wiedler.ch

book (design) story #119

walter d. edmonds:
chad hanna

büchergilde gutenberg, zürich, 1944
printer: unionsdruckerei bern
size: 22 x 14 cm
designer: richard paul lohse

chad hanna by american writer walter d. edmonds (1904-1998) was made into a hollywood film starring young henry fonda. it is about an american country boy in the 1840s who joins a circus.

the book design by richard paul lohse (1902-1988) tries to catch the vein of the story in emulating a 19th century style typography with its faible for a wild (wild-west?) mix of decorated typefaces arranged along a central axis – actually the kind of "untidy" typography jan tschichold & co. aimed to purge in the 1920s...

lohse used his "overprinting montage" style for the jacket (similar to books 36, 54, 102): it shows a 19th century style typographic circus poster (white on green), overprinted in red by the author's name and an old woodcut of a horse acrobat. the latter also appear on the cover – in a black-yellow-red colour scheme, as often with lohse around 1940 (see story 23).

the endpapers feature horse acrobatics, too – victorian-style. on the title page another example of lohse's drawing skills – a whip that circles elegantly around the writing, like a calligraphic flourish (similar idea in story 118).

the bold titles and page/chapter numbers are centred, too.