Cookin’ with Queen Ida by Queen Ida Guillory with Naomi Wise
Contributed by Florian Hardwig
on May 2nd, 2025. Artwork published in
.
An extravagant typeface for an extraordinary cookbook cover: Max Salzmann’s Dolmen (1922) is used with both its forms for E and bichromatic initials with a zigzag pattern modeled after the accompanying Zierdolmen. In this book, Ida Lewis Guillory a.k.a. Queen Ida (b. 1929), the “Queen of Zydeco Music”, shares “‘bon temps’ creole recipes (and stories)”. Smaller text is hand lettering.
1 Comment on “Cookin’ with Queen Ida by Queen Ida Guillory with Naomi Wise”
Letraset revived Dolmen in 1987. That’s not the version used or the book cover, though: their adaptation for dry transfer lettering added an alternate R, but the E with pointed top and bottom bars is not included.
UK-based phototype provider Face Photosetting showed a version of both styles in an early 1980s catalog, as Dolmen Black and Dolmen Deco. The former has both forms of E as well as an alternate i with round dot. If that’s the font used here, I don’t know how it found its way to California.