Zierde is a take on early advertising, small-copy grotesks of the late 19th/early 20th century, and is largely inspired by Miller & Richard’s own range of Grotesques. More importantly, Zierde is accompanied by a large set of ornaments (+200) which hark back to the look-and-feel of the early-modernist arts and crafts movement. The ornaments in, and presentation of, Zierde owe much credit to J.G Schelter & Giesecke’s 1913 type specimen book ‘Die Zierde’.
The strong functional uppercase sans-serifs alongside luscious, beautiful patterns in ‘Die Zierde’ make for beautiful combinations. This early-modernist use of grotesk alongside ornament looks bizarre in the eyes of us used to seeing sans-serifs in more formal, sterile settings. The face itself retains some historical flourishes such as the eccentric leaning angle of the italics, the long cross-bar on the ‘G’, the gammy-leg of the ‘R’, a strange ampersand and some irregular terminals across the weights.
