FUTURA BOOK
Paul Renner, The Bauer Type Foundry
Paul Renner, The Bauer Type Foundry, Inc.: FUTURA BOOK. New York/Frankfurt am Main: The Bauer Type Foundry, Inc., n. d. Slim octavo. String bound printed and embossed wrappers. 10 pp. Typesetting examples printed in two colors throughout. Wrappers lightly tanned and upper corner gently creased. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. A nearly fine example.
7.5 x 10.5 typographic ephemera consisiting of 8 pages of finely printed typesetting examples utilizing the Futura Book font designed by Paul Renner. Printed in Germany. The slogan Futura: die Schrift unserer Zeit [the typeface of our time] captured the excitement generated by the release of Paul Renner’s Futura by the Bauer Type Foundry in 1927. Since then, Futura has been one of the few products that has lived up to its own marketing hyperbole.
Futura is the font most readily associated with Jan Tschichold's idea that New Typography must be characteristic of the modern age, with its' pure geometry perfectly reflecting the industrial culture of postwar Europe. When Tschichold lauded the engineer whose work is marked by "economy, precision and the use of pure constructional forms that correspond to the functions of the object," he could have been describing Renner’s typeface.
Paul Renner ( 1878 – 1956) was a central figure in the German artistic movements of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming an early and prominent member of the Deutscher Werkbund while creating his first book designs for various Munich-based publishers. As the author of numerous texts such as Typografie als Kunst (Typography as Art) and Die Kunst der Typographie (The Art of Typography) he created a new set of guidelines for balanced book design. Renner taught with Jan Tschichold in the 1930s and was a key participant in the heated ideological and artistic debates of that time. Arrested and dismissed from his post by the Nazis, he eventually emerged as a voice of experience and reason in the postwar years. Throughout this tumultuous period he produced a body of work of the highest distinction.
From Luc Devroye, McGill University on Extinct 20th Century Foundries: Bauersche Schriftgiesserei was a "Frankfurt-based foundry started in 1837 by Johann Christian Bauer. At the end of the 19th century, the new owner was Georg Hartmann. On its staff, it had designers such as Konrad F. Bauer [Alpha (1954), Beta (1954), Folio (1956-63), Imprimatur (1952-55), Volta (1956), Verdi (1957), Impressum (1963), all made with Walter Baum], Lucian Bernhard [Bernhard Condensed, 1912], Hugo Steiner-Prag [Batarde, 1916], Julius Diez [vignetten, 1912], Henri Wieynck [Trianon, 1906; Cursive Renaissance, 1912; Wieynck-Kursiv, 1912], Georg Hartmann, Paul Renner [Futura, 1937], Emil Rudolf Weiss [Weiss Fraktur, 1924], Berthold Wolpe [Handwerkerzeichen, 1936; Hyperion, 1950; Rundgotisch, 1938] and F.H. Ernst Scheidler [Legend, 1937]. In its glory period, Bauer's leader was Heinrich Jost (1889-1949), from 1922 until 1948, who with punchcutter Louis Hoell made a beautiful version of Bodoni, now known as Bauer Bodoni. A New York office was set up in 1927, but after the 1960s, the foundry declined and finally closed its doors in 1972. Its typefaces were passed on to its Barcelona branch, Fundicion Tipografica Neufville."