A highlight from a recent catalogue, Willem Sandberg’s ‘lectura sub aqua – experimenta typografica’, the first of his clandestine pamphlet series published illegally during the Dutch resistance (Amsterdam, 1944). The cover relief is from a printer’s matrix, printed on phenolic resin ‘flong’ boards. More details below.
Part of an extraordinary collection offered by
@simsreed_books and
@shaperorarebooks : ‘Constant: New Babylon and the Situationist City’ (February 2024).
‘Throughout the war Sandberg was active in the Dutch resistance movement, and in the spring of 1943 was associated with a daring raid. The Gestapo put a price on Sandberg’s head, forcing him to go into hiding for fifteen months under an assumed name. It was during this time that he made the first of his experimenta typografica, hand-made booklets in which he collected inspirational quotes from his wide reading, and to which he added his comments in writing and in typography. In giving each quote a definite typographic character, Sandberg transformed his seemingly loose collections into intensely coherent meditations on the great questions of life so disregarded outside his hiding place. Some of the booklets were later published using a mixture of type and hand-rendered elements. The first of these, ‘lectura sub aqua’ (reading under water), was published illegally in 1944. The experimenta typografica demonstrate the materials, styles and conventions he was later to adopt for a wider audience. The Stedelijk catalogues are in this sense a continuation of the experiments of Sandberg’s wartime seclusion, in which he was similarly prolific: he made twelve of the eighteen experimenta typografica in the period from December 1943 to December 1944.’ (Mafalda Spencer in
@eyemagazine_ Issue no. 25, 1997).
#willemsandberg #lecturasubaqua #clandestinepamphlets #experimentatypografica #printersmatrix #artistbooks
