Tenth Letter of the Alphabet: Lettering: A Book of American Trade-marks & Devices

Monday, May 29, 2023

Lettering: A Book of American Trade-marks & Devices

Joseph Sinel

Alfred A. Knopf, 1924

The book is available for viewing and downloading at the Internet Archive.

Highly recommended.

The American Printer, November 5, 1924, profiled Sinel and mentioned his book of trademarks.

A designer who likes the forest primeval

Early this year I was introduced to a young artist who had come out of the west some months before, and who while in San Francisco had been associated with Edwin and Robert Grabhorn on some of their interesting productions. He showed me a dummy of a book on trademarks that he had in mind, and I had not before realized that there were so many American trademarks that were attractive in their design. Mr. Sinel himself redrew these designs in a poster manner and it was very likely the quality of his drawing that made them so interesting. Later I was pleased to learn that this book was to be published, and at this writing it is almost ready for delivery. It is being printed by Pynson Printers and published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Joseph Sinel is the namesake of an uncle who is a famous geologist and naturalist, and who at the present time is curator at the museum on the Island of Jersey in the English Channel. This fact is interesting when one learns of our Joseph Sinel’s love of nature and of his life in the wilds. In California, Mr. Sinel enjoyed his vacations on the top of the Sierra Nevada mountains, where on Lake Susie he built himself a shack. This shack is pictured by Mr. Sinel in one of his drawings that I am showing. While the picture of my artist friend posed with my cane on Forty-fourth Street was taken with my little cameras, the other picture is one of Mr. Sinel as he looked out there on the mountains of California.

Joseph Sinel was born in Auckland, New Zealand. After some experience in printing offices, art schools and in a lithographic plant as a draughtsman, he went to England and was with the Carlton Studios. He was art director of the C. H. Higham stores, and had much to do with that firm’s advertising. From England Mr. Sinel went to Australia, and from there to the Pacific Coast, where he did poster work with Foster & Kleiser of San Francisco.

Mr. Sinel came to New York in May, 1923. After six months with Calkins & Holden he became a free lance, and now has a studio at 154 West Eleventh Street, New York.