Drei Jahrzehnte deutscher Buchkunst 1890-1920
The pattern
This still is filed under Specimen as proof.
Define
A specimen (type, material, finish) is shown so the product proves itself under comparison.
Mechanism
Controlled display. Same conditions, side by side, no adjective required. The sample is the sentence.
Verdict
Buyers choose by eye or by hand and we can put the real thing in front of them.
Why it works
The whole book runs on one borrowed structure: the museum vitrine. Instead of a chronology the reader must hold in their head, each section is a case you stop at, which lets the author group by affinity rather than by date and say so openly on the title page. Numbering the cases turns a sprawling survey into a countable sequence, so a reader can measure how far they have come. The type choice is the argument made physical - a book praising honest material and artist-drawn letterforms is set in the author's own Schwabacher and declares it in the colophon, so form and thesis cannot be pulled apart.
Steal this when
You are surveying a crowded field where strict chronology would bury the pattern - name a spatial container, number the units, and group by kinship instead of date. Also when the artefact you are making can itself demonstrate the standard you are arguing for, and you can prove it in a colophon-style production note.