IDA – Page 13 – Index of Names & Places

Typophiles’ Documentarian

Posted on May 17, 2020 | by IDA

A. Burton Carnes, c. 1897–1975, artist, animator, photographer.

A. Burton Carnes studied engineering at the University of Chicago before finding his real interest in art and switching to the Chicago Art Institute. He had worked as an art director for various advertising agencies and publishing companies when he joined Esquire Publishing Company in 1944. Three years later, he transferred from Chicago to New York. He left Esquire in 1952 to become a freelance designer and began making animated films. One, for General Motors, depicted the parts of motor, using stop animation. In later years, he worked with William A. Tieck on historical books about the Bronx.¹

Burt Carnes photographed many of the Heritage of the Graphic Arts lectures (1963-1982) that were sponsored by Robert Leslie and the Composing Room. A longtime member of the Typophiles, he attended meetings and photographed its members too. In 1971, the Typophiles honored him for his contributions to photography and art. He was a good friend of John DePol and lived not far from Jeanyee Wong.

Photographs by A. Burton Carnes

Hortense Mendel David, with Ismar David and others in an undated photograph by A. Burton Carnes

About Philip Grushkin

Posted on May 7, 2020 | by IDA

Philip Grushkin, 1921–1998, graphic artist, book designer.

Philip Grushkin business card — Philip Grushkin’s business card.

Like his classmate, Jeanyee Wong, Phil Grushkin studied calligraphy at Cooper Union under George Salter. Grushkin went on to design books and jackets for Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, Abbevile and Harry N. Abrams and later as an independent designer.

He had a darkroom in his home and rode to the rescue when problems arose reproducing the ink drawings for the Psalms. Ismar David had done the drawings on mylar, a material he loved, because it enabled him to create crisp lines by scratching the material with a razor blade. The result, however, was impossible to photograph in the conventional manner. Lit from above, the ink drawing cast a shadow, heaving up the lines. Phil Grushkin was able to eliminate the shadow by photographing the drawings on a light box, lit from behind.

About Jeanyee Wong

Posted on May 7, 2020 | by IDA

Jeanyee Wong, 1920–2017, calligrapher, illustrator, graphic designer.

By her own account, Jeanyee Wong was a headstrong and pampered little girl. At the age of 10, she moved from San Francisco to the Bronx with her family. She attended Haaren High School on 10th Avenue and 59th Street. After graduating from Cooper Union, where she had studied calligraphy with George Salter, Jeanyee apprenticed to Fritz Kredel, whose German-speaking mother called her Wongchen. However, Jeanyee didn’t find her calling in wood cutting. Instead she became a successful freelance designer, calligrapher and illustrator. She did hundreds, if not thousands, of book jackets and many illustrated books, collaborating with some authors again and again. Advertising firms frequently used her prodigious skills, which allowed her to live comfortably later in life. Well into her ninties, she remained active, creatively and socially, and just as strong-willed as in her youth.

Jeanyee Wong, photographed by A. Burton Carnes

Waie and Jeanyee Wong Lew. Photograph by A. Burton Carnes

About Mary Ahern

Posted on May 5, 2020 | by IDA

Mary Ahern, student at Cooper Union, art director and book designer at Atheneum Books.

Letterpress printing & illustration by Mary Ahern

Illustration page of project by Mary Ahern

Letterpress-printed project by Mary Ahern

Mary Ahern was an art director at Atheneum, when she asked Ismar David for help with the multilingual, multi-alphabetic illustration for In the Name of God, by Marietta D. Moskin, 1980.

About Abigail Diamond Chapman

Posted on May 5, 2020 | by IDA

Abigail Diamond Chapman 1937–1994, calligrapher.

Abigail Diamond Chapman and Ismar David at the Calligraphy Connection, a calligraphy conference in Minneapolis, 1981.

London and Paris with the TDC

Posted on May 2, 2020 | by IDA

The Type Directors Club organized a trip to London and Paris in 1966.

About the TDC

Posted on May 2, 2020 | by IDA

Type Directors Club, international organization for the promotion of typography, established in 1956. In 1960, Beatrice Warde became its first female member.

Since its founding, the TDC has sponsored competitions, seminars, lectures and publications. In 1966, it planned a a field trip to London and Paris. Ismar David was among the 32 members who, with their families, participated. The TDC organized The Art and Science of Typography: An International Seminar of Typographic Design in 1958.

A TDC certificate of membership. Ismar David papers, box 11,folder 258, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.

The TDC medal, 1975, awarded to Edward Rondthaler. RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection

About Dr. Wirz

Posted on April 30, 2020 | by IDA

Bella Thannhauser Wirz, 1890–1980, medical doctor specializing in pediatrics and sports medicine.

The daughter of a successful manufacturer in Munich, Isabella Thannhauser attended primary school and a secondary school for girls on Luisenstraße. Private lessons enabled her to receive a diploma from a high school for boys, which cleared her path to study medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University. She married a fellow student Franz Wirz in 1917, the same year she received her license. Perhaps because she was married,¹ she worked as an unpaid assistant physician in the outpatient clinic of the Dr. von Haunerschen Kinderspital (Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospital) until 1919.² Her daughter, Liselotte (later Alisa) was born the following year. Dr. Wirz managed an infant welfare clinic in Munich until 1928. She divorced in 1928. After more unpaid work at the Städtische Kinderklinik (Municipal Children’s Clinic) in Düsseldorf for 2 years, she moved with her daughter to Berlin, where, between November 1929 and April 29, 1930, she worked under Heinrich Finkelstein, a pioneer in pediatric nutrition. She attended the Sozialhygenische Akademie (Academy of Social Hygiene) and assisted at the Reichsanstalt zur Bekämpfung der Säuglingssterblichkeit (Reich Institute to Combat Infant Mortality) before starting a practice as pediatrician in the Berlin district of Tegel.³ Mother and daughter were forced to leave Germany after the institution of laws revoking the right of Jewish doctors to register with statutory health insurance bodies, effectively making it impossible for Jews to practice medicine. In 1933, the pair emigrated to Palestine. On April 4, 1942, Dr. Wirz’ sister, Josepha,⁴ a concert violinist, was deported to Piaski. Three months later, the Wirz sisters’ mother committed suicide in Munich.⁵

Dr. Wirz had a long career in Jerusalem in family, as well as sports, medicine. (She was herself a member of a synchronized swim team.) Around 1936, she moved to an apartment in 8 Keren Kayemet Street in Rehavia. Ismar David rented studio space from her in the basement of the building. He lived in 8 KKL Street with Dr. Wirz and her daughter from the late 1930s until he spent a year and a half working for the Bonds of Israel in the United States and, ultimately emigrated in 1952. Dr. Wirz maintained the studio and its contents for some time after David’s departure and we have her family to thank for the safekeeping of various documents and artifacts.

About Café Hermon

Posted on April 28, 2020 | by IDA

Hermon Café, retaurant at 10 Keren Kayemet Street, 1938–1984.

Breakfast at Café Hermon Courtesy of the Central Zionist Archive

In 1938, a pair of German emigrés named Reiner and Scharf opened the café on the ground floor of 10 Keren Kayemet Street in the Rehavia neighborhood, just two doors away from Ismar David’s studio. The café was a favorite meeting place for intellectuals, artists and Zionist leaders, among them: David Ben Gurion and his wife Paula, Menachem Ussishkin, Itzhak Shenhar, Shlomo Zemach and Aharon Appelfeld. Local kids went there for ice cream. Charlotte Stein was a regular. Gabi Rosenthal and Ismar David, too. People in the neighborhood joked about the radio journalists who frequented the place. They’d have a bite to eat, eavesdrop on the politicians, and leave on the hour to make their broadcasts at the station nearby.¹

Postcard from Gabi

Posted on April 26, 2020 | by IDA

Gabriella Rosenthal, 1913–1975, Israeli illustrator, cartoonist, author, art teacher, and tour guide.

Munich born Gabriella Rosenthal emigrated to Palestine in 1935 with her husband at that time, Schalom Ben-Chorin, a distant cousin of Bella Thannhauser Wirz. Her humane and witty watercolor and ink work appeared weekly (Fridays) in the Palestine, now Jerusalem, Post under the rubric Palestine People. She illustrated several books and a Megillat Esther and has written and published in four languages: English, German, Arabic and Hebrew.

Gabi posted this card on December 29, 1950, while on vacation in Lugano, Switzerland. The card arrived in Jerusalem on January 24, 1951, nearly a month later. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as they say.

Postcard from Gabriella Rosenthal, front.

Master! Do you know what I got from my brother and his sister? A yellow silk paisley scarf!

So, if I am nice in the future, then it is really thanks to your most special charms. (Minus that I must know perhaps what it costs.)

Here, even the sausages wear little ballet skirts and silk sashes around their enormous waists. And the sparrows eat only what comes from pure buttercake.

[The little bird says, “Pooh! Blue Band.” (Blue Band was an Israeli margarine brand.)]

But I’m nevertheless coming back soon to this shitty home and am already looking forward to when the two of us, in yellow silk, will be complaining in Hermon [café in the Rosh Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem] on the Medine [in Israel]. So long, with a nice kiss to the ladies.

Your Gabi

The mysterious Gabi would also seem to be the author of this little comic strip.

Comic strip by Gabi — Comic strip by Gabriella Rosenthal, front.

From Mother to Daughter….

“That one there? My child, don’t let looks fool you—it’s completely dried out—and you won’t know it until it’s too late!”

“No, that one is way too green! Don’t touch it, the woman can’t stand it!”

“And that on the left over there, Mama?”

“Trust an experienced woman, darling—the one to the right, true, it’s not very big, but weight alone doesn’t do it. If you listen to your mother: that one has what it takes!”