Wronker, Lili Cassel, 1924–2019, calligrapher and illustrator.
Born in Berlin, schooled partly in England, Lili Cassel emigrated as a teenager to the United States with her sister and parents. She was a freelance calligrapher and illustrator. Her husband, Erich Wronker worked as a printer at the United Nations. They had two printing presses in their home and collaborated on various printing projects. Printers Clarke & Way gave the Wronkers the metal sorts of David Hebrew that had been cast for Ismar David’s contribution to Liber Librorum, 1955.
In 1949, Lili Wronker, then something of a protégé of Robert Leslie, traveled to Israel. One of the people she met there was Ismar David, who wrote, in an undated letter to Leslie: “From Lilly [sic] I have to tell you that we like her as well as her work very much.”
Dear Dr. Leslie, Dear Miss Mendel,
My experiences here surpass my fondest dreams, this city is so very beautiful. And so is life in general. My friends, the Yaaris, are spoiling me terribly and when the crate with art supplies and your wonderful tins arrived yesterday, they made me feel like Santa Claus. I will meet Istmar [sic] David shortly, have already met all the graphic designers of Jerusalem and seen the magnificent drawings of Leopold Krakauer (they ought to be in the M of MA.) Also Elly & I have been invited to study the manuscripts & books at the Schocken Library, a real treasure house. Meanwhile I’m sketching madly, painting, photographing, learning Hebrew calligraphy & conversation, planning trips through the country and a visit to a kibbutz, am also doing commercial jobs together with Elly. I’m going to have an exhibit of jackets at the Bezalel School of Art–in short, there will be so much to do, I shan’t be writing very often. Coming from America, my most overwhelming impression lay in the short distances here—from Haifa to Jerusalem by car is as long as Long Island to the outskirts of Brooklyn or the Bronx. And people actually walk in the street, not on the sidewalks.
Til I write again—best love Lili
