Schriftguss AG was a type foundry in Germany founded in 1892 under the name Brüder Butter (“Butter Brothers”) by purchasing the type casting firm of Otto Ludwig Bechert that had been founded in 1889.
A unique product of the foundry were modular systems of “Plakattype” to compose shapes and letterforms for display and jobbing applications, for instance Dekora, or Albert Auspurg’s 1931 Ne-Po (negative–positive), and finally Super-Plakattype in 1949.
After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 the last of the Butter brothers resigned from the corporation and it was changed to a limited partnership.
In 1948 the company was expropriated by the post-war communist government and became public property, under the name VEB Schriftguss Dresden, eventually becoming merged into VEB Typoart – Drucktypen, Matrizen, Messinglinien in 1951.
As a state run enterprise, the foundry lost its verve and panache and settled into producing serviceable type without distinction.