Off The Fence: Let's Talk About Tate

A plate from the 'Gordon Book Lettering for Commercial Purposes'. In this handbook, published in 1918, William M. Hugh Gordon lists a multitude of letterings already present in American culture, particularly in advertising environments. Nine pages are explicitly devoted to intertitles (‘Motion Picture Titles and Their Preparation,' pp. 153-160). > The book is online at archive.org/details/letteringforcomm00gordrich — [Continue reading in] New pamphlet: Victor Vance, title-artist by Julien Van Anholt Until the advent of talking pictures, cinema had been referred to as silent. To compensate for the absence of sound, films were punctuated by numerous ‘intertitles’ containing a fixed text, interspersed among the sequences of moving images. Intertitles could be hand-painted on thick paper or glass plates, using brushes or round-tipped nibs, by teams of letterers capable of producing up to 100 cards a day. Yet today we know almost nothing about these technically gifted craftsmen. However, at the end of the 1910s, in the United States, the name of a technician occasionally appeared in the film credits: that of Victor Vance, a letterer associated with the Warner Bros. studio. His distinctive style of lettering, constant over the years, was based on a virtuosic use of the brush. Considered a ‘title-artist’, he also wrote in 1930 an article on how to paint intertitles. This account sheds valuable and precise light on the methods used to produce intertitles and the way these objects were viewed at the time. Edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series. Victor Vance, title-artist by Julien Van Anholt Poem Pamphlet N° 10 English texts 28 pages, 12×20 cm Offset print on uncoated paper Glossy UV varnish Saddle stitch binding 2025 8€ #poem_editions #poem_pamphlets @julien.van.anholt #silentmovie #silentmovies #warnerbrosstudios #victorvance