Lehman, Osip Ivanovich

Early years. Finding a profession

Franz Joseph (Osip Ivanovich) Lehman was born in 1833 in a poor family of Petersburg Germans . He received primary education and training in the German school of St. Peter . In 1847 he was identified as a student in the Lampe foundry ^[2] . He studied the typography in the workshop of the printer Karl Krai ( German Kray ; 1809-1874). Under the leadership of the Region, he mastered the science of manual casting of letters and the subtleties of word-casting production, produced up to 5000 letters per day ^{[3] [4] [5]} .

When the production of the Region fell into decay, Lehman bought the equipment from him and in 1854 opened his own workshop, called the “Casting Facility of O. I. Lehman”. The foundry was located on the Catherine’s Canal , near the Bank Bridge in the apartment of Count Stenbock-Fermor’s house ^{[6] [4] [5]} .

Mature years. Lehman Casting Line

In the middle of the 19th century, foundry production in Russia was poorly developed; Russian printing houses ordered fonts mainly from foreign companies. Lehman's foundry was an exception ^[7] . Osip Ivanovich began to improve the process of casting a typographic font - he bought the latest equipment abroad, attracted the best masters of word-making, engravers ^{[6] [4]} . In 1859, Lehman replaced manual casting of the font with machine, in 1863 he introduced galvanic , in 1865 - stereotyped processes ^{[1] [8]} .

Leman was introduced in Russia applied byTo this day, the French font measurement system is the Dido , a Russian font with an elegant style has been developed (angularities in the styles of the letters l , f , c and n, and others have been eliminated ) ^{[1] [9] [8]} .

Not only printing specialists from St. Petersburg, but also printing houses from other cities of Russia and from abroad addressed orders to the foundry. Lehman received orders for the production of Latin , Georgian , Arabic , Sanskrit and ancient Persian fonts ^{[6] [4]} . According to the " Russian Biographical Dictionary ", the Lehman Slobronnyy was produced annually 4,000 pounds of various types, 2/3 of this amount was intended for state and private provincial and district printing houses ^{[9] [1]} .

Participation in exhibitions and awards

The works of O. I. Lehman have been repeatedly awarded prizes and diplomas of Russian and international exhibitions - “for independent and multilateral development of word-art in Russia”, “for enriching the Russian press with new elegant fonts”, “for extremely correct casting and impeccable fonts " ^{[10] [4]} . Leman received two gold medals at the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition of 1865 and the Polytechnic Exhibition of 1872 in Moscow, a silver medal at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867 and other awards ^[9] .

In 1870, at the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition in St. Petersburg, Lehman presented a frame with a set made up of 1000 different squares of all pins , of marzans and grandmothers of machine decoration. The presented set endured pressure and heaviness, without changing its shape and not crumbling, which testified to the accuracy of casting squares in the number of typographic items that make up the set ^[9] .

After the exhibition of 1870, the O. I. Leman's Establishment Institution was awarded the State Emblem , which meant the right to use the emblem in its works ^[9] .

Death. Continuation of business

March 2, 1873 O. I. Leman died of an apoplexy stroke ^{[9] [10] [4]} .

The case was continued by his heirs, the O. I. Leman Casting Facility was transformed into a joint-stock company, and subsequently it included a type foundry, which became the largest printing company in Russia. After the revolution of 1917, the enterprise was nationalized , under various names existed until the end of the XX century. Over a century and a half of existence, it has repeatedly received awards at Russian and international exhibitions ^{[11] [12] [4] [5]} .

• Leman I.I. Essay on the development and description of the workshops of the Slovenian O.I. Leman in St. Petersburg. - SPb. : Type. Chap. control Udelov , 1896 .-- 111 p.
• Slovolitni Joint-Stock Company O. I. Leman . - M .; SPb., [1910].
• [ABOUT. I. Lehman: Obituary] // Voice : gas. - SPb. , 1873. - No. 92 .
• [ABOUT. I. Lehman: Obituary] // Illustrated newspaper . - SPb. , 1873. - No. 11 .

• Lehman, Osip Ivanovich // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1896. - T. XVIIa. - S. 518.
• Lehman, Joseph Ivanovich // Russian Biographical Dictionary : in 25 volumes. - SPb. , 1914. - T. 10: Labzina - Lyashenko. - S. 185-186.
• Soboleva E. S. Iosif Iosifovich Lehman - Trustee of the Academic Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography // Germans in St. Petersburg. Biographical aspect. XVIII — XX centuries / Grew. Acad. Sciences, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera); [resp. ed. T. A. Schrader]. - SPb. : MAE RAS, 2012 .-- S. 169-176. - 364 p. - (Germans in St. Petersburg; issue 7). - ISBN 978-5-88431-208-1 .
• Grechuk N.V. Petersburg. Events and faces. The history of the city in the photographs of Karl Bulla and his contemporaries / Natalia Grechuk. - M .: Centerpolygraph; SPb. : Russian Troika, 2015 .-- S. 373-376. - 480 p. - ISBN 978-5-227-05075-5 .
• Sherikh D. Yu. House No. 82: Fonts from Lehman // Marat Street and surroundings / Dmitry Sherikh. - M .: Centerpolygraph, 2012 .-- 384 p. - (All about St. Petersburg). - ISBN 978-5-227-03374-1 .
• Grechuk N. The Second of History: Polyglots from Zvenigorod // St. Petersburg Gazette: Gas. - SPb. , 2000. - Issue. September 9th . - No. 168 (2318) .

• Joint Stock Company Slovolitnya O. I. Leman (neopr.) . Date of treatment May 9, 2017.