“Who created Dark Sovereign’s calligraphic logo?” I am often asked this question, and can quickly answer…
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 friends still when both families settled in Rockland County, N.Y. Cipe Pineles died in 1991. Months later, this author asked Yaroslava Mills to design a calligraphic logo for Dark Sovereign. In exchange, she accepted a venerable book from Cipe’s estate illustrating early European typescript fonts. Yaroslava’s estate retains Copyright to the Dark Sovereign design.
A website dedicated to the preservation of New York City’s East Village celebrates the life and works of Yaroslava Surmach Mills. Quotations in this blog are taken from the ‘Village Preservation Blog‘. / Robert Fripp