The Work of Ismar David at the Cary - RIT Libraries - Rochester ...

The Work of
at the Cary Collection
Biographical Sketch (cont’d)
Hebrew alphabets. The two spent six years together before
Hortense died on October 9, 1960.
Upon his arrival in New York City in 1953, Ismar David established
a design studio and began teaching Latin calligraphy at
Cooper Union and Pratt Institute. He had expected the bulk of
his commissions to come from designing decorative elements
for synagogues, however, he found his mainstay work in the
1950’s, 60’s, and early 70’s in the publishing industry. David
worked steadily as a designer for leading American publishers
including Alfred A. Knopf; Atlantic, Little Brown; Ballantine
Books; Fleming H. Revell; Harper & Row; Harry Abrams;
Houghton Mifflin Company; J.B. Lippincott Company; McGraw-
Hill; Pocket Books; Random House; Thomas Y. Crowell; and
Viking Press, among others. In a short span, he designed book
jackets or covers for more than 200 books.
Ismar David remained a free-lance artist throughout his career.
In addition to steady work in cover design, calligraphy, and
lettering, Ismar David earned commissions for book illustration
and developed the style of illustration for which he is best
remembered—a style characterized by striking patterns of
lines. This distinctive linear style was particularly well suited
for the Limited Edition Club’s 1971 publication of Pascal’s Les
Pensées, for which David created a dozen full-page, hypnotic
color-illustrations—pre-separated in the tradition of printmaking—as
well as ornamental tailpieces, and text frames. As
would become his custom, Ismar’s conceptions in vivid
oranges, greens, purples, blues, and golds were meant to
accompany the thoughts of the author, not to illustrate them
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