This recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto In A Minor Op. 16 was performed by the Symphony Orchestra of the Viennese Symphonic Society, featuring pianist Felicitas Karrer and conducted by Kurt Wöss. It was released by Remington Records in 1951.
The trichromatic caps on the cover are from Dahlia, an ornamented Fat Face drawn by lettering artist John Albert Cavanagh (1888–?) for Photo-Lettering, Inc. in New York.
Letterform Archive recently posted several photosfrom Hobart & Robbins, Specimens of Printing Types and Ornaments, from the New England Type & Stereotype Foundery, Boston, Massachusetts, 1851 – including this page showing several ornamented caps.
In Dahlia, J.Albert Cavanagh referenced Victorian faces like these. In fact, the Antique English Ornamented in line5 has a fairly similar floral pattern.
I was recently looking for layered or colour fonts in this attractive style–there aren’t many but Eckhart is one. It’s similar to traditional canal boat lettering, but that generally puts floral patterns around the letters, not within them.
Thanks for pointing out Eckhart, Blythwood! That’s a good addition, and indeed comes close in feel.
I have my quibbles with the typographic color (weight distribution, spacing), but this kind of style is best used for single letters (initials, drop caps) anyway, where the rhythm of “black” and white is less of a concern.
Agreed–it has its eccentricities, but I don’t know anything else available that compares, so I bought it. To me it feels like a style that really stands to profit from the move to colour fonts, since getting all the layers in place and the right colour (and really for this style you often want a drop shadow too) takes time unless you have a script to do it. (I’m a bit surprised Dala Prisma doesn’t offer separate fonts for the different stripes–maybe they thought that was going to encourage excessive use of it…)
Thanks, Jay! That’s a good suggestion. Judging from the samples shown in Mac McGrew’s American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, I’d say it’s Ludlow’s Medium Condensed Gothic. It’s very similar to Linotype’s Gothic No. 13, but has a lighter diagonal in N, and the right 1.
Now look at this: I have a copy of the Lettering and Alphabets by John A. Cavanagh (yes, the same author of this font) and today I did some scanning! Below are some glyphs for the types below:
Wonderful! Thank you, Jay. Which edition of Lettering and Alphabets are these from? The one from 1955, the 1980s Dover reprint, or some other one? The alphabets are not referenced by name in the book, are they?
Technically these alphabets are just that: lettered alphabets, not typefaces. They were turned into fonts in the narrower sense of the word only when Photo-Lettering adopted them to their film format. But yes, it looks like these designs correspond to the PLINC faces you linked to. Maybe there are small design differences, maybe not. I’ll use your scans to make (or complete) samples. Thanks!
12 Comments on “Grieg: Piano Concerto In A Minor Op. 16 album art”
Letterform Archive recently posted several photos from Hobart & Robbins, Specimens of Printing Types and Ornaments, from the New England Type & Stereotype Foundery, Boston, Massachusetts, 1851 – including this page showing several ornamented caps.
In Dahlia, J. Albert Cavanagh referenced Victorian faces like these. In fact, the Antique English Ornamented in line 5 has a fairly similar floral pattern.
I was recently looking for layered or colour fonts in this attractive style–there aren’t many but Eckhart is one. It’s similar to traditional canal boat lettering, but that generally puts floral patterns around the letters, not within them.
Thanks for pointing out Eckhart, Blythwood! That’s a good addition, and indeed comes close in feel.
I have my quibbles with the typographic color (weight distribution, spacing), but this kind of style is best used for single letters (initials, drop caps) anyway, where the rhythm of “black” and white is less of a concern.
Agreed–it has its eccentricities, but I don’t know anything else available that compares, so I bought it. To me it feels like a style that really stands to profit from the move to colour fonts, since getting all the layers in place and the right colour (and really for this style you often want a drop shadow too) takes time unless you have a script to do it. (I’m a bit surprised Dala Prisma doesn’t offer separate fonts for the different stripes–maybe they thought that was going to encourage excessive use of it…)
The unidentified condensed sans-serif grotesk could be a Gothic No. 13.
Thanks, Jay! That’s a good suggestion. Judging from the samples shown in Mac McGrew’s American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, I’d say it’s Ludlow’s Medium Condensed Gothic. It’s very similar to Linotype’s Gothic No. 13, but has a lighter diagonal in N, and the right 1.
Now look at this: I have a copy of the Lettering and Alphabets by John A. Cavanagh (yes, the same author of this font) and today I did some scanning! Below are some glyphs for the types below:
Exhibit A: Bingo
Exhibit B: Eighteen-Ninety
Exhibit C: Dahlia (shown on this page, IYKYK.)
Exhibit D: A wider version of Nubian with differences
Exhibit E: Chandelier
What do you think?
Is anything related to the last comment I posted?
Wonderful! Thank you, Jay. Which edition of Lettering and Alphabets are these from? The one from 1955, the 1980s Dover reprint, or some other one? The alphabets are not referenced by name in the book, are they?
Technically these alphabets are just that: lettered alphabets, not typefaces. They were turned into fonts in the narrower sense of the word only when Photo-Lettering adopted them to their film format. But yes, it looks like these designs correspond to the PLINC faces you linked to. Maybe there are small design differences, maybe not. I’ll use your scans to make (or complete) samples. Thanks!
Florian, it seems to be that 1975 (ed. guess) printing that I currently obtain in my collection.
Thanks, Jay. Does the book assign names to the alphabets?
What you accurately describe as “a wider version of Nubian with differences” was called Cavanagh Calliope at Photo-Lettering.