsuta, published in 1983.

ב״ה

22 May 1985

Dear Izmar:

Thank you so much for meeting me at your dentists this morning. I’m looking forward to our next meeting whenever and wherever that will be ב״ה it probably wont be at the dentists!

I wanted you to have the few enclosures—with our “compliments.”

The label I enclosed because after I got back Nellie said “what about a letter head?” Well, we’ve never had one & I guess we could continue to get along without one but if we do have one for a standard mailing sheet about 8 x 12 9 x11 I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have design it, Izmar. So I presumptuously attach the label below for the information it contains rather than as an example of a suggested design—for your consideration.

Respectfully & with regards to Dorothy
JOYCE SCHMIDT

Die gute Kunstgewerbestube

Posted on July 15, 2025 | by IDA

Rosa Graetzer Freudenthal, 1870–1951, proprietor of the Kunstgewerbestube Freudenthal, Breslau.

Rosa Freudenthal and family members — Rosa Freudenthal (seated right) with her sister Elise (seated left), Elise’s husband Ismar Freund and children Peter and Paul (on his father’s shoulder). The identities of the two other women are unknown. Courtesy of Rivka Sklan and Sara Frenkel, Jerusalem, Family archive_1. Photo: © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Well into middle age—she was about 50—Rosa Freudenthal, widow of physician Samuel Freudenthal and mother of two grown sons, launched an art gallery from her home. The grisly post-war economic circumstances suggest that she needed the money.¹ Her evident enthusiastic engagement and ingenuity, however, go far above and beyond any purely financial necessity.

At first, the undertaking featured works by Freudenthal’s late brother Alfred Graetzer, an artist (and friend of Hermann Struck), who had just begun to achieve success when he died of tuberculosis in 1911. She placed classified ads in community newspapers in December of 1920 announcing a two-week Hanukkah exhibition that also showed contemporary Jewish graphics and crafts. Four months later, works by metalsmiths Leo Horovitz (Frankfurt), Georg Mendelssohn (Hellerau), Friedrich Alder (Hamburg) and Jaroslav Vonka, professor at the Arts and Crafts School in Breslau, headlined her new show, with textiles by Rosa Weyl (Breslau) and Hilde Zadikov (Munich) and an exceedingly charming paper sukkah by Erna Selten (Breslau) in supporting roles. Freudenthal astutely juxtaposed modern household objects available at affordable prices with historical treasures, many briefly on loan from the collection of Sally Kirschstein (Berlin-Nikolassee), even then unofficially considered the Jewish Museum of Berlin.²

In newspaper advertisements for her December exhibition later in 1921, Freudenthal gave her enterprise a new name (and perhaps coined a new word): Kunstgewerbestube Freudenthal, parlor or salon of applied arts. The name was appropriate. She had transformed her own “small, tastefully appointed living room, the walls of which were graced with prints by [Siegfried] Laboschin, into an elegant museum. [It is] a splendid tableau and, in its entirety as in every detail, a testament to the vibrant, warm and devout spirit that brings it all to life.”³ But she did not restrict herself to exhibitions in her apartment in Breslau. As early as 1923, she displayed her wares in Frankfurt, Berlin, Karlsruhe and other cities. In 1925, she presented at the 14th Zionist Convention, where her ceremonial objects and crafts received a positive response: “At first glance, they looked like work from the Bezalel School, but then astoundingly, the observer discovered they were good Jewish crafts from Germany, and what’s more, from Breslau.”⁴

Special acclaim went to the quality of her artful, educational and entertaining toys which included dreidels, a Hebrew language-based lotto game that inspired many imitators, a mini-printshop, holiday pennants and Wunschbögen, a kind of greeting card for children to write their good wishes for the new year to parents and grandparents.

“If we want the adult to love and value their Jewish heritage, then we should have the child play Jewish games. The Kunstgewerbestube Freudenthal shows us how that can happen. This series of work engenders so much joy as soon as you see it, that you are tempted to play with your kids for many hours.”⁵

Freudenthal aimed at more than the German market and in 1932, brought out a card game called “The Proverbs of Solomon” in Hebrew, German and English. She pressed on in Germany until 1934, when she joined her son Erich and his family in Haifa. (Her son Walter, a physician like his father, had gone to London the year before.) Although she made some attempts to continue in business in her new surroundings, the Kunstgewerbestube Freudenthal effectively came to an end.⁶

Rosa Freudenthal was the sister of Ismar David’s aunt Elise, wife of his mother’s brother, Ismar Freund. Rosa Freudenthal’s nephew Heinz, son of her late husband’s brother Siegfried, owned Graphos Stationery in Jerusalem. In 1930, Ismar David made the drawing for one of the Kunstgewerbestube’s Wunschbögen. A reviewer described it like this: “The child is familiar, from school and from temple, with the words at the top of the card: תקעו בחדש שופר. A dignified old man blows the shofar. He is not dressed in a tuxedo and top hat, as we so often see nowadays, but instead he wears his kittel, reminding us to look deep within ourselves.”⁷

Two copies of this Wunschbogen at the Israel Museum shows David thanking his aunt’s sister for her valuable help, but nonetheless disregarding the criticism she has written on the proof.

Many thanks to curator Alona Farber and her excellent exhibition, More Than Child’s Play, Israel Museum, Jerusalem 2024, for uncovering the existence of this early work by Ismar David and his connection to the Kunstgewerbestube Freudenthal.

Posted in F

Actor and Printer

Posted on August 16, 2024 | by IDA

James Hendrickson, born c. 1898, actor-manager, typographer, printer.

James Hendrickson as Macbeth. Gold and Black, Birmingham-Southern College, February 28, 1930.

“When I couldn’t decide which road to take, I decided to travel both,”¹ James Hendrickson told a reporter. And, a gratuitously snarky report in the New York Times notwithstanding,² he did just that. Hendrickson (with his old-school repertory company, The Shakespeare Players) did “a world of good in keeping alive throughout the country the traditions of the legitimate stage through their interpretation of the works of the master dramatist.”³ And, when not on the road (from October to May), Hendrickson worked for and alongside some of the finest printers in America.

Hendrickson began printing as a kid. He bought his first equipment for $5 and set it up in his mother’s kitchen, making flyers for local shops. As the presses got bigger, the size of the kitchen unfortunately remained the same. “My bedroom, right over the kitchen, was my composing room. I would rush down the stairs with a chase full of type to the press room, where my mother was trying to bake pies. I had to dash upstairs again to make corrections. Back and forth, back and forth. Figure the excitement when I printed a 100-page cookbook.”⁴ Hendrickson was among the young printers who “apprenticed”⁵ at the prestigious press of William Edwin Rudge. He went on to succeed Frederick Warde at Crosby Gaige’s Watch Hill Press and was, for a few years, in charge of production at Alfred A. Knopf.⁶ In 1943, Hendrickson performed an invaluable service to printing history with his Paragraphs on Printing. Elicited from conversations with Bruce Rogers, as the subtitle explains, it is the only lengthy compilation of the design philosophy of a designer famously reticent to give it. When Joseph Blumenthal established a printing workshop for the AIGA in 1948, the shop director was Hendrickson.⁷

But the stage was irresistible and Hendrickson ambitious. No less than film star William Powell had encouraged him to be an actor, back when both were members of a Shakespeare Club in Kansas.⁸ This led to acting school after the First World War, then a decade as a journeyman performer, including two years traveling with Fritz Lieber and his troupe. In 1927, Hendrickson founded his own touring company with his wife, Claire Bruce, herself a veteran of a company lead by Robert B. Mantell. She played Ophelia to Hendrickson’s Hamlet and Lady Macbeth to his Scottish thane as they barnstormed colleges and high school auditoriums by bus, enduring all manner of catastrophe due to weather and road conditions.⁹ After the couple disbanded the Players in 1942, they ran a printing and design service out of their hotel apartment.¹⁰

Claire Bruce died of a heart attack in April of 1959. A year later, Hendrickson printed an unusual tribute volume. It contains a reproduction of a spirit, or automatic, drawing. In this case, it is a colored-pencil sketch, depicting Sister Mary Cecilia holding little James Francis Weiss, “by Claire Bruce Hendrickson through the mediumship of Lillian Dee Johnson” in a totally darkened séance room on August 3, 1959. Ismar David did the lettering for the binding. When the book was finished in the spring of 1961, Hendrickson sent David a copy. In his note, Hendrickson refers to David’s most recent New Year’s card, which indirectly acknowledged the recent death of Hortense Mendel.

April 19, 1961

Dear Ismar

I am sending you one of the books under separate cover. Your contribution is beautiful and I thank you!

The date on the title page is really incorrect as the book is just now out of the bindery and you are among the first to see it.

I hope you may be able to give the story of Little Jimmy a measure of credence—your New Years card gives me reason for so hoping—and if so the implications of this episode are tremendous ones.

Faithfully,

James Hendrickson

Letter from James Hendrickson to Ismar David, 1961. Ismar David papers, Box 1, folder 2, Ismar David papers, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.

Posted in H

Sometimes Nobody Wins

Posted on August 11, 2024 | by IDA

Levant Brewery, incorporated November 21, 1941 with a capitalization of £P5000, divided into 5,000 shares of £P1 each,¹ subsidiary of Palestine Brewery Ltd.

Local beer production in Mandatory Palestine only began to gain traction when it received government support in the form of tax reduction in the mid-1930s, probably driven by the demand for beer from an increased British military presence.² With the financial backing of French industrialists, led by banker and trained brewer René Gaston-Drefus, The Palestine Brewery opened in 1934 on the grounds of a Rishon LeZion winery³ and made rapid headway, spawning 2 companies: Cabeer Breweries Ltd. in 1937 and Levant Brewery Ltd. in 1942.

Levant took a page from its parent company and initiated competition for the label of its first product.⁴ The competition was open to anyone and entries had to be submitted by February 1, 1942. Artist Abel Pan headed the jury, which included S. Bensimon and Benjamin Lewensohn. First prize winner would be awarded £P15; second, £P10; and third, £P5. It was up to the contestants to invent a name for the new beer, specially made with extracts of American malt and hops “containing vital vitamins.”⁵ The strategy of having entrants suggest branding was intended to help the company determine the preferences of consumers.⁶ The judges reserved the right to “cancel the competition if the standard of the entries [was] not considered satisfactory.”⁷ According to an announcement the following month, no first prize was awarded. Ze’ev Raban and Ismar David won second prize, with the prize money to be divided equally between them. Third prize went to Meir Gur-Arie, Hami [spelling uncertain] Klein and E. Coleman, a private in the M.E. Forces, who likewise split their prize money.”⁸ If only Levant had seen fit to share the brand names each entrant devised.

Posted in L

From the Land of the Bible

Posted on August 8, 2024 | by IDA

American Fund for Israel Institutions, founded in 1941 as the American Fund for Palestinian Institutions, now the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, dedicated to the support of cultural institutions in Israel.

Son of a vice president of Sears & Roebuck, Harvard-educated, Navy veteran Edward A. Norton made several trips to Palestine in the early 1930s and became interested in various cultural and educational institutions there. In 1941, he founded the American Fund for Israel (then Palestine) Institutions to consolidate the many small fundraising campaigns working on behalf of these groups. (By 1949, the Fund had 99 beneficiaries.)¹ The American Fund for Israel became a driving force not only for the support of the Israel Philharmonic, Inbal Ballet, Habimah Theatre and Tel Aviv Museum, to name a few, but also for cultural exchange between the United States and Israel.

One such endeavor was a traveling exhibition, “From the Land of the Bible,” which opened at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 14, 1953, before traveling to other cities in the United States and then on to The Hague and London. At the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC (January 10-27, 1954), it set a record for attendance at the time: over 30,000 visitors in 17 days.²

Two years of planning went into the exhibition, praised for “its absorbing interest, wide range, skillful presentation, and the manner in which it brings to life and makes plausible, by suggestive symbols and individual objects, the actuality of that distant past which we are prone to regard as stories in a Great Book.”³ More than twenty shipments by air and sea⁴ carried over 1,500 objects⁵ to New York from institutions and private collections in Israel, Turkey, England, Cyprus, Belgium, France, Canada and the United States. Arranged chronologically in nine showrooms, the exhibition included Neolithic artifacts, bronze weapons, Byzantine lamps, glassware, coins, mosaics and a recently discovered seven-ton headless statue of a Roman emperor. Examples from the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the oldest known Biblical scroll, the Book of Isaiah,⁶ were seen for the first time in the United States. Dr. S. Yeivin, director of the Department of Antiquities of the Israeli government’s Ministry of Education and Culture: “We of Israel wish to show our rich heritage—to demonstrate to America that the aid and support we have received from your country has been well used. These relics of the ages prove that our strength, distilled from the cultural glories of the past, is great and lasting.”⁷

Ismar David designed four panels for the exhibition. Three were typeset: an introductory title and acknowledgements at the start of the exhibition and the Ten Commandments in English for the Israelite or Iron Age room. The fourth panel was the Ten Commandments, hand-lettered in Hebrew, a rare example of large pen-written lettering by David.

Entry of the traveling exhibition, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

The Ten Commandments, as featured in the traveling exhibition, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

Detail of a photo of the traveling exhibition, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

A traveling exhibition of archaeological artifacts, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

A traveling exhibition of archaeological artifacts, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

A traveling exhibition of archaeological artifacts, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

A traveling exhibition of archaeological artifacts, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

A traveling exhibition of archaeological artifacts, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

A traveling exhibition of archaeological artifacts, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

A traveling exhibition of archaeological artifacts, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions, 1954.

From the Land of the Bible, presented by the American Fund for Israel Institutions. Photos of the exhibition in the Smithsonian Institution, 1954.Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 312, Box 35, Folder 8.

Posted in A

Jerusalem Siege Stamps

Posted on May 10, 2024 | by IDA

Prepared But Never Issued

by Moshe Spitzer
from the Palestine Post, March 20, 1949

The siege of Jerusalem almost presented philatelists with a set of unique postal stamps issued by the authorities of the city isolated from the rest of the country. Preparations for the printing of the stamps—the designs for which are published here for the first time—were practically complete when the siege was lifted and Israel postal stamps were sent to Jerusalem.

A set of revenue stamps, however, was actually printed and in use during the siege. Their production was more urgent than that of postal stamps, for while postal services with the rest of the country were interrupted during the siege and almost non-existent in Jerusalem itself, business continued as usual, though on a reduced scale, and the lack of revenue stamps would have meant a serious loss of income to the Ozar Ha’am or People’s Treasury, as the provisional financial authority was called.

On May 6, 1948 , only nine days before the State of Israel was to come into existence with the end of the Mandate, the publishing department of the Jewish Agency commissioned this writer to provide new revenue stamps with greatest dispatch. Within 24 hours the designs by the graphic artist Mr. I. David, who also designed the postal stamps, were ready for blockmaking, and after another three days and nights’ work, the Jerusalem revenue stamps were ready for issue to the public.

Rush Job

This rush job was done under extremely difficult conditions. The fight for Jerusalem was then at its height; Katamon had been occupied by Jewish forces only a few days earlier. Jerusalem’s manpower was fully mobilized, and all facilities for work extremely restricted. No really suitable coloured inks for the printing of stamps were available, and the perforation had to be done by hand. In spite of all these difficulties, Jerusalem’s revenue stamps were ready for issue in time, and turned out satisfactorily from both the technical and aesthetical point of view, owing to the untiring efforts both of the managements and the workers of the zincographer Mr. M. Pikowsky and the Hashiloah printing press, which cooperated in the job.

Postage Stamps

Encouraged by the success of the revenue stamps, the Jewish Agency ordered a set of Jerusalem postage stamps. By this time working conditions had become quite hopeless. It was almost impossible to get workers released from military service even for a few nights. There was no electric current most of the time, and kerosene was worth almost its weight in gold. A special cable had to be laid from a private electric plant to the zincography workshops to enable it to continue the work. Even so, much of the work of the artist in connection with the blockmaking had to be done by the light of a kitchen lamp.

Siege Lifted

The issue of the postal stamps was scheduled for Independence—May 15. But fate intervened, the battle of Jerusalem entered its climax, civilian work in the beleaguered city almost ceased with available men called for defence duties—and together with other affairs the postage stamps were shelved for the time being. When the battle was over and the new road to the coast opened, ending Jerusalem’s isolation from the rest of the country, it was ruled that the stamps issued by them in the meantime should also be used in Jerusalem. So the “Jerusalem Siege Stamps” were never printed, to the disappointment of those who had worked so hard to produce them and, it can be presumed, to the regret of philatelists the world over.

Since then, the battle of the road has been commemorated with a special Jerusalem stamp in two colours issued on the occasion of the first meeting of the Assembly in Jerusalem on February 16.

Posted in S

The Last Silesian Indigo Printer

Posted on February 22, 2024 | by IDA

Gerhard Stein, 1893–1972, graphic and textile artist, illustrator, caricaturist, animator, teacher.

Gerhard Stein, working on printing blocks. From the magazine, Schlesien, November/December 1940. Śląska Biblioteka Cyfrowa

After studying at the art academies in Breslau and Dresden and his discharge from service at the end of World War I, Gerhard Stein made a multifaceted career as a commercial artist in Breslau. His work appeared regularly in Kunst und Volk, the magazine of the Breslau Folk Theater, and Schlesische Theater- u. Musik-Woche, among other publications. In April 1928, Gebrauchsgraphik, a magazine for commercial art, featured an 11-page spread of his caricatures, illustrations and commercial posters. The glowing description of the contrast between Stein’s ebullient, satirical outlook which exposed the “human weakness of the greats of the day,” and the weightier, bombastic style of earlier (but soon-to-come-back) tastes¹ seems more than a little ironic. At any rate, whether Stein lost his teaching position at the Städtische Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule Breslau, because the Nazi authorities didn’t appreciate his sense of humor² or, as he said, his non-Aryan-sounding name, he had to find a new means of living.³ He returned to his home town, where he rescued his uncle’s workshop from compulsory auction and took over a business that had been in his family’s hands since 1763.⁴

Gerhard Stein had grown up in Steinau an der Oder, surrounded by blaudruck, the process of resist printing on textiles that are subsequently dyed with indigo. As a child, he had dreamed of what could be done with blaudruck patterns,⁵ but the family regarded him as too “art-besotted”⁶ for their very traditional enterprise, so he was sent to art school. In 1938, though, he came back to a business devastated by inflation and debt. But with a trove of traditional patterns, his own new designs and support from state and federal authorities, he managed to revive the operation. Despite the severity of wartime conditions, the business did well and Stein even became a nationally celebrated craftsman. Success was short-lived. In early 1945, Stein and his family fled the advancing Russian army and made their way to West Berlin.

With what must have been enormous resilience and dedication, Stein started over yet again. He knew of an abandoned fabric printing facility in East Germany and, while his family permanently settled in Berlin, he set about rebuilding his business in Pulsnitz. Once again, he restored a cultural treasure while, once again, painstakingly documenting his craft. During the early 1950s, Stein was able to visit Berlin often, his daughter occasionally worked with him, and he considered moving to the west. But although, or because of, his status as a Vorzeige-Handwerker (exemplary craftsman), he was watched. In 1961, with the erection of the Wall, any hope of resettling in Berlin, as well as visits to his family, ended.⁷ As late as December 24, 1971, the 78 year-old craftsman was shown, promoting his wares, the last of his kind.⁸

Gerhard Stein had been teaching at the municipal arts & crafts school in Breslau for only a year or so, when he instructed Ismar David in drawing for graphics and graded the 17-year-old’s classwork as “rather good,” with a “good” for effort.

Posted in S

Fine Paper Importers

Posted on February 18, 2024 | by IDA

Andrews/Nelson/Whitehead, importers and distributors of fine paper, based in New York.

Monumental sample book, Specimens, issued by Stevens-Nelson , 1953. Spine lettering by Freeman Craw.

Andrews/Nelson/Whitehead was the direct descendent of the Japan Paper Company, an enthusiastic champion of handmade paper and the book arts. Founded in 1901 in Manhattan by Richard Tracy Stevens to import tissue paper from Japan for use in teabags and Elizabeth Arden cosmetics, the company expanded to import handmade, mold-made and other high-quality papers from fifteen European and Asian countries. The JPC, later renamed Stevens-Nelson, commissioned some of the best designers and printers of the time to produce much-admired and still-treasured broadsides and sample books to promote its paper. The pinnacle of these endeavors came in 1953. Specimens: A Stevens-Nelson Paper Catalogue, with an edition of 5000 and bound 109 sample sheets produced by more than 150 designers and printers, “has never been equaled”¹

In 1957 Stevens-Nelson merged with Whitehead and Alliger to become Nelson-Whitehead. In 1962, the company merged yet again to become Andrews/Nelson/Whitehead. Under Vera Freeman, vice-president of the fine paper group at A/N/W, the company offered and ever-increasing array of printmaking papers. Freeman was instrumental in the development of new products, mold-made papers in rolls and in colors as well as archival printing papers.

Ismar David designed a greeting card for Andrews/Nelson/Whitehead in 1983. He owned a copy of the 1953 Specimens.

Posted in A

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