Klassische Schriften (Rudolf Koch)

It’s 1908. Thirty-two-year-old Rudolf Koch is ready to write a book. His first. This is it. He presents twenty-five plates of lettering not meant to be ripped off, but to motivate and inspire type designers. Essentially, this is a showing of classical typefaces after Gutenberg, Dürer, Morris, König, Hupp, Eckmann, Behrens and others. As Jerry Cinamon wrote, “[o]ver half the typographic samples were redrawn by Koch, not because he thought he could design them better, but because the originals were protected by copyright.” That seems a little peculiar, but the takeaway is that what we have here is Koch bringing his own hand to other hands. His RK monogram is peppered throughout. Strangely rare.