Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse

Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse (2 January 1918 – 13 December 2019) was a German book-binder, calligrapher and typographer.

She also designed several typefaces.

Gudrun von Hesse was born on 2 January 1918 in Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Schwerin (then part of German Empire).

She became an apprentice and assistant at the bookbindery of Otto Dorfner in Weimar from 1934 to 1937.

Her calligraphy practice began during this apprenticeship; in her acceptance address for the Frederic W. Goudy Award, she said "One afternoon a week we had to write very simple letters. I was not satisfied with this form of instruction; therefore, I taught myself at home, from a detailed examination of the works of Rudolf Koch and Edward Johnston.”

After completing her apprenticeship in 1937, Hesse stayed on as an assistant in Dorfner's bindery until 1940.

She received a Master's Diploma in bookbinding in 1940.

While working at Bauer in the late 1940s, Zapf von Hesse learned punchcutting and cut her first complete brass alphabet, Hesse-Antiqua, under the guidance of Bauer's chief punchcutter, Joseph Spahn.

The alphabet was made specifically for gold-tooling on book bindings.

She completed further studies at the Berlin Graphic Arts School in 1941 with Johannes Boehland (German painter and graphic artist, 1903–1964).

In 1941, Gudrundie von Hesse worked as a bookbinder in Berlin.

From 1944 to 1945, she taught bookbinding and calligraphy as therapy for soldiers with head injuries at a hospital in Bad Ischl, Austria.

Hesse moved from her home in Potsdam to Frankfurt in late 1945 or 1946.

Potsdam was under the Soviet occupation after World War II, and according to Hesse it was "not a good place at all to start a new life".

After World War II, in 1946, she opened her own book bindery on the premises of the Bauer type foundry in Frankfurt.

The director of the foundry, Georg Hartmann, gave her permission to operate her bindery on the premises.

From 1946 to 1954, Zapf von Hesse taught calligraphy at the Städelschule in Frankfurt.

At a calligraphy exhibit in Frankfurt, Gunther Lepold, the director of D. Stempel AG Type Foundry, and Hermann Zapf, Stempel's art director, took notice of her work and invited her to Stempel for a meeting.

Zapf von Hesse's career as a type designer began after Lepold and Zapf commissioned her to design typefaces for Stempel.

She met Hermann Zapf in 1948.

Zapf was the art director for D. Stempel AG typefoundry.

She was invited to visit Stempel's offices after Zapf and Dr. Lepold (Stempel's director) had seen her letterforms at an exhibition in Frankfurt.

In 1948, Zapf von Hesse opened a bookbinding studio with one apprentice in the Stempel Type Foundry building.

She and Zapf married on 1 August 1951, and the two managed thereafter to keep their professional work somewhat separate.

Her first typeface for Stempel was Diotima, issued in 1951.

The New York City Opera used Diotima for advertisements in the New York Times, and it was also used for headings in the British Airways in-flight magazine.

Zapf von Hesse and Hermann Zapf had a son, Christian (1955–2012).

During her acceptance address for the Frederic W. Goudy award, she commented that she was "a little sorry" about not having time to do bookbinding when her son was young.

After some years passed, however, she was able to focus on calligraphy and type design.

Her bindery at Stempel closed in 1955 when her son Christian Ludwig was born, but she continued designing typefaces "as time and family duties allowed."

In the 1970s, Zapf von Hesse worked with her husband Hermann Zapf to prepare bitmaps by hand for his alphabet designs Marconi and Edison.

As technologies changed in the second half of the 20th century, she continued to design typefaces for photocomposition and digital production.

She was actively designing typefaces into the 1990s for Berthold, Bitstream, and URW Hamburg.

In general, Zapf Von Hesse's work has "elegant simplicity" and "technical precision".

Her use of decoration is "refined by moderation… both understated and unpretentious".

She was the 1991 winner of the Frederic W. Goudy Award.

To mark her hundredth birthday in January 2018, Monotype released the titling typeface Hesse-Antiqua.

The titling face was digitized in 2018 by Ferdinand Ulrich.

She also made decorating tools with Spahn's help.

Zapf von Hesse died in December 2019 at the age of 101.