But Dwig did not follow the rules. His longtime friend and
collaborator Dorothy Abbe once said that he had arrived at his own
determination of fine printing, and it differed very considerably from that
of Goudy, Updike, and Rogers. While these stalwart keepers of the classical
rejected mass production as anathema to fine design, during the course of
his life Dwig witnessed the passing of individual craftsmanship and the
substitution of bigger, faster machines in all phases of typesetting and
printing. He saw no reason why new technologies should not produce
quality work, and he proposed that photoengraving, for example, made
calligraphy more widely available, which would increase popular
appreciation of good design.
Dwiggins practiced advertising design, type design, book design,
and marionette design. He even designed a working puppet theater in
his clapboard studio across the street from his home in Hingham,
Massachusetts. But to appreciate Dwig’s obsessions for work and therefore
his contributions, one must know that he was driven to accomplish as
much as possible before succumbing to the dire prediction of an early
death. “He was handicapped by the clock and the calendar,” says a
biographical notation. Diagnosed with diabetes, an often fatal disease at
that time ( 1922 ), Dwiggins exhibited an intense drive to get on with life.
Dorothy Abbe explained: “He resolved thenceforth to satisfy himself.” A
year later Dwig announced to the world: “Me I am a happy invalid and it
has revolutionized my whole attack. My back is turned on the more banal
kind of advertising and I have canceled all commissions and am resolutely
set on starving....I will produce art on paper and wood after my own
heart with no heed to any market.” However, fate intervened: Insulin soon
became available, giving Dwiggins another thirty-three years of life.
Tossing aside his lucrative advertising accounts, he concentrated
on the not-so-profitable business of book design and page ornament. His
earliest book commissions were from the Harvard University Press, for
whom he designed the now-rare volume Modern Color( 1923 ), and from
Alfred A. Knopf, for whom, beginning in 1924 and continuing for almost
two decades, he designed 280 books of fiction and nonfiction as well as
almost fifty book jackets. “Bill enabled us to produce a long series of trade
books that for interest and originality of design are unequaled,” writes
Mr. Knopf.
In addition to his uniquely composed (and sometimes illustrated)
title pages, two features characterized his design: The text was always
readable, and the bindings (and especially the shelf backs) were adorned
with his calligraphic hand lettering and neo-Mayan ornament. Every piece
of lettering and typography—down to the minutest graphic detail—was
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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