Rudolph Koch (1876 - 1950)
Koch was for most of his career the staff designer at the Klingspor type
foundry in Offenbach. Early work by Peter Behrens and Otto Eckmann showed
a clear Jugendstil culture upon which he built, designing revised blackletter
faces. He combined the talents of punch cutter and calligrapher, two skills
sometimes at odds with each other.
The best summary of his career is in Sebastian Carter's Twentieth
Century Type Designers , Trefoil, London, 1987.
This extraordinary, beautiful little book of decorative alphabets - The
Little ABC Book of Rudolph Koch (Das ABC Buchlein ) was produced
in 1934 by a convergence of all the talents at the Offenbacher Werkstatt.
It was written by Koch and Berthold Wolpe, and cut into lead by Kredel
and Eichenuer.
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