The dollar store across the street has amazing pencils.

I went to the Photo LA fair last week, and it was a treat to spend a little time at the booth for Eric Chaim Kline Booksellers.

This gem pictured was on display. It’s a rare one, published in 1924: a modernist illustration of the alphabet, with black-and-white photographs of a sporty dancer interpreting each letter and interacting with the type.

The title of the book is Abeceda, which means Alphabet in Czech. From what I understand this slim volume was produced as collaboration between the Czech dancer Milca Mayerova, typographer Karel Teige and writer Vitezslav Nezval. More info and pictures here.

Karel Tiege, the designer and typographer, is quoted elsewhere as saying, “In Nezval’s Abeceda, a cycle of rhymes based on the shapes of letters, I tried to create a ‘typofoto’ of a purely abstract and poetic nature, setting into graphic poetry what Nezval set into verbal poetry in his verse, both being poems evoking the magic signs of the alphabet.”

Of course I took a picture of V. Other letters, like M, were more inexplicable in the relationship of our gal’s pose to letterform…