Krienser letters for Moscow

Kriens is the industrial city behind Lucerne. The Krienbach flows between the Sonnenberg and the Pilatus and brought trade and industry to Kriens early on. Roman Scherer moved there around 1890 because he needed more space for his company. Because in the Kriens district brass hammer the area was used to hammering and sawing works so this was the right place for Scherer’s factory with a direct rail link.

This Roman Scherer was a farmer’s son from Meggen (LU). He was born in 1848 and was allowed to attend the canton school. But studying was not an option. After high school, Roman Scherer first followed a commercial internship Moss Steelworks in Emmenbruecke. He then worked at banks in Ticino and France.

Back in Lucerne, Scherer first worked at a bank and then took over the management of the bank at a young age «Pays factory», who made wooden furniture and rifle butts in Lucerne. In 1877, the now 29-year-old became self-employed: he was able to take over machines from a bankrupt company in Valais. Scherer made letters for the printing technique – from local fruit wood, which was sufficiently available in Lucerne. He established his small business on the Reussinsel in Lucerne. Such letters were used in the printing process for posters, headlines and titles.

Business went like clockwork, also because Roman Scherer quickly focused on an international clientele. That is why he came to Kriens around 1890, set up a real factory and employed up to 100 people. Making such letters from wood for the printer was a highly specialized niche business. Producing only for the region or only for Switzerland would never have paid off.

That is why Roman Scherer’s wood factory focused on expansion: he found buyers all over Switzerland, but also in France, Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Russia, Japan and China. By 1900 Kriens’ factory was already producing 50,000 letters a year!

To find customers in Russia, Scherer produced special Cyrillic fonts for the Russian market – with great success. This is how the design of the letters of the Russian daily went Pravdathe central organ of CPSU, based on a wooden typeface by Roman Scherer. His series of types «Series 5015»called “Reform”formed the basis for the lettering “Pravda” on the headline of the newspaper.

For example, the wood factory Kriens made a small contribution to the communist rearmament of Russia! Or to communist truth, because the word Pravda means nothing but truth. However, Scherer developed this typography as early as 1905, while Pravda, as one of the world’s largest newspapers, did not appeal to communism until 1912.

The “King of the Letters” Roman Scherer experienced the pinnacle of his industrial career at the World Exhibition for Book Trade and Graphics in Leipzig in 1914: the Swiss was awarded the Gold Prize there. At that time, Scherer’s factory expanded its range to include billboards made of cooled cast aluminum. Eight years after the award in Leipzig, Scherer died at the age of 74, but his company survived until 1966.

Roman Scherer’s type books are still sought after in the printing industry today, because the typographical design of the Kriens firm was very precise, but also very imaginative. The Basel historian Philipp Messner, who has done excellent research on Scherer’s work, published Scherer’s typebooks in the Basel paper mill and in the Lucerne Central and University Library tracked down.

Moreover, Scherer’s typefaces are included in Luc Devroye’s well-known typography collection McGill University arrived in Montreal, Canada. Or in 1972 a reprint of Scherers appeared Art Nouveau- And art deco– Writings in America. And his works are also in the Letterform archives documented in San Francisco. Kriens’s writings are probably now much better known than the place where they were produced.