Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation plays a game of old and new. It is based on a famous early nineteenth-century American “reader”—the very source of the Peter Piper pickled pepper tongue twister—which the editors have reprinted in full, with a brief scholarly commentary on the original edition. But the book is actually an advertisement and design sampler for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, the manufacturers of the most up-to-date typesetting equipment of the 1920s. Mergenthaler commissioned a literal Who’s Who of graphic designers of the period to create the book, each of whom was asked to design one spread, for one alphabetical rhyme, in their own style. The catalogue is a précis of American illustration and page design of the period, with designs that range from traditional to full-on Moderne.

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