12ozProphet

“By the 1930s display alphabets were being duplicated from master artwork and manually assembled into words. The Rutherford photo-lettering machine, produced nearby in New Jersey and developed from 1928 to 1936 with the banknote industry in mind, featured master alphabets on glass plates. Only a mere handful of the Rutherford machines had been sold and put into use. The Electrographic Corporation, then owner of one of New York City’s leading typographers, decided to launch a start-up proposed and staffed by departing Rutherford employees, notably Edward Rondthaler and Harold Horman. The new midtown firm of Photo-Lettering Inc., starting in 1936, took advantage of the underutilized technology, and claimed an early commercialization of phototype. While not text photocomposition, Photo-Lettering was never handlettering as the name implied. Photography freed the typographic image from the historic constraints of metal, allowing flexibility in scale, dimension, and position, variations which had previously required letter-drawing skills.”(peter bain, of incipit).

in the early 60’s, ed benguiat also joined photo-lettering, inc as a director in the company and heading up their publication PLINC. along with ed rondthaler of photo-lettering as well as herb lubalin and aaron burns, he also established the type foundry ITC in 1971 (where he then worked with lubalin on U&LC). this rich history of hand crafted type shows how much of a technical craft all of these individuals had behind the type they created, and how it evolved from metal type into a more malleable and fiscally democratic photo-based process. they had designs from many prominent designers of that time including the aforementioned individuals as well as milton glaser, dave west and many more - and its only fitting that the collection is now owned by the guys at HOUSE, who will no doubt be trustworthy in converting any of these types into the digital era. truly inspirational on all fronts.

more pics of some catalogs i have below…