PM
Volume 4, Nos. 1 – 8
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]
Eight issues of PM complete with original covers and all inserts bound into a single decorated cloth volume by the craftsmen at the Composing Room in an edition of 400 copies. Blue cloth boards with leather gilt spine label. Boards quite worn and bumped and spine label worn and chipped. All 8 bound issues are in near fine condition.
A unique opportunity of own a collection of PM when it was becoming the leading journal for American Graphic Design and a clarion for the Avant-Garde Immigration to the United States.
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. New York: The Composing Room/P. M. Publishing Co., [Volume 4, No. 1: 1937]. Original edition. Slim 12mo. Thick printed wrappers. 40 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Multiple paper stocks. Cover is an original 4-color offset design by Laszlo Matulay.
5.5 x 7.75 perfect-bound digest with 40 pages of articles and advertisements including Type Designs of the past and present by Stanley Morrison, color portfolio by Laszlo Matulay, Language in Pictures, industry news, trade ads, etc.
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. New York: The Composing Room/P. M. Publishing Co., Volume 4, No. 2: October 1937. Original edition. A very good or better digest-size magazine in photographically-printed stiff wrappers: bound with wire rings. Light wear to edges. Interior unmarkedand very clean. Cover consists of nude studies by Stanley Bernard Schaeffer.
5.5 x 7.75 wire-ring bound digest with 48 pages of articles including A. M. Cassandre’s Peignot by Joseph Brumenthal, Type Designs of the past and present by Stanley Morrison, Morning Noon Night: a Photogravure Insert by Stanley Bernard Schaeffer, Claude Garamond, Robert Granjon, Christoper Plantin, and industry news, trade ads, etc.
[Beall, Lester] Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. New York: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., Volume 4, No. 3: November 1937. Original edition. Slim 12mo. Stitched and perfect-bound printed wrappers. 66 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Classic 2-color letterpress cover design by Lester Beall.
The November 1937 PM features a cover and 16-page letterpress insert designed by Lester Beall. Scarce in collectible condition. The Beall cover for PM 39 is widely recognized as a singular high point in American Graphic Design. Beall's design is a perfect synthesis of the European Avant-Garde neue typographie, interpreted by an extremely sensitive Designer from Missouri.
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. NYC: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., Volume 4, No. 4: December 1937 – January 1938. Original edition. Slim 12mo. Perfect bound and sewn printed wrappers. 84 [16] pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. 4-color offset cover art by Edward Chaiter.
5.5 x 7.75 perfect-bound digest with 84 [16] pages of articles including Pratt Institute (student portfolio featuring industrial design, graphic art and illustration), and WPA Federal Art Project (review of Poster Show in NYC), Type Designs of the Past and Present Stanley Morison, and much more.
Leslie, Robert L. and Percy Seitlin [Editors] PM: AN INTIMATE JOURNAL FOR ART DIRECTORS, PRODUCTION MANAGERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATES. New York: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co. [Volume 4, No. 5: February / March 1938 ]. Slim 12mo. Stapled, photographically-printed stiff wrappers. 50 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Cover by Lee Brown Coye.
This issue of PM features Essentials for Architectural Education by Walter Gropius, a 16-page letterpress insert designed by Herbert Matter. PM 42 was the first of three issues that devoted themselves to detailed analysis of the importance of the recently-shuttered Bauhaus.
In April 1937, Robert Leslie and Percy Seitlin announced their intent to devote the July or August PM to The Bauhaus Idea in America. The ambitious plan for Josef Albers to guest edit the contributions of Walter Gropius, Xanti Schawinsky, Grace Young, William Lescaze, and A. Lawrence Kocher was never realized. The Gropius contribution was published in the Feb./March 1938 issue and was followed by issues devoted to Herbert Bayer and the Bauhaus Typographic Tradition.
Also features a cover and insert by Lee Brown Coye, an artist who achieved fame as a preferred cover artist for Weird Tales.
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. NYC: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., Volume 4, No. 6: April - May 1938. Issue Number 43 (on cover but actually number 42 in count). Original edition. Slim 12mo. Perfect bound and sewn printed wrappers. 112 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. One of the finest issues of PM. Cover design by Hans Barschel printed on a special cloth paper.
This issue of PM features a cover and 8-page 4-color lithographic insert designed by Hans Barschel and a magnificent Fifty American Prints 1933-1938 insert, featuring 50 full-page black and white reproductions of the 50 prints of the Year Show sponsored by the AIGA (including price list!).
5.5 x 7.75 perfect-bound digest with 112 pages of articles and advertisements.
- Hans Barschel (designed by Hans Barschel)
- Editorial notes
- A Bamberger Experiment
- Book Reviews: American Bookman History; The Handbook of Advertising - ed. by E. B. Weiss, F. C. Kendall, C. B. Larrabee; The Book - The Story of Printing and Bookmaking by Douglas C. McMurtrie; A Philosophy of Esthetics by Dale Nichols
- PM Shorts: mentions Hans Alexander Mueller, Eleanor Treacy , Norman W. Forgue , Bob Carroll, Adolph Treidler, Howard Willard, Evelyn Harter, E. Van Elkan.
- Making Printers’ Typefaces (designed by R. Hunter Middleton and Norman W. Forgue)
- Fifty American Prints 1933-1938 - AIGA Exhibit (designed by Lucian Bernhard). A magnificent snapshot of the Ashcan School of American Art and the WPA/Federal Arts project (who co-sponsored the event). Artists whose work is reproduced in this bound-in insert: Rita Albers, Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, John Taylor Arms, Peggy Bacon, Will Barnet, Fred Becker, Thomas Hart Benton, George Biddle, Andrew Butler, Paul Cadmus, Francis Chapin, Jean Charlot, Nicolai Cikovsky, George Constant, Howard Cook, Jon Corbino, Hubert Davis, John De Martelly, Mabel Dwight, Fritz Eichenberg, Philip Evergood, Don Freeman, Wanda Gag, Emil Ganso, Anne Goldthwaite, William Gropper, Rockwell Kent, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Joseph Leboit, Doris Lee, Russel Lembach, Charles Locke, Margaret Lowengrund,Peppino Mangravite, Kyra Markham, Jack Markow, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Nason, Edith Newton, Augustus Peck, Sanford Ross, Francis Shields, Raphael Soyer, Benton Spruance, Prentiss Taylor, Alice Tenney, Stow Wengenroth, Harry Wickey, Lois Wilcox,and Grant Wood. Wow.
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. New York: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., June-July 1938 [Volume 4, No. 7]. Original edition. Slim 12mo. Perfect bound and sewn letterpressed wrappers. 76 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Cover is 2-color original design by Bauhaus student M. Peter Piening.
5.5 x 7.75 perfect-bound digest with 44 [32] pages of articles and advertisements. This issue of PM rates a singular high point in the history of American Graphic design because it was the first published account in English of the Bauhaus Typographic philosophy. L. Sandusky wrote the text and Lester Beall provided the design work for the 34-page, 2-color insert that has become one of the standard bibliographic references for the cross-pollination of European and American avant-garde typography.
The Bauhaus Tradition and the New Typography feautres work by Wassily Kaninsky, Alexander Archipenko, Walter Gropius, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Karel Teige, Piet Mondrian, Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner, Herbert Bayer, M. Peter Piening and many others. While it seems common today to attach these names together under the common avant-garde umbrella, it was quite an intellectual stretch to merge the plastic arts of architecture, painting, typography, printing and sculpture into a coherent argument in 1938.
Lester Beall's layouts for this article are truly amazing-- A classic piece of original graphic design and one of the best instances of the synthesis of the European Avant-garde into the American consciousness.
This issue of PM also includes an article on Warren Chappell; A New Angle on Animation; A Specimen of Types by The Village Press; A Bibliography of The Village Press; and A Specimen of types - engraved & designed by The Village Press.
In this issue, the PM / A-D Shorts column mentions L. Sandusky, Lester Beall, The Art Squad, Leon Friend, Herbert Matter, M. Peter Piening, Paul Smith.
[Industrial Designer] Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. New York: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., Volume 4, No. 8: August-September 1938. Original edition. Slim 12mo. Thick printed perfect bound and sewn wrappers. 64 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Multiple paper stocks. Cover is an original 4-color offset design by Hans Alexander Mueller.
5.5 x 7.75 perfect-bound digest with 64 pages of articles and advertisements that include:
- Hans Alexander Mueller at Seventy by Lynd Ward. 16-page insert illustrated with electrotypes from original wood engravings via 5-color letterpress.
- Mr. Gerald Worthington Cedluss Streamlines the Tomato
- Designers at Work in America: 31 pages of Industrial Design featuring work and self-designed 2-page profiles of:
- Ruth Gerth
- Wilbur Henry Adams
- Walter Baermann
- Donald Deskey
- Donald R. Dohner
- Frederick J. Kiesler
- Lucian Bernhard
- Russel Wright
- Edward Epstean at Seventy
- Editorial Notes
- Letter to the Editor from Professor Josef Albers of Black Mountain College, NC gently correcting L. Sandusky's article on The Bauhaus Tradition and the New Typography. How cool is that?
- PM Shorts: L. Moholy - Nagy, Frank E. Powers, George F. Trenholm, Alfred A. Cohn, Otto W. Fuhrmann, F. L Amberger, Irving Geis.
- Advertisers include The Composing Room, Merganthaler - Linotype, Intertype, Allen - Hall Co. Inc., Wilbar Engravings, Ludlow Typograph, Russell Rutter Co., Inc., Silvertone Process Co., Reliance reproduction Co., Colton Press, The National Process Co., Flower Electrotypes.
PM magazine was the leading voice of the U. S. Graphic Arts Industry from its inception in 1934 to its end in 1942 (then called AD). As a publication produced by and for professionals, it spotlighted cutting-edge production technology and the highest possible quality reproduction techniques (from engraving to plates). PM and A-D also championed the Modern movement by showcasing work from the vanguard of the European Avant-Garde well before this type of work was known to a wide audience.