Berthold Wolpe Explained

Berthold Wolpe
Birth Name:Berthold Ludwig Wolpe
Birth Date:29 October 1905
Birth Place:Offenbach am Main, German Empire
Death Place:London, England
Notable Works:Albertus typeface
Occupation:Typographer, type designer
Children:4

Berthold Ludwig Wolpe (29 October 1905  - 5 July 1989) was a German calligrapher, typographer, type designer, book designer and illustrator.[1] He was born into a Jewish family at Offenbach near Frankfurt, emigrated to England soon after the Nazis came to power in 1935 and became a naturalized British citizen in 1947.[2] He was made a Royal Designer for Industry in 1959,[3] awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in 1968[4] and appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1983.[5] He died in London in 1989.

Career

Wolpe began his career as an apprentice in a firm of metalworkers, followed by four years as a student of Rudolf Koch at the Offenbach Kunstgewerbeschule. In 1932 he visited London and met Stanley Morison, who invited Wolpe to design a printing type of capital letters for the Monotype Corporation. The typeface, Albertus,[6] [7] was first shown in 1935 and completed in 1940.

When World War II was declared Wolpe, along with other German nationals living in England, was sent to an internment camp in Australia. He was permitted to return to England in 1941 and joined the production department at Faber and Faber.[8] His use of Albertus and hand-painted lettering became strongly identified with Faber jackets in the years that followed, and continued from 1958 on the Faber paper covered Editions.[9] He remained at Faber until his retirement in 1975 and is estimated to have designed over 1,500 book covers and dust jackets.[10] [11]

In addition to Albertus, Wolpe designed several other typefaces.[12] [13] He also taught at the Frankfurt and Offenbach School of Art (1929–33), Camberwell School of Art (1948–53), Royal College of Art (1956–57) and City & Guilds of London School of Art.

A retrospective exhibition of Wolpe's career was held at the V&A Museum in 1980 with Wolpe's involvement, and another in Mainz in 2006.[14] [15] [16] In 2017 Wolpe's font design publisher Monotype released its Berthold Wolpe Collection, a set of updated digitisations of five Wolpe typefaces, and promoted them with an exhibition of Wolpe's work at the Type Museum in London.[17] [18]

Typefaces

Publications

In 1960, Wolpe published Renaissance Handwriting: An Anthology of Italic Scripts, co-authored with Alfred Fairbank, World Publishing Company & Faber and Faber

In 1967, Wolpe prepared revived editions of the early nineteenth century specimen books of London typefounder Vincent Figgins.[30] [31]

In 1975, Wolpe published a monograph on the Elizabethan writing-master John de Beauchesne. The Life & Work of: John de Beauchesne & the First English Writing-books was published in a limited edition of 50 copies for the Society for Italic Handwriting, and was subsequently republished as a chapter in A. S. Osley's Scribes and Sources (1980).[32] [33]

Personal life

His wife was fellow artist Margaret Wolpe (née Smith; sculptor and silversmith)[34] [35] and his children are Paul (doctor); Toby (technology journalist);[36] Sarah [Wolpe-Lawrence] (designer and basket maker); Deborah [Hopson-Wolpe] (potter and printmaker – who uses BLW's Albertus typeface in her work).

External links

Notes and References

  1. Drew. Nicholas. The Work of Berthold Wolpe. Art and Industry. 1940. 128–133. 10 October 2017.
  2. Web site: Dawood. Sarah. Delving into the life of Berthold Wolpe: the German Jewish designer who fled the Nazis. Design Week. 21 March 2018. 30 January 2019.
  3. http://www.thersa.org/projects/design/rdi/past-rdis List of Past Royal Designers for Industry
  4. http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=161282&groupID=161282 List of Honorary Doctorates
  5. http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/49375/supplements/12 Supplement to The London Gazette
  6. Owen Williams, 'Berthold Wolpe and his Typeface Albertus'. In: Letter Arts Review, Vol 20, No 1, 2006.
  7. [Simon Garfield]
  8. Web site: Berthold Wolpe at Faber (1941-1975). The Thought Fox. Faber & Faber. 17 April 2016. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20160403033202/http://thethoughtfox.co.uk/berthold-wolpe-at-faber-faber-1941-1975/. 3 April 2016. dmy-all.
  9. James Pardey, 'Wolpe, Albertus and Faber's Classic Covers.' In: Creative Review, December 2011.
  10. [Joseph Connolly (author)|Joseph Connolly]
  11. Web site: Himelfarb. Ellen. Meet Berthold Wolpe, the Designer Behind Faber & Faber's Distinctive Book Covers. 27 May 2015. AIGA. 10 October 2017.
  12. http://www.faber.co.uk/work/berthold-wolpe/9780571227280/ Susan Shaw. Berthold Wolpe. London: The Merrion Press, 2005.
  13. Neil Macmillan. An A–Z of Type Designers. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2006.
  14. Web site: Rhatigan. Dan. Berthold Wolpe: Type Designer, Book Designer & Emigrant. Typeoff. September 2006. 20 September 2015.
  15. Web site: Rhatigan. Dan. Exhibition (flickr set of pictures). Flickr. 7 September 2006. 20 September 2015.
  16. Web site: Shaw. Paul. Paul Shaw (design historian). Overlooked Typefaces. Print magazine. 10 February 2011. 2 July 2015.
  17. Web site: The Wolpe Collection celebrates a quiet legend of design, Berthold Wolpe. Monotype Imaging. 9 October 2017. 10 October 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171010055517/http://www.monotype.com/blog/font-stories/the-wolpe-collection-celebrates-a-quiet-legend-of-design-berthold-wolpe/. dead.
  18. Web site: Sinclair. Mark. Berthold Wolpe: An Uncommon Type. Creative Review. 27 September 2017. 9 October 2017.
  19. Book: Tracy. Walter. Letters of Credit. 168.
  20. Web site: Shaw. Paul. Overlooked Typefaces. Print magazine. 10 February 2011. 2 July 2015.
  21. Book: Margaret Re. Johanna Drucker. James Mosley. Matthew Carter. Typographically Speaking: The Art of Matthew Carter. 1 July 2003. Princeton Architectural Press. 978-1-56898-427-8. 6, 73.
  22. Web site: Dinamo Standards . Dinamo . 26 April 2020.
  23. Web site: Cavedoni . Antonio . Wolpe Pegasus . Typographica . 26 April 2020.
  24. Web site: Wolpe Pegasus . 10 October 2019 . Monotype . 26 April 2020.
  25. Web site: Hill . Jon . The face of the Tortoise . 16 January 2019 . Tortoise Media . 26 April 2020.
  26. Web site: Omagari. Toshi. Tempest. MyFonts. Monotype. 10 October 2017.
  27. Web site: Tucker. Emma. Introducing Wolpe Tempest, a contemporary and dynamic typeface from The Wolpe Collection, by Toshi Omagari. Monotype. 10 October 2017.
  28. Web site: Bryant. Sarah. James. Mosley. Florian. Hardwig. Adventures in the Monotype Archive: The Sad Story of Sachsenwald. 17 April 2014. Big Jump Press. 10 October 2017.
  29. Web site: Omagari. Toshi. Fanfare. MyFonts. Monotype. 10 October 2017.
  30. Book: Wolpe. Berthold. Vincent Figgins: Type specimens, 1801 and 1815. 1967. Printing Historical Society. London.
  31. Web site: Knopp. Justin. Type Specimens from the Vincent Figgins Type Foundry – 1815.. Typoretum. 10 October 2017.
  32. Web site: John de Beauchesne & the First English Writing-Books. Society for Italic Handwriting. 5 February 2017.
  33. Book: Osley, A. S.. 1. D. R. Godine. 9780879232979. Scribes and sources: Handbook of the chancery hand in the sixteenth century : texts from the writing-masters. Boston. 1980.
  34. News: McLean. Ruairi. Obituary: Berthold Wolpe. The Independent. 6 July 1989.
  35. News: Margaret Wolpe (obituary). Times. 20 September 2015.
  36. Web site: Wolpe. Toby. Great video on my father Berthold Wolpe's work. Twitter. 10 October 2017.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Berthold Wolpe".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.