Page from "Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration," 1914
1914
A 1914 letterpress advertisement page promoting Ludwig Alter’s artisanal furniture and interior-architecture services, blending an engraved vignette with elaborate hand-drawn display lettering.
A finely detailed black-ink scene — a corseted lady and a small table set on a draped checkerboard pedestal — crowns the sheet, while ornate, calligraphic type and flourishes in varying sizes march down the page against the warm, slightly worn paper.
The sheet exemplifies the decorative Jugendstil visual language used to sell craft interiors at the Darmstadt artists’ colony and is the kind of richly ornamented typography that designers like Jan Tschichold later rejected when advocating for modernist, functional graphic design.
Medium
Letterpress
Dimensions
11 11/16 x 8 5/16" (29.7 x 21.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Jan Tschichold Collection, Gift of Philip Johnson
Accession
1182.1999
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
