19th Century Graphic Design (Week 3)

The objects of his inspection are, for the most part, at the intersection of technology, commerce and culture. More than 300 years after the invention of printing, the 19th century was an era of design enlightenment. The commercial art and craft of graphic and typographic activity was

prodigiously practiced by trained artisans who drew their inspiration from many of the same sources. Printers and type foundries published scores of elaborate sample books — some so ornate they resembled family Bibles, others stuffed like scrapbooks with samples hot off the presses.

Contemporary artists and designers sometimes think this material is merely quaint, or else they turn up their noses altogether at this decorative stuff, but a simple scan of Jury’s reproductions shows that the men (and the few women) who worked in this field knew exactly what they were doing. This is not naïve art. What they knew how to do was decidedly more difficult than using layout, font and drawing programs on today’s computers. The high level of sophistication can be seen in specimens like an excessively decorated ad for a 12-color press (“Golding’s Chromatic Jobber,” circa 1886) that demanded a lot of patience as well as aptitude to achieve the final result. And the eccentric typography on the cover of a specimen book by Thomas Hailing elegantly employs a quirky ornate typeface that prefigures everything from psyche­deliato today’s comics.