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You are here: Home / Book Design / Typefaces of 1932: Weiss Roman Specimens

Typefaces of 1932: Weiss Roman Specimens

by Joel Friedlander on July 11, 2012 6 Comments

Recently a big box arrived in the mail from a reader in the Midwest. Inside was a pile of type specimen books from type foundries at the height of the letterpress era in the first half of the twentieth century.

These are beautiful artifacts if you love typography, otherwise they probably just look like old booklets and commercial junk.

I sent most of them on to e.m.ginger at 42-line, a longtime expert and enthusiast of letterpress printing, but I kept a couple in the office for a closer look.

Here’s one I picked out from New York’s Bauer Type Foundry. This is a 7-1/2″ x 10-1/2″ booklet of 16 pages printed in several colors on a very nice, soft but sturdy ivory-colored paper.

It gives a feeling of opulence, in fact, compared to most of the printed products we handle today. But it was nothing more than a “freebie” of the time, a handout to show off the typefaces that the foundry had for sale.

Weiss is an elegant typeface designed by Rudolph Weiss for Bauer, so it was their proprietary design. It’s based on classic models from the Renaissance, like many oldstyle typefaces, and the italic shows just how much it owes to calligraphy.

The vertical strokes in Weiss are slightly wider at the top, and that may be why it has an unusual beauty. Weiss is also available in weights that will work both for body copy and for display in headlines.

Have a look at some of the pages from the sample book:

Weiss typeface
The cover is elegant and symmetrical, with a red flourish.

Weiss typeface
Here the foundry shows how it will look at the sizes available. These are metal typefaces, so no resizing!

Weiss typeface
Notice how the display of characters is also an excuse to show how real words look in Weiss, too.

Weiss typeface
These type specimen books are also a chance for the foundry’s designers and compositors (the guys who made up the metal forms for printing) to show off their skills, like this artful type composition that really lets the Weiss titling fonts with their alternate characters shine.

Weiss typeface
A little bit like the templates we use now, you can see exactly how to make up your book pages and what they will look like. Handy.

Weiss typeface
For the 1930s, this sample advertisement for a Cunard cruise is avant garde and a good job on a challenging printing job.

The foundry put a lot of time and care into these sample booklets, which became the best salesmen for their typefaces by showing exactly how to use them to best advantage.

Throughout this specimen, Weiss is shown in book pages, advertisements, social announcements and in many sizes and styles. It’s hard for us to appreciate, with our hundreds or thousands of type fonts on our hard drives, just what a new typeface could mean to the printers who had the skill to use it.

Resources

  • Weiss is available in versions from several type foundries at MyFonts.com
  • Free Weiss Roman Truetype font for Windows OS at FontZone.com
  • You can read about the Bauer Type Foundry, too

Filed Under: Book Design Tagged With: Bauer Type Foundry, book design, letterpress, type specimens, typography, Weiss Roman

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Nan Bush says

    July 11, 2012 at 5:25 pm

    Oh, lovely, lovely! Thanks so much.

    Reply
  2. Tracy says

    July 11, 2012 at 5:50 am

    Joel,

    How well do you think Weiss Roman would hold up in a modern publication or novel? It looks great on paper from the samples shown and appears to be highly readable. Do you think it would add just a little bit of unique, yet professional flair?

    Reply
    • Joel Friedlander says

      July 11, 2012 at 4:28 pm

      Tracy,

      You can use Weiss as a text face, it adds a lot of “color” to the page and it might not be suitable for many books, but in the right place it could work really well.

      Reply
  3. Michael N. Marcus says

    July 11, 2012 at 3:30 am

    Thanks! I love looking at old type books.

    Other type geeks may enjoy http://books.google.com/books?id=wZjgAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=typefaces+1907&source=bl&ots=s8jpKd6I0I&sig=RxYqWZZ5rTQAv__x46xvwJo1DUU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qVP9T_qREMnY6wHrzMnmBg&ved=0CF0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false

    and http://books.google.com/books?id=eEZVi6JAkiAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=typefaces+1907&source=bl&ots=7br9Flf_Q5&sig=bahlMx5OHVwhJJRIl_DWnV5VhnI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OFT9T-CcLImu6gH-78W7Bg&ved=0CDgQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q&f=false

    and http://books.google.com/books?id=nRSQ2EwtnMsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=type+foundry+1907&source=bl&ots=mzOZit_yKW&sig=ky8o5GfXInl7_OHAIksnYajDCx8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aFX9T-2wAqaj6wGk7uT8Bg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwATg8#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Michael N. Marcus
    http://www.bookmakingblog.blogspot.com
    http://www.SilverSandsBooks.com
    http://www.BookFur.com
    http://www.Facebook.com/SilverSandsBooks

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Top Links to Fonts for Your Self-Published Book — The Book Designer says:
    July 18, 2012 at 12:05 am

    […] Typefaces of 1932: Weiss Roman Specimens “Typefaces of 1932: Weiss Roman Specimens shows pages from a booklet issued by Bauer Type Foundry for the printers of the time.” […]

    Reply
  2. Typefaces of 1932: Weiss Roman Specimens — The Book Designer says:
    July 11, 2012 at 12:02 am

    […] Typefaces of 1932: Weiss Roman Specimens […]

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