The Fork and Broom Press

Gnocchi

Symphonie:1938, Imre Reiner; Mozart: 1927, Georg Belwe; Maxim: 1956, Peter Schneidler; Wilhelm Klingspor: Rudolf Koch, 1926; Sonderdruck; Boulevard: 1954, Günter Gerhard Lange; Arabella: 1936, Arno Drescher; Forelle: 1936, Erich Mollowitz; Legende: 1937, Friedrich Schneidler; Adagio: 1953, Karl Klauß; Eilschrift; Bernhard-Fraktur: 1912, Lucian Bernhard; Palette: 1950, Martin Wilke

There is a wealth of fonts designed in the style of handwriting. The diversity of those fonts remined me of the variations in form of the handmade gnocchi dancing in the boiling water when they are being cooked. Two blackletter fonts have joyfully joined in: Wilhelm-Klingspor-Fraktur and Bernhard-Fraktur. And right they are. Like the Uncial, blackletter fonts developed from handwritten forms using a quill, reed pen or broad nib. These tools refuse to easily produce round forms, so the nib has to be taken off and put down again in another angle to produce a rounded letter. The movement of the nib while writing cannot be fluent, it needs to be broken, thus the term broken type or fraktur (like fracturing a bone).

 

Quince-Parsnip-Curry

Garamond: 1925, Stempel foundry; Garamond italic: 1926, Stempel foundry

Parsnip is a very old vegetable and used to be a staple food in Europe for a long time.
Garamond is a staple in typography, one of the classic fonts. It was cast by a number of foundries and on stock in many printing offices. Claude Garamond lived in the first half of the 16th century. The metal type I have on stock has been cast by Stempel in Frankfurt and has not been used much, particularly the bigger sizes. This is the reason why the ornated specimens in the italic version are virtually impeccable.