IDA – Page 7 – Index of Names & Places

About the Israel Museum

Posted on February 11, 2021 | by IDA

The Israel Museum was established in 1965 as Israel’s foremost cultural institution and one of the world’s leading encyclopedic museums. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, adjacent to the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Its holdings include the world’s most comprehensive collections of the archaeology of the Holy Land, and Jewish Art and Life, as well as significant and extensive holdings in the Fine Arts.

Ismar David and the Israel Museum corresponded between 1985–1988 regarding the donation of original drawings of the David Hebrew typeface for their permanent design collection, and a loan of Hanukkah menorahs for an exhibition. Izzika Gaon, Curator of the Israel Design Department of the Israel Museum, visited David’s studio in New York. In addition the museum holds a collection of Ismar David artwork and sketches, donated by Henri Friedlaender.

About Zelda Popkin

Posted on February 9, 2021 | by IDA

Zelda Popkin, 1898–1983, novelist, sister of Helen Rossi Koussevitsky.

Jenny Feinberg of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania changed her name to Zelda when she left home to study journalism at Columbia University. She settled in New York, founded and ran, with her husband Louis Popkin, a public relations firm, and wrote occasional articles for magazines. In 1938, Lippincott published the first of her Mary Carner mysteries, Death Wears a White Gardenia. Four more volumes in the series followed. After the her husband’s death, she gave up their business and turned her attention to writing as a profession. She enjoyed her greatest commercial success with Journey Home in 1945.

In late 1946, convinced that there was material for a novel in the Zionist struggle in Jerusalem and that the story badly needed telling, Helen Rossi began to encourage her sister to visit Palestine. Shortly after the declaration of the State, Popkin visited Israel for two months, and did, indeed, plan a novel. In a letter to her Lippincott editors, she described the Israelis who had so deeply impressed her, including Ismar David. He had been in New York, looking into printing methods,¹ when fighting broke out. He cut his visit short. Popkin wrote that David “said when he returned to bomb-torn Jerusalem this winter: ‘I know I am not a fighter but when I come back my friends will say: “David was safe. He was in America yet he returned to us!” and that will give them strength and courage.’”² In her novel, The Quiet Street, she mentions one of his Hagana Posters:

A poster appeared on the walls, a dramatic thing, an arm and a clenched fist with the English words, “It all depends upon you,” and the Haganah symbol of the blue and white flag above the Old City walls. Everyone took these words as his own and worked feverishly as though he alone were the one to defend Jerusalem.³

Ismar David must have first met Popkin during his trip to New York in 1947. Helen Rossi had asked her sister to make some calls and introduce him to people (interior decorator, Julie Lucas and Sadie Engle’s brother, owner of an offset printing plant) who might help him.⁴

Printers’ Pilgrimage to Israel

Posted on February 8, 2021 | by IDA

Soon after he became president of The Typophiles in 1971, inveterate traveler Bob Leslie initiated group outings. Destinations that could be accomplished in a day rapidly evolved into fully organized overseas tours. To celebrate the 45th anniversary of The Typophiles in 1974, 45 members and their significant others, plus a few European colleagues, made a “Printers’ Pilgrimage to Israel.” They included Fritz and Toni Eichenberg, Alice Koeth, Berthold Wolpe, Hermann Zapf, Raymond Gid, Cathy Tyler Brody, Alexander Lawson ( director of the school of printing at RIT), Helen Barrow (former production manager at Simon and Schuster), Charles Vaxer (director of printing at Esquire magazine), Edna Beilinson of Peter Pauper Press and book designers Marilyn Marcus (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), Bertha Krantz (Random House) and Herbert Rosenthal.

Leslie enlisted the aid of Israel Soifer and Gideon Stern (Director of the Printing Information Center of the Israel Export Institute) to help plan a whirlwind sixteen days exploring historical and technical aspects of printing in Israel. The Typophiles met Israeli colleagues Moshe Spitzer, Elly Gross, Henri Friedlaender, Miriam Karoly and Jack Jaget and enjoyed receptions given by Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kolleck and Haifa Mayor Josef Almogi. The group visited Keter, Ltd. (producers of the Encyclopedia Judaica), the Government Printing Plant and the printing plant of the Jerusalem Post; and the Franciscan Press, the Hebron Press and the Peli Printing Works. They went to the Museum of Printing in Safed and the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem. They saw the Alphabet Museum in Haifa and met Gisa Frankel, an authority on Jewish paper cuts, at the Ethnological Museum and Folklore Archives in the city. Friedlaender organized a special exhibit, “The Image of the Hebrew Letter in Israel,” in honor of The Typophiles’ visit. The Jewish National and University Library at Hebrew University arranged a special display of Hebrew bibliophilic books for them. They visited the Schocken Library, the artists’ colony at Ein Hod and Jerusalem’s Burston Graphic Arts Center. Tourist spots were not neglected. In the end, the group managed to see the upper and lower Galilee, the Golan Heights, Caesarea, Acre, Safed, the Dead Sea, Masada and the Judean Desert.

Ismar David Day

Posted on February 5, 2021 | by IDA

From drafts of a talk, given by Ismar David, at the March 6, 1974 Typophiles luncheon at Rosioff’s Restaurant on West 43rd Street in Manhattan.

Dear friends,I am grateful for the honor. I want to use this opportunity to elaborate some more on one of my latest works, The Psalms. The Hebrew typeface and the specific kind of drawings are the two aspects that have involved me a great deal. The Hebrew developed in a time when only a few Hebrew typefaces were available.

When I could not resist the temptation to venture into Hebrew type design, it was clear to me that these new designs would have to move much closer toward their Middle Eastern ancestors and away from those styles that had developed in Europe.

The impact and impression that new surroundings, the Judean landscape, the eastern way of life and a new social environment had made precluded any other conception. But, of course, all technical aspects had to be considered within the framework of western achievements in typographical design. I intended to go one step further than in the conception of a type family and add a sans serif to text face and oblique and I developed these three variations on three weights. Each letter of theses nine variation would fit on the same matrix and line up in print on the same base line. This is always a problem that goes with designs intended for line casting machines. In those days no one in Palestine thought of anything else. I had to come to grips also with proportions of letters and devised a division of the alphabet into three groups, just one group narrow letters, then the group of medium width that included all letters with only one vertical element with the and [a] very few others and the third wide group including most letters with two full vertical elements or more. This system brought a much higher degree of evenness in structure and texture than is usual in Hebrew typography, which too often suffers from spottiness.

The new forms, which I developed, I tried out in newspaper ads, as display matter and on sign boards, of which I designed many during this period. I gained confidence as I observed the acceptance that was given to these new forms. After about 15 years since my start I finally prepared final drawings for Intertype. Unfortunately the three sans serif designs were not included in Intertype plans. Since then the accepted deigns for the text face and its oblique companion have gained wide acceptance. While in the beginning, their use was limited to commercial matters, more and more books are now set in these faces and it does not any longer seem strange to see a book like The Psalms set in my Hebrew.

That much about type. Now about my drawings.

While I admire western art I am drawn toward the Oriental concept that uses symbols but never tries to imitate nature or to create illusions of realities. But these symbols are rendered so that they not only stand for objects, but convey qualities of it as well as a mood and atmosphere. There is a great difference between the simplistic symbol like the red cross which you can only recognize for what it is after you have learned its meaning and the brush delineation of a blossom on a Chinese screen that can convey so much beyond the form which it symbolizes. In my work, lines do not any longer define shapes, but become symbols like letterforms, being straight or curved and modulated. They are grouped to form patterns to suggest and stimulate, but never to define. A lot is left to the viewer. Specifically for drawing s that are accompanying religious texts , it seems to me important that the views is not irritated by the style of attire of figures, the fashion of beards or hair styles, but is allowed to let his imagination wander.

Of course, I also like to use color. But here, too, I will not use color in a realistic fashion. Color can create texture and background. It can create tension. And if used successfully, it will complement or support my lines and strengthen their impact. So I use lines and color, but mainly lines, not in the framework of isms, like realism, expressionism or impressionism, but to serve my own needs to communicate my ideas [and] my feelings, but in the service of the book.

About the Typophiles

Posted on February 5, 2021 | by IDA

The Typophiles, probably founded around 1932 and still active, an association that fosters the appreciation of fine typography and bookmaking with luncheons, lectures and publications.

One upon a time, when New York City was the center of the book industry, a group of men in the various related printing trades formed an informal monthly lunch club. They met at restaurants in Manhattan to chew the fat and share examples of their work. Luminaries like Fredric Goudy and Bruce Rogers attended. In these early days they took to joyously and somewhat spontaneously producing collections of their own printed matter with whimsical titles like Spinach from Many Gardens (for Goudy’s seventieth birthday), Barnacles from Many Bottoms, scraped and gathered together for BR…, and Diggings from Many Ampersandhogs.

In 1940, the Typophiles initiated a subscription fee for regular publications, which they called chap books, as well as pamphlet commentaries, the latter amounting to a kind of newsletter. They remained, however, a volunteer and non-profit organization. In 1955, when Ismar David provided the lettering for the cover of Chap Book Commentary 26, the Typophiles were still a male-only organization—women could join beginning in 1970—and still characteristically quirky. Something of the nature of the group, or more properly of its guiding light and founding member, Paul Bennett, can be seen in his guidance On Getting the Chap Books.

There’s no mystery about becoming a Typophile subscriber and getting the Chap Books, we repeat. This may require a bit of waiting, but that’s because our volunteer set-up places a natural limitation on what we can handle. The turnover among subscribers is small. There are several deaths each year, unfortunately. And occasionally economic difficulties mean dropping out.

Our subscription procedure is simple: We accept only subscribers who want our books and will be patient in waiting for them; who seldom write about details, and who send renewal funds promptly upon notice. This since there’s little time for correspondence or the chore of record-keeping.
Applicants must send on a minimum of $20. in advance. They move from the waiting list as subscription vacancies occur. Funds are allocated in these directions: Membership fee, $4. Annual dues,$4. And forthcoming books at the rate of $2 each.

Potential subscribers, in short, must have faith in our judgment and in what we do—there’s no time for notes, follow-ups or the customary business procedures.

Institutional subscriptions, for reasons outlined previously require a minimum deposit of $26, so inquiries may be halved. Remember, please, we have no time to acknowledge orders, sign vouchers, or do special billing.

If you have a candidate who can bear with these peculiarities, and who wants in, act accordingly.
For The Typophiles,
Paul A. Bennett

In 1955, too, The Typophiles gave out 200 copies of Daniel 3, a small book which World Publishing had given out for the holidays the year before. Ismar David had supplied the pattern on its slipcase, as well as lettering and illustrations.

After Bennett died suddenly in 1966, The Typophiles were forced to make their organization a bit more organized, formally incorporating as a non-profit, educational organization in the State of New York, adopting rules and electing officers. They elected Eugene M. Ettenberg as their first president in 1968. Robert Leslie, who succeeded him the following year, put his enthusiastic stamp on The Typophiles in many ways, including arranging typographic-themed junkets for the group, including trips to Europe and Israel. Abe Lerner followed Leslie as president.

Over the years, many guests and members have spoken at the luncheons, among them, Ismar David on March 6, 1974. David traveled to Israel with The Typophiles on their “Printers’ Pilgrimage to Israel” in 1974 and for Leslie’s 100th birthday celebration in 1985.

Larry the Goniff

Posted on February 3, 2021 | by IDA

H. Lawrence Hoffman, 1911–1977, book jacket designer, illustrator, painter, teacher.

A RISD grad (class of 1934) and post-grad, H. Lawrence Hoffman had a remarkable career during which he designed more than 650 book covers and jackets—as he kept neither records nor his own artwork, the exact total remains elusive and growing. Until 1948, he worked mainly for mass market paperback publishers, creating a dazzling variety of pulp fiction and mystery covers. While working with Sol Immerman, he illustrated all but 11 of the first 125 covers for Popular Library. He rendered the cover illustration as a smaller line drawing on the title page. After 1948, he left frenetic, poorly-paid mass market covers behind to design dust jackets for traditional publishers. He contributed the jacket, endpapers and illustrations for The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, which was among the AIGA’s fifty best books of the year in 1948. Hoffman taught illustration and lettering at Cooper Union from 1960–1967 and was a Professor of Art at C.W. Post University from 1967-1976. Filmmaker David Hoffman, made this short video about his father and his creative, humorous work.

In the Spring of 1972, Dorothy and Ismar David had friends over to their apartment. Bob Leslie, Phil Grushkin and Larry Hoffman were present. A silver spoon went missing…

Letter from H. Lawrence Hoffman, May 1972.

May 1972

Dear Dorothy:

Last night we were dressing for a dinner party—the first since we visited you—and guess what I found in my pocket. I decided to mail it to you anonymously— but Eve voted that down! So now you know I am the culprit! But I assure you the item was planted on me— probably by Gruskin [sic] or Leslie—both of whom have shifty, untrustworthy eyes.

We also send our Love
Larry the goniff.

Announcement from H. Lawrence Hoffman — Change of address announcement from H. Lawrence Hoffman.

About the 23rd Congress

Posted on February 2, 2021 | by IDA

Theodor Herzl established the Zionist Congress in 1897 as the legislative authority of the Zionist Organization. Early congresses took place in Basel, Switzerland and other European cities. With more than a little pride and joy, the 23rd Zionist Congress became the first to take place in the State of Israel.

The 23rd Zionist Congress convened in Jerusalem on August 15, 1951. It faced complicated and contentious issues principally because the major goal of Zionist movement—the creation of the State of Israel—had already been achieved. When the congress wrapped up on August 30th, the delegates had not ratified a new “Jerusalem Program” to replace the old “Basel Program,” concentrating instead on the less radical necessities of absorbing immigrants in Israel and fostering unity among Jewish people.

Ismar David designed various graphics for the 23rd Congress. His designs were used again for the 24th Congress in 1956, with alterations by Emanuel Grau.

Envelope commemorating the 23rd Zionist Congress

About Paul Standard

Posted on January 29, 2021 | by IDA

Paul Standard, 1896-1992, calligrapher and author.

In the December 1947 issue of Women’s Day, Paul Standard set out his goal: to supplant writing methods, like the Palmer system, with Ludovico Arrighi’s 1522 model, La Operina. His article, complete with diagrams and charts, received an enthusiastic reception from his colleagues in Europe, including Jan Van Krimpen, who translated it into Dutch.¹ Although Standard tirelessly advocated for teaching broad-edge italic handwriting to children, his most lasting impact lies in his works documenting the revival of calligraphy in the twentieth century and in his support of a young German calligrapher named Herman Zapf. Fluent in German, Standard translated Zapf’s works for many years and helped Zapf in innumerable ways, during his early visits to the country.

Tall, elegant, old-world in style, Paul Standard was a journalist, an editor for the Associated Press and a publicist for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He and his wife Stella, a cookbook author, lived in a book-lined apartment in the east 60s in Manhattan and were fixtures at graphic arts events in New York City. He taught at the Parson’s School of Design and at Cooper Union concurrently with Ismar David. In 1983, the Type Directors Club awarded him its prestigious TDC Medal.

Review of Our Calligraphic Heritage

Posted on January 29, 2021 | by IDA

Paul Standard’s review of Our Calligraphic Heritage appeared in Fine Print, volume VI, number 2, April 1980.

David, Ismar. Our Calligraphic Heritage. The Geyer Studio Writing Book.
New York: The Geyer Studio, [1979].
Oblong 8vo. 38pp., plus thirty-four 4-page folders,
all enclosed in a cloth-covered wooden easel-case.
Signed by the author/calligrapher.
$67.50 plus $3.50 shipping from Geyer Studio,
P.O. Box 1311, New York, New York, 10008.

We need hardly say that our calligraphic heritage was not invented by Ismar David. But it is perfectly true to say the Our Calligraphic Heritage is a book which present that tangled heritage in terms and figures of uniquely graceful clarity, to enrich the taste of every living practitioner of letterforms, and to give (perhaps for the first time) a full view of a landscape of letters to a world readership.

It is a heritage of enormous scope, hitherto lying scattered in many hundreds of scholarly volumes available to specialists, but now taken in hand by a scholar-artist who is also an artist-scholar. Undaunted by the complexities of the task, Ismar David has discerned the threads of related families of letters, and has presented them in a text supported by graphic illustration, enlightening to the reader and inspiring to the practitioner. Seventeen styles are presented, beginning with Classic Roman Capitals, and continuing through various uncials, Carolingian Minuscules, Gothic, Humanistic, Chancery, Fraktur, etc., and ending with contemporary italics.

To produce such a work, the very boundaries of the book-making art had to be extended, as its title page declares: “The Geyer Studio Writing Book — Text, Charts, and Compositions by Ismar David.” It therefore consists of three major units: first, a paperbound writing book containing a narrative text with clarifying charts and figures for each style; second a set of seventeen folders to display the major historic styles, with printed remarks and graphic detail as needed; and third, a series of seventeen folders, each with a different multi-color calligraphic composition by Ismar David, to show how each classical form can be adapted into motifs for current use in the graphic arts. All three components are brightly distinctive in their use of color. This trinity of parts is housed in a wood-frame box with a heavy buckram cover. This latter feature turns it into something new in bookmaking because it is so ingeniously hinged as to become a lectern whereon a single folder or series may be placed, its bottom edge resting on a ledge to keep the chart vertical, while the reader is free to flank the lectern at left and right with other folders needed for instant comparison. This device makes detailed study of the forms a straightaway instead of an entangling process. And since the reader can easily bring forward the two or several folders needed to decide some point of difference or similarity, he will have more comfort in this than the usual textbook.

I have spoken at length of this bookmaking breakthrough because of its novelty. But I must add that every page of text and every style of letter shown is made with such exemplary finesse and accuracy as could only be lavished by an author solidly informed and long in love with all letters and with worth bookmaking.

About Ben Shahn

Posted on January 29, 2021 | by IDA

Ben Shahn, 1898–1969, painter, lithographer, photographer, activist, lecturer, teacher.

Born in Lithuania, Ben Shahn immigrated with his parents and siblings to the United States in 1906. After studying in America and Europe, he rejected modern European art in favor of social realism, bursting onto the American art scene with his series of paintings, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1931–32. They remain perhaps his most iconic work. Shahn made over 6,000 photographs for the Farm Security Administration during the Depression. He designed and executed his own murals, experimented extensively with lithographs and silk-screens, taught, and lectured widely. He often treated themes of social progress and social protest, but also had a special interest in lettering. He had had an intense relationship, he said, with typography, during his apprenticeship years. Both Roman and Hebrew lettering figure in his work.

By the mid fifties, Shahn was at the height of his career and Ismar David, a relative new comer. Shahn had lived, since 1938, in the Jersey Homesteads (now called Roosevelt), a few miles from Princeton University, which exhibited his work in the 1940s and ’50s and eventually awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1962. On October 13, 1954, Gillette Griffin, Director of the Graphic Arts Division of the Princeton University Library approached Ishmar [sic] David with a proposal that seems to have involved quite a bit of foot-dragging:

Dear Mr. David:

I have been meaning to write for several months now, ever since Ben Shan [sic] suggested that perhaps you and he could combine efforts on a joint exhibition of your calligraphy for the Graphic Arts Division here at Princeton. I would like to suggest that the exhibition might be principally of Hebrew calligraphy, but if you have any other examples of calligraphy that you think interesting, it might be nice to include them too. May be you and Mr. Shan could work out what you would like to show together, and I will get in touch with him. If possible, I would like to put the exhibition up sometime in November.

David responded the next day, that he had written to Shahn and was interested in the exhibition, but that the time to plan such a project was unfortunately short. Shahn responded three weeks later.

Dear Mr. David

I so regret not having answered sooner and now it’s probably too late. But only too late for the pleasure of going through some of your wonderful graphics with you. As far as Mr. Griffin is concerned he’s a highly perceptive and sensitive person and will do a bang up job on any exhibit that he would undertake.

This has been a fantastic month and now I have to leave for a 2 week mid-west lecture tour. Please let me know what progress you’ve made with Mr. Griffin. And again accept my apologies for not answering sooner.

Regards to Mrs. David and Dr. Leslie
Yrs Sincerely
Ben Shahn
Roosevelt, N. J.
Nov 8 1954

Letter from Ben Shahn to Ismar David, November 8, 1954. Ismar David papers, box 5, folder 118, Cary Graphic Arts Collection, RIT.