The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England

The Legion of Honor was the sole West Coast venue for the first major exhibition of Tudor portraiture, textiles, sculpture, silver, jewelry, and manuscripts in the United States. The exhibition followed the development of the arts in England from Henry VII’s seizure of the throne in 1485 to the death of his granddaughter Elizabeth I in 1603.

We sought to capture the typographic zeitgeist of the Renaissance through the mixed use of Blackletter (Respira Black) paired with Humanist Roman (Dear Sir/Madam). The text is either fully justified or creates conical shapes using a kind of tapered typesetting. Inspired by the hyper-ornamentation of book artistry from this era, the primary lock-up variation is finished by a dingbat in the shape of the Tudor Rose, the heraldic emblem of the House of Tudor. The exhibition title wall featured gilded three dimensional letters using gold leaf foil. For aided legibility, a custom T was created.

Graphic identity: Lizzie Baur
Exhibition graphics: Meghan Moran, Kate Agarwal
Exhibition design: Xiaoxi Chen, Tristan Telander
Art direction: Amy Browne, Benjamin Shaykin, Alejandro Stein
Installation photography: Gary Sexton