IDA – Page 6 – Index of Names & Places

About the Twelve Tribes

Posted on May 11, 2021 | by IDA

Emotional expression and simplicity, key principles of Viennese sculptor and pedagogue Eugen Steinhof’s philosophy, characterize Moshe Ziffer’s early work. Steinhof encouraged his students to ignore small details to concentrate on the greater play of light on form.¹ His student Moshe Ziffer’s many female nude studies, often compared to Maillol’s, eschew academic anatomical detail in favor of unfussy form and line. His sculpture, The Pioneer, for the Palestine Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair demonstrates this as well. These and smaller public works, including the gravestone for Chaim Bialik (in collaboration with the painter Moshe Mokdi in 1935), the monument for the controversial re-interment of Ber Borochov and his wife in Kinneret Cemetery (in collaboration with Aryeh Sharon)² and the Weizmann gravestone were comprised of bold forms, without ornamentation, except, in some cases, a figurative image of some kind.

A large panel of the twelve tribes of Israel, signed by and attributed to Moshe Ziffer, stands out in contrast. A photograph of it, probably taken by Israel Zafrir, was among Ismar David’s papers. Although carved in stone, the ornamental scrollwork and the particular quality of the Sephardic lettering are characteristic of David’s work at the time. Indeed, the symbols are very similar to those on The Palestine Book, produced for the Palestine Pavilion in 1939.

The Palestine Book — Cover of a souvenir magazine for the Israel Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair.

Blue Band ad — Pastiche of a medieval manuscript in a Passover advertisement for Blue Band margarine in the April 4, 1947 issue of *Davar.*

None of these details resemble the work, up to that point or later, of Moshe Ziffer and it seems likely that a collaboration of some kind took place. Quite a lot of the work David produced in Jerusalem was executed by others: sign painters and other craftsmen for exhibitions or commercial signage—the carved wooden cover of the Jewish National Fund’s eighth Golden Book is another example—and he must have been accustomed to other people interpreting his designs. The staff of the Sieff Institute gave this gypsum panel to Chaim Weizmann on the eve of his inauguration as the President of Israel³ in 1949. The Israel Museum dates it, however, as 1940/41. Today, it remains installed on a wall of Weizmann’s home in Rehovot. The design has enjoyed a much wider audience, though, if in ever decreasing size and quality, in many smaller metallic iterations.

About Moshe Ziffer

Posted on May 11, 2021 | by IDA

Moshe Ziffer, 1902–1989, sculptor.

The son of a self-taught master builder, Moshe Ziffer was born in Przemyśl in Galicia. He began to learn Hebrew at the age of six, imbibed a spirit of Zionism at home and was a member of the Socialist-Zionist youth group, Hashomer Hatzair. He had the benefits of a secular education that would have prepared him for university studies,¹ but instead trained with HeHalutz (The Pioneer), as a carpenter,² and joined the great wave of migration to Palestine in 1919. In the old new land, he took part in a number of large scale projects which included planting 5,000 eucalyptus trees in Qastina and building the Haifa-Gedda Road. When an accident with a contentious donkey landed him bedridden in a hospital for an extended time, he came across Dmitry Merzhkovsky’s vivid novel about Leonardo da Vinci. The young laborer had hardly read 20 pages before he knew he must become a sculptor.³ He became fascinated with “the fantastic shapes of olive tree roots” and began imitating them in wood carvings of his own. ⁴ In October 1924, he was given a small stipend to seek further treatment in Vienna. He took the opportunity to visit his family and apply for a place in the class of Eugen Gustav Steinhof, director of the Universität für angewandte Kunst. Steinhof recalled:

Herr Ziffer kam zu mir mit einer geschnitzten Baumwurzel in der Hand und mit der Absicht, in meine Bildhauerklasse einzutreten. Er sagte mir ferner, daß er Gärtner gewesen wäre. Die ruhige Tiefe seiner blauen Augen, die feine Linie seines Mundes sowie der Ernst und die Ruhe seiner Rede bewogen mich, ihn als Schüler aufzunehmen und nicht seine geschnitzte Baumwurzel. Wer kann den Wert einer menschlichen Seele in ihrer Tiefe ermessen, wenn Reinheit und Scheu sie verhüllt?⁵

Mr. Ziffer came to me with a carved tree root in his hand and with the intention of entering my sculpture class. Further, he told me that he had been a gardener. The quiet depths of his blue eyes, the delicate line of his mouth, as well as the seriousness and stillness of his discourse, and not his carved tree root, moved me to take him as a student. Who can measure the depth of a human soul, if purity and reserve veils them?

Through the sponsorship and encouragement of Steinhof and of Chief Rabbi of Vienna Peretz Hayut, Ziffer remained in Austria’s capital for almost three years. In 1928, the Holbein Gallery exhibited 23 of his works in an array of media: marble, stone, alabaster and terracotta. Despite the success of the exhibition, or perhaps because of it—the reviewer in Der Tag found fault with his work, but also pronounced him “on a good path”⁶; the Neue Freie Presse predicted a bright future if he would acquire technical more technical prowess⁷ —Ziffer left to further his studies in Berlin with Edwin Scharff. Albert Einstein befriended Ziffer in 1929 and thereafter supported Ziffer’s Berlin studies financially. In April 1933, Ziffer was forced to abandon the sculptures he had made in Berlin, as well as a promised exhibition at the Gurlitt Gallery, and returned to Palestine to devote himself to his work and to teaching. In 1937, he traveled to Paris, where his work was critically well-received and he became friendly with many in the artistic community, returning to Jerusalem in 1939. Subsequently, he divided his time between Tel Aviv and Safed.⁸

Ziffer enjoyed considerable success in his adopted homeland. In 1935, he and the painter Moshe Mokdi won a competition to design the gravestone for Chaim Nahman Bialik. Ziffer’s larger-than-life sculpture, The Pioneer, stood in the Hall of Transformation in the Palestine Pavilion (in front of a photographic mural with lettering probably designed by Ismar David) at the 1939 World’s Fair. Ziffer’s many monumental public works dot Israel today (Weizmann Institute, the Hebrew University, the Haifa Technion, Kibbutz Hulda, Netanya, Kibbutz Netzarim, Ain Gedi), culminating in the decades-long development of his garden in Safed, by which time his work had turned fully to abstraction.

Bookbinder in Jerusalem

Posted on May 1, 2021 | by IDA

Yehuda Miklaf, born 1942, Esperanto advocate, Freemason, bookbinder and letterpress printer.

Joyous, enthusiastic Yehuda Miklaf hails from tiny, but historic, Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia. His gravity-defying life path took him from Canada to a Franciscan seminary in New York City to, after converting to Judaism, his own bookbinding studio in Jerusalem. He has made bindings for the Pope, an American President, a French President and the Queen of England, among others. As his wife says, “Doors don’t open for Yehuda, they fall off their hinges.”¹

In the late eighties, fine printing began to absorb more of Miklaf’s attention and he established his own Shalom Yehuda Press with a small platen press and a Vandercook SP-15. Lili Wronker gave him the David Hebrew metal type that had been cast for Liber Librorum. In December of 1990, he wrote to Ismar David to inquire about the provenance of some Hebrew metal type.

Letter from Yehuda Miklaf to Ismar David

Letter from Ismar David to Yehuda Miklaf

Ismar David papers, box 4, folder 102, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.

24.12.90
Dear Mr David,

I am an amateur printer, originally from Toronto, now living and working in Jerusalem. I am a hand bookbinder by trade, so my involvement in printing, although coming late in my career is closely allied with my work.

Due to the kindness of Nahum Ben-Tzvi of Ben-Tzvi Printing, I have acquired their Vanderook proofing press and some cases of type with which I am now working. My first project is a short essay on typography by Beatrice Warde that Dr. Moshe Spitzer had translated some years ago but which had never been published. I am printing it in your typeface David, and if you like, I will be happy to send you a copy when it is finished.

David is my favorite Hebrew face, and I would like to know something of its development. I know that the Jerusalem Type Foundry cast 12 and 16 pt., and they had an unfinished set of mats for 24 pt. I understand that the 12 and 16 pt. were the only sizes ever cast in foundry type.

I was speaking with Lila Avrin yesterday about something she wrote in her article in A Sign and a Witness, “ The Art of the Hebrew Book in the Twentieth Century.” On page 137, note 7, she writes: “For Liber Librorum, Ismar David supervised the making of the font for hand-typesetting on a Thompson caster,…”. This information interests me very much since it implies that there were or are sets of David mats other than those at the Jerusalem Type Foundry. The reason this interests me is that the David type I have (from Ben-Tzvi) does not look anything like the type produced by the JTF, and I would like to know from where it comes.

If in fact you did supervise a casting for hand setting, could you tell me at which foundry this was done, and which mats you used. And, where are these mats now?

If you can be of any help on this, I would like very much to hear from you. I think that it is a shame that fine printing in Hebrew should be limited to a few presses outside of Israel, and now that Ariel Wardi and I have presses, we might be able to change that, provided we can find sources of useable type.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Yours,
Yehuda Miklaf

January 10, 1991
Dear Mr. Miklaf,

Intertype produced only the book face in light and heavy and the slanted style in light in matrix form for the use on line casting equipment. The foundry large size by the Jerusalem Type Foundry is unfortunately a misinterpretation of my design. The serif-like beginnings of letters are too pointed. That is to say that no authentic foundry type exists. The type for Liber Librorum was cast from the Thompson caster, a device that casts single letters from Intertype matrices. Clark & Way, a firm that long ago went out of business, gave some of this type to Erich Wronker, Lili’s husband.

Most of the digital versions of my type are lifted. I only redesigned one version and that was from Stempel. I do not object to lifting if the result is successful. I feel that any typeface if often used becomes public domain. It becomes one of the images by which the alphabet is known. It is only when my name is distorted to DOVID, as has happened, that I am saddened.

So much about my Hebrew type. I am working on other Hebrew styles but I am quite sure they will never be manufactured in metal. I am enclosing a prospectus that will give you a better idea of what I am doing now than my letter to you. I will be glad to receive one of your prints (Beatrice Ward in Hebrew).

With my best wishes for success of your new enterprise.
[Ismar David]

Genesis

Posted on April 28, 2021 | by IDA

Liber Librorum, a portfolio of Bible designs by international book designers, distributed by the Royal Library, Stockholm, in 1955.

Liber Librorum began as an invitation from a committee, Paul A. Bennet, Francis Meynell, C. Volmer Nordlunde, Raúl M. Rosarivo, Maximilien Vox, Bror Zachrisson and Hermann Zapf, to a select group of book designers to participate in a group project to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the printing of the Gutenberg Bible. The committee and the participants consisted of men from Argentina, Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and America. Each participant was charged with creating “his individual solution of the typographic problem of the Bible.”¹ After paying a $10 entrance fee, participants were expected to donate their time and materials. Thirty-nine designers produced 43 designs, with non-Latin alphabets (Gaelic, Greek and Hebrew) used in just four. (Henri Friedlaender provided one of the two Hebrew exemplars.) Each supplied 1500 prints of their work and received 15 finished portfolios. The committee gave 200 portfolios to religious, educational and cultural institutions and arranged for 500 to be sold commercially in order to offset the costs of assembly, boxing and shipping. In case of monetary gain, the proceeds were to go to Albert Schweizer’s Lambarene Hospital. Sales were not entirely robust, but in the end, Dr. Schweizer received two payments totaling £375.

Ismar David answered the initial invitation enthusiastically, but asked two questions.² To the first about using illustrations, Zachrisson’s secretary responded: “The Liber Librorum is not conceived as an illustrated project.”³ To the second, as to whether the deadline could be extended, Zachrisson acceded, and wrote: “As there will be probably some delays in the last minutes, let us agree to November 15. We want you indeed to participate. Please do not inform other participants of this crooked arrangement.” (How often and with how many participants must he have used this line…?) Hortense Mendel approached Harold Plaut of Intertype about sponsorship, telling him that the budget was [$]750 (if possible 1000 to take care of eventualities),⁴ but Intertype declined.

For his innovative bilingual design, David chose Bembo, “one of the beautiful Monotoype faces…”⁵ and his own newly-released David Hebrew. Clarke & Way, under the name Thistle Press, handset the Hebrew type, which had been cast on a Thompson caster. (David gave the resulting metal type to the Wronkers and it later made its way into the hands of Yehuda Miklaf.) The 1500 copies designated for Liber Librorum were shipped on November 23. An additional 5 copies had to be airmailed to Stockholm in order to be included in exhibitions at the Royal Library and the universities of Uppsala, Gothenburg and Lund. The Davids also gave or mailed the Genesis pages to an array of friends, family, professional associates and potential clients in the United States and Israel.

Auerbachstraße 2

Posted on April 14, 2021 | by IDA

Auerbachstrasse 2, apartment building in Berlin.

Auerbachstraße got its name in 1898, in honor of idealistic author and ardent supporter of German unification, Berthold Auerbach, born Moyses Baruch Auerbacher. The gracious apartment house at number 2, called Nickel’sches Haus, was built a year later and still stands, a minute’s walk from the S-bahn station, not far from the edge of the Grunewald Forest and a lake.

In 1920, the building belonged to the Jewish community, from whom Ismar Freund bought it in 1921. His tenants, then, included government functionaries, attorneys and factory owners.¹ Not much had changed by the time Freund’s nephew, Ismar David, a student at the Städtische Kunstgewerbe- und Handwerkerschule Berlin-Charlottenburg, moved in. As Berlin telephone books of 1931 and 1932 show, David’s neighbors were a solidly middle-class group: a city employee, a masseuse, a director, a business man, a sculptor, a banker, a purveyor of fine foods, a (graduate) engineer and two people of private means.

Seven years after David left for Jerusalem, author Frida Kalischer lived on the third floor and records show her rent (180 Reichsmark) paid to Elise Freund in Jerusalem. Some time in 1942, the National Socialist authorities struck Elise Freund’s name from the property owner registry. In December Frida Kalischer was deported. She perished in Auschwitz on New Year’s Day 1943.²

In 1938 Nazi administrators had changed the name of the street to Auerbacher Strasse, to disassociate it from its Jewish namesake. In November of 2012, the district authorities sought to right at least one wrong and decided (at the express wish of the area residents) to rename the street, Auerbachstrasse.³

About Jerusalem Automobile

Posted on March 29, 2021 | by IDA

Jerusalem Automobile Company, Ltd., car dealership in Jerusalem, from 1936.

Princess Mary Avenue, Jerusalem — A view of Princess Mary Avenue in Jerusalem, between 1940 and 1949. G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress

According to its own ads in the Palestine, later Jerusalem, Post, the Jerusalem Automobile Company had been “Ford Specialists since 1936.” Early on, their offices were on Julian Way,but by 1940, they had moved to prominent rounded storefront on Princess Mary Avenue, where they continued as authorized Ford dealers, offered automobiles (including used cars) for sale and rent (on a monthly basis only). After the Second World War, they sold British-made, luxury Rover automobiles as well. The showroom was damaged during the riots of 1948.

Ismar David designed graphics and corporate identity for Jerusalem Automobile Company, Ltd., which was also used in the signage for their Princess Mary Avenue location.

Storefront of the Jerusalem Automobile Company Ltd.

Damage to stores on Princess Mary Avenue during the riots in Jerusalem in 1947-48. Courtesy of the Central Zionist Archive

About Random House

Posted on March 27, 2021 | by IDA

Random House, American publisher, founded in 1927 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer.

Two years after buying Modern Library in 1925, Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer established Random House. They had intended to just put out “a few books on the side at random,” but instead built a publishing giant, presenting many great names, such as James Joyce, James Faulkner, Isak Dinesen, André Malraux, Robert Graves, John O’Hara, Sinclair Lewis, Robert Penn Warren, and successful titles, like Ulysses, Ellison’s Invisible Man, The Cat in the Hat and, The Iceman Cometh, as well as many classic reprints.

By our count, David designed 31 jackets or covers for Random House (including three for Modern Library and two for Modern Library paperbacks) between 1955 and 1961. Among them is one cultural touchstone for the era, Truman Capote’s 1958 novel, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as seen in Tom Ford’s film, A Single Man, made 2009, but set in a meticulously recreated early 1960s Los Angeles.

Scene from A Single Man, (2009) directed by Tom Ford.

At Random House, David received his assignments from Charles Anthony “Tony” Wimpfheimer, Regina Spirito and “Ruth K.” Some commissions came with technical limitations, due to size or budget, or with very specific directives as to color and writing style, due to the desires of the editors. For instance, Breakfast at Tiffany’s came with a sketch by Bennett Cerf, a color swatch and a request for “strong Bodoni” lettering.¹ Turn-around time for a sketch was usually 10–14 days, although rush jobs came in, too. Often sketches were returned with exact instructions for adjustment, but at times, the back and forth must have tried the patience of all concerned. “Are you still with me or have you tossed all this across the room?”²

Ismar David’s Random House book jackets and covers are: Heritage, 1955; A Family Party, 1956; Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People, 1956; Of Human Bondage (Modern Library paperback), 1956; The Magic Flute, 1956; The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, 1956; And Walk in Love, 1956; The Greek Commonwealth (Modern Library), 1956; Sartoris, 1956; The Valley of God, 1956; Death of a Man, 1957; The Ox-Bow Incident (Modern Library paperbacks), 1957; The Eye of the Beholder, 1957; Go and Catch a Falling Star, 1957; Madame Bovary, 1957; The Catcher in the Rye (Modern Library), 1958; Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1958; A Knot of Roots, 1958; They Came to Cordura, 1958; The World’s Great Operas (Modern Library), 1959; Love and Money, 1959; The Quick Rich Fox, 1959; Before You Go, 1960; The Faces of Blood Kindred, 1960; On Wings of Faith, 1960; Putting First Things First, 1960; The Seducer, 1960; The Trend is Up, 1960; The Witching Ship, 1960; The Important Thing, 1961; The Wisdom of Buddhism, 1961 and The Mountain Lion, 1962. In 1957, he designed stationery for the firm, which Bennett Cerf “liked very, very much.”³

A Father and Two Sons

Posted on February 17, 2021 | by IDA

S. Friedmann Ltd. Technical Works, an Israeli company for the production of heating and household appliances.

Shelf sign — A shelf sign, showing the Friedmann logo. Photograph taken during the Typophiles’ Printers’ Pilgrimage to Israel.

The Friedmanns, father Shmaryahu and sons Laiush and Ferry (aged 15 and 13) immigrated to Palestine in 1926 from Hungary. Using basic equipment he had brought with him, the elder Mr. Friedman opened a modest basement repair shop in the Nahalat Shiva neighborhood of Jerusalem. The two boys helped him fix the small kerosene-fueled stoves that were common at the time, as well as other small appliances and plumbing. Ten years later, after studying the kinds of machinery they repaired, the three men founded Friedmann Ltd. and began engineering and manufacturing their own products. The company expanded rapidly during the Second World War, supplying goods to the British Army. It was a major employer in Jerusalem at the time and the saying was, “Either you work for Friedmann or you worked for Friedmann or you work for Friedmann.”¹

S. Friedmann Ltd exhibition — An exhibition of products from S. Friedman Ltd. in a trade fair in Israel, c. 1953. Courtesy of the Friedmann family and their web site about S. Friedmann Ltd.

After the war, Friedmann returned to producing innovative consumer products, eventually even branching out to heaters and refrigerators. But Friedmann today remains most famous for its small household stoves. S. Friedmann died in 1957. With the death of both of his sons in the 1970s, the firm came to an end.

Ismar David designed various graphics for the firm, as well as the iconic father and sons symbol. Ferry and Ziva Friedmann were his friends. David designed furniture for them and a memorial for Ferry Friedmann that remains unbuilt.

About Henri Friedlaender

Posted on February 15, 2021 | by IDA

Henri Friedlaender, 1904–1996, type and book designer, co-founded the Hadassah Printing School and served as its first director.

Henri Friedlaender described his multi-national heritage:

Von Frankreich hatte ich die Liebe zu Klarheit in Form und Wort bekommen; von England Wertschätzung für geschichtlich Gewachsenes und für Weltweite; von Deutschland meine Fachkenntnisse und ein Ahnen der Nachtseite der sichtbaren Dinge; von Holland die Erfahrung, daß schlichte Menschlichkeit wichtiger ist als Spitzenleistungen…¹

From France, I got the love of clarity in form and word; from England, the appreciation of growth over time and the greater world; from Germany, my technical expertise and an inkling of the dark side of visible things; from Holland, the experience, that simple humanity is more important than excellence…

Lyon-born Henri Friedlaender moved to Berlin when he was six years old with his English mother and German father and received all his primary and secondary education there. After graduating from the Mommsen Gymnasium in Charlottenburg, he apprenticed in various printing methods, gaining experience in hand setting, letterpress and intaglio, as well as administrative exposure to engraving. He taught himself lettering and studied for a year at the Akademie für Graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig. Beginning in 1932, he was art director at Mouton & Co. in the Hague. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Friedlaender could neither live nor work openly and was forced to hide in his own house, seeing only his wife. In 1950 the couple emigrated to Israel, where he founded and led the Hadassah Apprentice School of Printing in Jerusalem. After retiring, he continued working as a free-lance book designer and taught at the Bezalel Academy of Art.

Friedlaender is best known as the designer of Hadassah, a type face he began in 1931, when Schocken asked the Haag-Drugulin Foundry, where he was a printer-manager, whether a modern Hebrew typeface could be created. Haag-Drugulin’s partipation ceased, when Friedlaender left for Holland. Nevertheless he continued developing his ideas. Lettergieterij Amsterdam produced a trial casting in 1949, which necessitated considerable revision. Hadassah was finally issued in 1958. Friedlander also designed three Hebrew typefaces for the IBM Selectric typewriter II typeball: Shalom, Hadar, and Aviv.

In his essay, Toward a Modern Hebrew, in 1959 Friedlaender wrote: “Ismar David started from the simplified Hebrew he had evolved in his practice of lettering. He tried to preserve in type as much as possible of its modern, free character. In the sloped version moreover he introduced motives of italic semicursive, originated in the fourteenth century but still alive. The resulting type is charming, elegant and well suited for not too long texts. For books it is a little too playful and not quite restrained enough.”²

Friedlaender must have visited Hortense Mendel and Ismar David in New York during the mid-fifties.

Ismar David papers, box 2, folder 52, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.

15 September 1957
Dear Mr. David,

A package from you arrived today, and a few days earlier one from the Composing Room, for which you are probably also responsible. Many heartfelt thanks. Very interesting, at a high standard, full of motivation, (which are here more confusing than helpful) (there is also so much work and ideas packed in each and every work, that one can’t process it all—an embarrassment of riches [in French])

I often think back to the hours [with you two] at your home, and also often of America, not in the sense of something I would long for, but as an admirable self-contained entity—like a gifted boy in his teens, who doesn’t at all know where to go with his powers and to whom fate assigned a task, the scope and depth of which he doesn’t understand at all. How are you and your wife? Fully engaged again with interesting work that takes full advantage of your abilities and leads to new discoveries? Without being ground up by the [rat] race? I hope so.

Here, so far, it’s going well. One goes forward in small steps, building the foundation stone by stone, admittedly without the assurance, or let’s rather say: the certainty, that the building will also really stand. Some basis for hope, however, exists.

Best regards to both of you
from Henri Friedlaender

About Viv and Herman Cohen

Posted on February 11, 2021 | by IDA

Herman Cohen, 1905–1997, and Aveve Brown Cohen, 1909–2001, founders and proprietors of Chiswick Book Shop, publishers.

Chiswick Keepsake — Keepsake for the fiftieth aniversary of Chiswick Book Shop. Among those pictured: Bob Jones, Motoko Inoue, Jerry Kelly, Lili and Erich Wronker, Ismar David, John Dreyfus, John Depol, Jack Gulden, Joe Blumenthal, Stephen Harvard, and Viv and Herman Cohen and their family.

Aveve Brown first met Herman Cohen on a ship returning from Europe when she was fourteen years old. Family lore has it that it was practically love at first sight.¹ Six years later, they married. After gaining experience working for a variety of book sellers, they opened their first shop on West 51st Street in Manhattan in 1935 and, due their own initiative, enthusiasm and audacity, and a bit of luck, it was a success. The shop moved several times through its over 65 years in business, but wherever it was located, it was a center of conviviality and support for artists and admirers of fine printing. Herman was active in antiquarian bookseller organizations, as well as being a member of AIGA. They were great friends of John Fass and early promoters of his Hammer Creek Press publications, which they offered in their catalogues.

They published four books: Aldus Manutius and the Development of Greek Script and Type in the Fifteenth Century, by Nicholas Barker (1985), The Making of the Book of Common Prayer of 1928, by Martin Hutner (1990), John S. Fass and the Hammer Creek Press (1997) and The Book of Jonah, designed and illustrated by Ismar David.