Type Specimen

Most Complete Wood Display & Poster Type Specimen TYPE SPECIMEN. SCHERER, Roman. Sample Book with 226 partly colour printed leaves of all his available wood type letters. Lucerne, Roman Scherer, ca. 1910.£12000 Large 4to (300x224mm), ll. 226, all double-page openings (295x412mm), some larger format with multiple fold-outs, partly colour-printed, all with Scherer letterhead; contemporary half cloth over dark boards, very well preserved. The most comprehensive collection of Scherer's type samples, and as such a unique documentation of the designs for wood type, especially poster and display type by its most internationally influential type designer of the 20th century. Wood type became popular during the nineteenth century for making large display typefaces for printing posters, because it was lighter and cheaper than large sizes of metal type. Roman Scherer(1848-1922) specialised in wood type design and production in 1877. He manufactured letters for letterpress printing using wood from local fruit trees, which were in abundant supply in the Lucerne region. The letters were used in printing processes for posters, headlines and titles. From the beginning he targeted the international market and by 1900 the factory was producing more than 50.000 letters a year. In order to sell to customers in Russia, he produced special Cyrillic type faces. For example the typeface used by the Russian newspaper Pravda, is based on a wooden type made by Roman Scherer. But his type faces were much in demand all over the world. The type specimen also covers various decorative elements, such as borders and vignettes, typographical accessories, such as pointing hands and pictograms and figurative elements. The sample numbers range from the low 3 digits to the high 3000s, and thus presumably cover both very early type designs to later ones. The type specimen is undated, but appears to be more comprehensive than any other recorded, such as the ones held by the Basler Papiermühle and Lucerne Library, and also those recorde in the US, such as at Columbia University, Iowa and Michigan.