Ismar David

Ismar David was born in 1910 in Wrocław

Ismar David was born on 27 August 1910 in Breslau, then in the German Empire, to Rosa and Wolff David. He left school at 14 to help support his family as an apprentice to a house painter.

At 18 he went to Berlin and studied design and illustration at the school of applied arts in Charlottenburg. During his studies and work he won several design prizes, including one for an edition of the Jewish National Fund golden book.

In 1932 he moved to Jerusalem, where he worked in interior, industrial and type design. With Moshe Spitzer he created the David typeface, which Intertype acquired in 1954. He also designed some of Israel's first banknotes, many stamps, the Hish emblem and the Nesher cement logo, and submitted proposals for the state emblem in 1948.

In 1953 he settled in New York and opened a studio for synagogue decoration, book covers and Judaica. His 1973 Book of Psalms won a prize from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and in 1991 he designed the Book of Jonah. In 1987 he founded the studio ABCD with Helen Brandshaft.

He died in New York on 26 February 1996. In 1997 much of his estate was given to the Cary Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology.