“Who created the Dark Sovereign calligraphic logo?” The question’s often asked, as quickly answered.
Yaroslava Surmach Mills was born in Manhattan’s East Village, in 1925. Her immigrant parents, Myron and Anastasia Surmach, “opened Surma Book & Music Company on East 7th Street. Surma was an East Village mainstay for books, greeting cards, honey, Ukrainian folk sheet music…” Here, Yaroslava “first sold her drawings as greeting cards. Surma was the oldest Ukrainian bookstore in the United States until its closing in 2016.” In 1959, Yaroslava — ‘Glory’ in Ukrainian — married Columbia University sociology professor C. Wright Mills.
The art director for Condé Nast magazines, Cipe Pineles, commissioned Yaroslava’s work. The two became friends, closer still when both families settled in Rockland County, N.Y. Cipe Pineles died in 1991. Months later, Yaroslava Mills designed the calligraphic logo for Dark Sovereign. In exchange, she accepted a venerable book from Cipe’s estate illustrating early European typescript fonts.
A website dedicated to the preservation of New York City’s East Village celebrates the life and works of Yaroslava Surmach Mills. Quotations here come from this, the ‘Village Preservation Blog‘. / Robert Fripp