Elkan & Levinsohn was formed in Berlin in 1909 by my great-grandfather Leopold Levinsohn. They specialized in window display, typography and graphic design. My great-grandfather would go on to develop a modern window decoration school devoted to those crafts and produced at least one book on the subject.

Sadly, the family all died in the Holocaust except for my grandmother and her older brother, (seen in the attached photo.) The two siblings escaped separately to South Africa and China, (respectively.) Both eventually immigrated to the United States.

As a designer, I find the connection to this history very compelling and hope to discover more about the work of this time and place. I am relaunching my great-grandfather’s brand and working closely with my colleagues and associates to connect more with this legacy - a Berlin rich with intellectual vigor and creative passion now mostly lost to us, it’s inheritors.

This website will continue being a showcase of my and my associates work, as well as an archive of my great-grandfathers work and hopefully an evolving archive. - Adam Thabo