Richard J. Hoffman (1912-1989) was a fine press printer and taught print and design at California State University, Los Angeles. His interests in typography, miniature books and the alphabet are represented by two works in the Books On Books Collection: “Don’t Nobody Care about Zeds” (1987) and Otto Ege’s The Story of the Alphabet (1988).

Both books scratch the collection’s “alphabet itch”. The first provides the added satisfaction of complementing the children’s books that champion the alphabet’s last letter: Jon Agee’s Z Goes Home (2006), Alethea Kontis & Bob Kolar’s AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First (2012), Sean Lamb & Mike Perry’s Z Goes First (2018) and Lou Kuenzler & Julia Woolf’s Not Yet Zebra! . The second adds an alphabet history to the miniature abecedaries as well as a more than usually intricate design.

“Don’t Nobody Care about Zeds” (1987)

“Don’t Nobody Care about Zeds”
A Modest Book About an Oft-overlooked Character of the Alphabet Prepared for the Pleasure of Zamoranans* (1987)
Richard J. Hoffman
Hardcover, casebound. Cloth and paper cover with colored endbands and printed doublures. H160 x W120 mm. 176 pages. Edition of 200. Acquired from Scott Emerson Books, 5 September 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Hoffman’s introduction, which explains the book’s title and final image, also touches the collection’s expatriate funny bone.

‘Zeds is what the English folk call the magnificent twenty-sixth character of our alphabet. This I learned while shopping at Covent Gardens in London some years ago. There I happened upon a flea market where from a pair of old wood type cases, an ‘uckster was peddling electrotyped initial letters. With a blob of sealing wax, he assured me, I could personalize my correspondence by stamping my initial in the soft wax. When I asked he had any Zs, he looked at me questioningly, then he beamed as I picked one up, very brightly responded that he still had some unsold, and then solemnly observed, “Don’t nobody care about Zeds.”‘

For those who consider the ampersand to be the alphabet’s twenty-seventh character, Hoffman’s book may remind them of Jan Tschichold’s A Brief History of the Ampersand (1957) or ~Zeug/Velvetyne Type Foundry’s Et & ampersands : une récolte internationale = a contemporary collection (2017), but those two come nowhere near Hoffman’s embellishments with fleurons and ornaments to highlight his extended sampler.

The Story of the Alphabet (1988)

The Story of the Alphabet
Its Evolution and Development… Embellished Typographically with Printer’s Flowers Arranged by Richard J. Hoffman (1988)
Otto F. Ege** and Richard J. Hoffman
Hardback, casebound in gray cloth over boards, endbands, printed doublures. H70 x W74 mm. 82 pages. Edition of 250. Acquired from Bromer Booksellers, 1 November 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Color and embellishment in Hoffman’s The Story of the Alphabet perform an informative as well as decorative function. The cover cloth’s red, green, gray and blue are decoratively echoed on the title page and later are used in the color-organization of fleurons and ornaments described in the “Printer’s Note”. Little wonder that the book received a Distinguished Book Award from the Miniature Book Society in 1988.

“The first eight, printed in blue ink, show the Garamond units”

“The second group … use[s] the Granjon Arabesque …. These are printed in green ink.”

“The final group … feature[s] a typographic unit designed by Bruce Rogers…. These, because of their heavy weight, are printed in gray ink….”

*”Zamoranans” refer to the members of the Zamorano Club of Los Angeles, named after Augustin Zamorano, who brought the first printing press to California in 1834.

**”Otto F. Ege” serves another purpose for the collection. Without the artistic justification atributable to some book artists, Ege was a notorious biblioclast. Thinking to make them more widely available, he broke apart numerous illuminated manuscripts to create portfolios of samples. Fortunately he was not comprehensive in his efforts, and a large number of intact works made it into Yale’s Beinecke Library (see below).

Why does the alphabet begin with the letter A? The long-held speculation that its origin from a sign designating “ox” made it the first in line because of the ox’s meeting the first of our survival needs — food — seems a stretch. Beyond B for beth meaning “house” (shelter) and C for gimel meaning “hunting stick” (in case we run out of oxen), what needs do the other twenty-three letters represent? Especially the letter Z.

Z began its life in seventh place with the Phoenician and Greek alphabets. With Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” extending only to five levels in the twentieth century, Z has had no identified need to represent — even after the fact. In Phoenician and Hebrew, the letter’s name is zayin, in Greek, zeta, and both mean “seven”. Now there is a credible rationale for a letter’s position in the alphabetical order. But then came Spurius Carvilius Ruga, a Roman headmaster who came up with the letter G, displacing Z, and then Appius Claudius Caecus, the developer of the Appian Way and “censor” with the influence in 312 BC to decide that Latin had no need of Z and its sound anyway and so banished it. After the Romans conquered Greece and began importing Greek words like zephyros, the letter Z returned and settled meaninglessly into last place.

Until the twenty-first century.

Z Goes Home (2006)

Z Goes Home (2006)
Jon Agee
Casebound, paper pasted on boards, sewn. H320 x W223 mm, 30 Pages. Acquired from Amazon, 1 July 2021.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.

In this first of four imaginative books bringing Z to life, the letter begins to take on real character, quietly descending a ladder from its day job at the city zoo, making its way home across a Bridge, stopping for a Cake and Doughnut snack, admiring itself in a Mirror, and so on until reaching its home at the end.

AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First (2012)

AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First (2012)
Alethea Kontis & Bob Kolar
Paperback, sewn. H270 x W245 mm, 48 pages. Acquired from Altair Books, 1 July 2021.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the author and artist.

Kontis and Kolar give the letter a zestier, feistier temperament in AlphaOops. Z and Zebra start off well enough, followed by Y and X, but then P and the Penguins show up out of order and Z finds that keeping everyone in reverse alphabetical order is harder than it looks.

Z Goes First (2018)

Z Goes First (2018)
Sean Lamb & Mike Perry
H286 x W205 mm, 26 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 1 July 2021.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the author and artist.

Lamb and Perry introduce a generally milder Z, accompanied by a helpful Y always ready to ask why and why not when the other letters are less than cooperative with Z’s going first.

Not Yet Zebra! (2018)

Not Yet Zebra! (2018)
Lou Kuenzler & Julia Woolf
Hardback, paper pasted on board. H256 x W256 mm, 28 pages. Acquired from The Saint Bookstore, 1 August 2021.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the author and artist.

Kuenzler and Woolf let Z’s inner Zebra loose on poor Annie who just wants to paint her alphabet in the right order.

What has taken Z so long to find its raizon d’être?

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Jon Agee

Books On Books Collection – Richard J. Hoffman