Re(un)Covered

“Archival recovery: it’s journalism, but with dead people” 😵☠️🪦🗃️ Elizabeth Colwell (1881–1961) was the only woman listed as an American designer by American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) in 1948. A working artist in Chicago, she was a printmaker, painter, and writer, plus designed Colwell Handletter and Colwell Handletter Italics for American Type Founders in 1916. Colwell wrote about hand lettering ✍️ for Sketch Book (1904). Her work also appeared The Printing Art (1905) and Inland

“Well, I want the Christmas card” 🎄🎅✉️ Elizabeth Friedlander (1903–1984) made a typeface, disinformation campaigns, Die Dame fashion magazine layouts, decorative paper patterns for Curwen, book covers for publishers like Penguin and Mills & Boon, plus played the violin. Born in Germany, she studied with typography and calligraphy with Emil Rudolf Weiss (former student of Anna Simons) who likely introduced her to Bauer foundry director Georg Hartmann. Bauer commissioned her eponymous...

“I have too many tabs open” 📑 🗂️ Today we talk about some women whose archival trace is almost ghostly in its faintness. Sometimes we only have a single date and some work products, leaving huge gaps in both their professional and personal lives. Hildegard Henning (1888–?) and Lina Burger (1856–?) are two of the first women we know designed a typeface in this metal type era. What else did they do? And why were so many of the women designing foundry type from Germany? We don’t know much about

“History: problematic and cool, all at once” 📜✒️🗃️ Anna Simons (1871–1951) taught hand lettering to a generation of designers. She studied calligraphy with Edward Johnston at Royal College of Art (UK), then taught courses in his place in Germany and translated his work into German. After WWI Simons went on to teach how to use broad nib pens across Europe for decades. She also designed some 1400 titles and initials for Bremer Press.🖋️ Simons was part of the BUGRA (Weltaustellung für

“Why did you rub the lamp that contains me?” 🧞 Joe and Bethany cover what you’ll be hearing on Re(un)Covered, what is archival recovery, some feminist history, and how knowing a more inclusive past can help us make a better future. Also: dinosaurs 🦖🦕🐓. Season 1 of Re(un)Covered talks about women who designed typefaces in the hot metal type era (late 1800s to 1950s). For each episode Bethany and Joe will talk about what we know (and don’t know) about one or two of these women type design...