The Chesapeake Chapter of APHA, and friends,  had the opportunity to look over some of the treasures in the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland in College Park, on Saturday, July 19th.

Doug McElrath, Manager of Special Collections hosted a showing of the W.A. Dwiggins collection, as well as typefounder’s catalogues from the Maurice Annenberg collection. Additionally, there were some Colonial-era types recovered from the Jonas Green house in Annapolis. Green was the official printer for the province of Maryland in the mid-18th century, and a large amount of type has been unearthed during archeological excavations there.

W. A. Dwiggins was a pre-eminent book designer, calligrapher, type designer, illustrator and commercial artist in the first half of the 20th century, and was responsible for a marked improvement in American book design through the 1920’s and 1930’s. He is also credited with coining the term “graphic designer” in 1922.

Maurice Annenberg was a commercial printer, among other things, and a scholar of printing history; he was, in fact, a founding member of The American Printing History Association. Among his other writings are “Typefoundries of America and Their Catalogues” (1975, recently reprinted) and “A Typographical Journey Through the ‘Inland Printer’ 1883-1900” (1977).

Being on a summer Saturday morning, we had the entire library to ourselves, and grateful to Doug for allowing us to handle samples of the Colonial-era type found in Annapolis; there are thousands of pieces in their archives.  We were also able to examine and read good examples of books from the Dwiggins and Annenberg collections.  Doug painted a very helpful story of the impact of the two on the history of American printing.

Left to right: Chris Sweterlitsch, Chris Manson and Doug McElrath, manager of special collections at the University of Maryland Hornbake Library.

Casey Smith, Val Lucas

Chris Sweterlitsch, Chris Manson, Pat Manson, Val Lucas, Hershel Kanter.

Casey Smith, Hershel Kanter, Doug McElrath

Photos by Jim Wilder.