Awesome. I've never seen anything like that. Thanks for sharing.

very nice indeed.

I bought a box of metal letters on ebay a few months ago.
Nothing as exquisite as these however. I will post
some scans tomorrow, if that's okay.

bj

Perhaps this is a precursor to the black signs with white plastic letters that you see in corporate lobbies, usually with messages like "Acme Corp. welcomes Zara Evens."

The magnets would go on the back of black metal board to hold the letters in place. The whole thing would then slide into some kind of display stand, or rest on an easel.

Just a guess, though. Very cool find!

It looks like the A and 4 are reversed, and maybe one of the Zs.

My guess is that Hrant is on the right track, and that they are for photographic titles, in films or for slides.

The magnets could act as spacers, so you can create a nice drop shadow.

I've seen a similar style of art deco lettering used for titling in a 35mm colour slide show (but made out of a thick white material). The slides dated from the mid '50s.

The appeal of this "Broadway" kind of Deco style at that late date would be because of its ease of manufacture.

While there were commercial lettering kits available, it's the kind of project you would find in Popular Mechanics magazine. Or maybe even an amateur photography magazine.

Was your Grandad a bit of a handyman, Zara? Did he make these himself? Did he have the photography bug, too?

Nick, I think I have a set of the same thick, white lettering. And it is definitely made for creating dimensional titles - specifically for 8mm and 16mm home movies. The depth of the characters made it perfect for side-lighting and shadow-casting.

That's a sweet set of letters, Zara.

Hi Zara!

You're in luck! I first came in contact with these types of letters at Typecon last year as the folks from Timeless Treasures had an entire collection of pin-backed ceramic letters that John Downer informed me were used for department store marquees in the 40s and 50s which were in the front of the store to guide shoppers to featured specials, etc . . .

Anyhow, Joan was kind enough to loan me some of these letters to turn into typefaces. The first result of this effort is a new freeward font called 'Featured Item' check it out at: http://www.fontdiner.com

Beyond that, I have another set of letters Joan loaned me which were grossly incomplete but very cool looking. A few eBay searches later and I found the originals! Turns out they were no for store signage but as previously suggested in this post, were for home theater titling boards. . . . A great find at $9.99

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3853050776

Anyhow, one thing that makes these letters so sweet is that they are very unique type styles that have essentially disappeared into history since they were in essence never cast by a foundry and only exist in this format for this purpose by the original manufacturers.

Best,
Stuart :D

Stuart, note that Zara's letters are only about an inch tall, which puts them in a different category from shop or theatre marquee lettering.

As these were probably used for film/slide titling, they are no longer "merely" letters, but can be considered as type, specifically, strange as it may seem at first, phototype. Even if there is only one font, the design is a typeface in its own right.

Besides the small size, there don't seem to be enough "sorts" in a set like this to make it usable for marquees; it seems enough for one-shot settings. Plus the quality seems overkill for a department store - compare it to that eBay item.

> can be considered as type

There is no type without sidebearings.

hhp

>There is no type without sidebearings.

That's a bit anal.

Sure, Letraset and Phototypositor (eg VGC filmstrip) had sidebearing indications, but most typographers who used those systems, good or bad, ignored them and spaced by eye.

Now you may not like the results, but can you really say that those technologies weren't typesetting?

A technology that includes sidebearings is type. A user who ignores the sidebearings is doing lettering. Nothing anal about understanding the central role of White. Do you like the fact that Quark over-rides a type designer's determination of the proper size of the blank space in his fonts?

hhp

I was under the impression that lettering had to do with the act of forming the letters (whether by pen, brush, chisel, etc.).

compared to yours Zara,
these are ugly ducklings,
aluminum Helvetica ...