Item #938 [UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]
[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]

[UKRAINIAN FONTS, THE 1920S]

Item #938

Two Ukrainian type specimen of the 1920s.
1. Derzhavniy trest predpriemstv poligrafichnoy prommichlennosti Kiev-Druk. Zrazki shrivtiv 6oi drukarni [i.e. The State Trust of the Printing Enterprises. Type Specimen of the 6th Printer]. Kiev: KIev-Druk, [1920s]. [220 pp.] 26,5x18 cm. One of 150 copies. Original brown cloth. Lettering on the spine is faded, otherwise in a very good condition. In Ukrainian.
2. Knizhkova-zhurnalna fabrika. Zrazki shrivtiv [i.e. The Factory of Books and Magazines. Type Specimen]. Kiev, [1920s]. 72 pp. 20x13,5 cm. One of 100 copies. Original brown cloth. Very good. In Ukrainian.
The editions are extremely rare like all Ukrainian pre-war type specimen. It’s interesting to analyse them because flagman style of book design in USSR at the time was book constructivism, the principles of which, developed by Alexei Gan, suggested that the fonts as well as any other typographic material should be regarded as the primary means of designing a book.
Kiev-Druk was one of the main typographies in Kiev in the 1920s-1930s, producing all kind of printed materials, including children’s books and posters.
The catalog of Kiev-Druk are design using the principles of constructivism as well, but because a lot of the typography’s design elements resemble ‘art-nouveau’, the end product is very curious. Some half-titles have been designed in the strict geometrical manner, while the variety of vignettes and the headpieces show the lean towards pre-revolutionary stylistics. However the vignettes of the machinery, steamers and coal-wagons are also present, as well as coat of arms of USSR (on the same page with rather bourgeois-looking monocle and chairs). The quintessence of the conflict between the old and the new are shown on the page, where the example of baroque ornament is given, around the lettering ‘Communists’.
All in all, a very interesting insight into the printed matters of early Soviet Ukraine.
Extremely rare, not in the Worldcat.

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