Prof. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Dill Pickle Club poster
This is a promotional poster/card for an event with “Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the earliest and most influential advocates for gay rights, speaking at the Dill Pickle Club in the early 20th century.” As seen on Newberry Library’s wonderful Tumblr. There is no year on the card, but Heike Bauer dates it as 1931.
The library describes the Dill Pickle Club as a “Bohemian Chicago social club, founded by former labor activist Jack Jones in 1916, to provide an unconventional meeting-place for the uninhibited and free-thinking, including Socialists, atheists, anarchists, liberated women, lecturers and soap-box orators, artists, actors, playwrights, literary figures, etc.”
The poster is composed entirely of type. Hirschfeld’s name is set in a wood type style offered by many manufacturers, often with the name Clarendon Italian. Oddly the period in “Prof.” is hovering well above the baseline.
“HOMOSEXUALITY” is set in what appears to be the 60-point size of the Gothic Condensed (No. 47) series, which can be difficult to identify because its design varies so much between sizes. (This is the first time that type series has been documented here on Fonts In Use.)
The wider sans-serif is Lining Gothic, and it appears the typesetter either had a shortage of apostrophes, or they didn’t notice (or care about) the use of a single open quotation mark as an apostrophe in “Europe‘s”.
The last line with the date and address is Alternate Gothic No. 1.
