Songs For Swinging Mothers
High In-Fidelity Records produced chiefly pseudo record albums as gag gifts. Most featured silly titles and photography to match. The actual packaging didn’t contain a vinyl LP, only a paper insert that read like, “I bought this Album for you as a gift… sorry, I couldn’t afford the record.”
The title is set out in Barclay, released by Photo-Lettering and originally drafted by lithographic stone engraver George Playford (PLINC co-founder Harold Horman's father-in-law). Upon Photo-Lettering’s founding, Playford’s alphabets, with their subtle mannerisms, were made part of PLINC’s original assets and were renamed after regions in New York City’s pre-NANP 2L-5N phone dialing program. These included Bryant, Digby, Longacre, Butterfield, Watkins, Wickersham, Tompkins Square, Lackawanna, Schuyler, Academy, Chelsea, Cortlandt, Algonquin, University, Worth, and Barclay.
Photo by Ra Cantu.
Very lucky there was another copy that shows me details of Barclay’s lowercase.
The script used for the insert appears to be Filmotype Liberty.
7 Comments on “Songs For Swinging Mothers”
Thanks Florian, for spotting Filmotype Liberty and tracking down Playford’s obituary!
For a time, the original creator of Barclay, George Playford worked for anti-counterfeiting company Todd Protectograph Company. I found a very similar alphabet to Barclay that Todd used on one of their certificates, maybe a precursor.
A wonderful find, Garrison! That looks indeed like the blueprint for Barclay Engraved, a variant with horizontally hatched outside shade, and one of numerous styles shown in PLINC’s One Line catalog from 1971.
This 1974 PLINC ad from Luc Devroye’s site also looks to use Barclay.
Indeed! According to the info in One Line,
1066 = Barclay Expanded 10
0302 = Barclay Screened
1357–4 = Barclay Expanded 9
0475 = Barclay Condensed 7
The other styles (8967, 8649, 8648, 8829) appear to be extensions or revisions added after 1971, as also suggested by the higher numbers.
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Did you know that a full digitization of PLINC’s Typefolio can be borrowed from the Internet Archive?
Florian! Didn’t realize that! Gonna check it out!