[ARABIC TYPEFACES FOR IRANIAN NEWSPAPERS AND CRIMEAN TATAR INTELLECTUALS ? MULTINATIONAL TYPOGRAPHIC SPECIMEN BOOK FROM IMPERIAL RUSSIA] Slovolitnia, gal'vanoplasticheskoe, gravernoe, i stereotipnoe zavedenie "O. O. Gerbek". Moskva, Tverskaia, Briusovskii pereulok, dom. no. 21 [Type foundry, electrotype, engraving, and stereotype concern "O. O. Gerbek"]. Typographic specimen book

Beschreibung:

Moscow: O. O. Gerbek, ca. 1907?1910. Octavo (21 ? 13.8 cm). Original dark brown cloth with title and publisher to front board; 523 pp. of typographic specimens including ornaments, symbols, and a few pages of equipment. Boards rubbed and faded; some scuffing and fraying to edges and corners; internally with stamps and tipped-in price list of another contemporary printing establishment (Type Foundry of G. K. Gorbunov); one leaf with cut-out portion; the occasional pencil mark; else still a solidly good copy of a book that saw frequent use. Rare, extensive specimen book for letter, title, and display fonts by the Moscow publishing and type foundry concern of Otto Herbeck. In addition to containing a range of Cyrillic typefaces, the catalog also reflects the multinational nature of publishing in Imperial Russia, with pages devoted to Armenian, Georgian, Greek, German, Hebrew, Polish, and Arabic. The latter is represented with twelve pages of "Naskh" script in various sizes and with regional distinctions, including "Tashkent Naskh" and "Constantinople Naskh" (Naskh referring to a typographic adaptation of a common Arabic calligraphic script). In fact, Herbeck's fonts in the Persian Naskh style, available since the 1880s, especially his Moscow Naskhi, played an important role in the rise of Persian printing using movable type. Recent scholarship by Borna Izadpanah demonstrates the important traces this typeface left in the "visual grammar of Persian headline typography," which he describes as "constructed across imperial, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries" ("Typography as a Revolutionary Icon: The Transnational History Behind 'Shah Raft'", 2025, p. 2). As Izadpanah notes, whereas lithography was initially seen as more fitting to the fluidity of Persian manuscript culture, beginning in the 1870s "Iranian publishers increasingly turned to imported types and printing presses from Istanbul, Moscow, and European centers such as Vienna" (p. 5). These were often further modified to suit local needs, but still determined the overall appearance of typographic products in Iran. By the early 1900s, Herbeck's types dominated the Iranian newspaper landscape and were also used for many book publications. Izadpanah also mentions another important use case of Herbeck's Arabic types: the newspaper "Terc?man" (Interpreter), a bi-lingual publication founded by a Crimean Tatar intellectual, which played a leading role in Muslim intellectual circles throughout the Russian Empire. The specimen also includes 4 pages of Hebrew, 8 pages of Armenian, several pages of Greek and German, as well as one page of Georgian secular and liturgical types, in addition to a wide range of display and headline fonts, as well as decorative elements, borders, and special characters. Not much is known about Herbeck's life. Apparently originally from Bavaria, he settled in Moscow, where he led his foundry from the late 1860s onward and also contributed to typographic culture, for instance by organizing a "Moscow Graphic Circle" in 1880. Following his death, the type foundry was acquired by M. F. Glebova and managed by G. K. Gorbunov, as indicated by the tipped-in price list of his firm and the company stamp, which features the same address. Adariukov 217. Adariukov also lists the first 96 pp. of this volume (texts fonts only) as 179, with the publishing date 1907, after which a separate title leaf and the "title fonts" follow. As of September 2025, KVK, OCLC trace a somewhat earlier but less extensive specimen of the company at one North American institution, but none of the present work. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 55311

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