Dr. Sarah Lowengard, Keynote Speaker

Why Color? On the Uses, (Misuses) and Meanings of Color in Printing | recap

Sarah Lowengard is a historian of technology and science who specializes in the chemistry and physics of the early modern West.  Her research combines art, material culture and materials science into more typical historical concerns of social, economic and intellectual life. Her most recent book, The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Gutenberg-<e>, Columbia University Press, 2006) examines the relationship between developing scientific theories and changing artisan practices for pigment-making, textile, ceramic and glass-coloring endeavors. She is presently writing a book about the technologies of printing in colors before 1800, researching a biography of the eighteenth-century French color-printer and scientific crank, Jacques-Fabien Gautier-d’Agoty, and completing a set of essays about the social and scientific transformations of ferric ferrocyanide (Prussian blue) from its invention to the present day. She was granted a Ph.D. from SUNY-Stony Brook and has held fellowships from or at the Huntington Library, the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin), the Smithsonian, and the National Science Foundation. She is an associate member of The Pigmentum Project (London/Oxford) and serves as a member of the Editorial Committee for the journal Technology and Culture.

Nancy Sharon Collins

Implications of a Second Color in New Orleans Blue Books, ca. 1910 | recap

Nancy Sharon Collins is a stationer/graphic designer, sole proprietor of Collins, LLC, AIGA New Orleans special projects director, instructor at Delgado Community College and adjunct instructor at Loyola University New Orleans. Her book, The Complete Engraver, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in September of 2012. Articles she has penned appear in AIGA Voice, Mohawk Fine Paper’s Felt & Wire, Neenah Paper’s Against the Grain, and Book 2 Volume 1: Issue 2 by Caroline Archer (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books). Ms. Collins appears in Women in Graphic Design 1890-2012 by Sabine Bartelsheim and Ute Brüning Gerda Breuer (Berlin : Jovis Publishing) December, 2012.

Alan M. Levitt

American Currency: Three Hundred Years of Color Printing | recap

Alan Levitt serves as a consultant and advisor on the study, preservation, and display of items of historical, scientific, or artistic importance. He is currently engaged in independent research focusing on the design, manufacture and use of printers’ trains types, blocks, and engravings in letterpress, intaglio, and lithographic printing, exploring their use, social significance, and roles in commerce. This work has led to an investigation of the origins and use of color on American currency. Levitt’s findings in these and other fields have been presented in papers presented at three international conferences, at APHA conferences, and published in numerous scholarly journals

Russell Maret

Painting with Polymer: Priming, Shading and Layering in Digital Letterpress | recap

Russell Maret is a type designer and private press printer working in New York City. In 1996 Russell began teaching himself to design typefaces, leading to a twelve-year study of letterforms before he completed his first typeface in 2008. In 2011, he began working with the Dale Guild Type Foundry to convert some of his designs into new metal typefaces. In 2009 Russell was awarded the Rome Prize in Design from the American Academy in Rome. He has been the printer in residence of the Press in Tuscany Alley, San Francisco (1990); Artist in Residence at the Center for Book Arts, NYC (1996); he is the current North American Chair of the Fine Press Book Association, and a past trustee of the American Printing History Association. Russell’s books and manuscripts are in public and private collections throughout the world.

Julie Mellby

Adding Color: The Business of the Stenciller in Twentieth-Century Publishing | recap

Julie Mellby is the curator of graphic arts in the department of rare books and special collections at Firestone Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.

Gabriella Miyares

Worlds, Dot by Dot: Four-Color Process in the Age of Pulp Comics | recap

Gabriella Miyares is a graphic designer and illustrator based in New York City, and currently works as a designer at Galison. She is also the owner of Moxie Press and built a press to print her linocuts.

Andre Ribuoli & Jennifer Mahlman

Experimental Collaborative Printmaking Practices at a Contemporary Fine Art Studio | recap

Andre Ribuoli and Jennifer Mahlman founded Ribuoli Digital in New York City in 2009. Andre has printed for a number of fine art digital studios over the past 15 years and prior to founding Ribuoli Digital he was the director of Pamplemousse Press, the digital studio at Pace Editions. Andre has also presented at many conferences and programs regarding technical and aesthetic concerns in digital printmaking. Jennifer studied printmaking and photography at the University of Toledo and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a student assistant at Tandem Press Jennifer learned collaborative printmaking, print production and editioning. Jennifer works in a variety of traditional print media and specializes in using photopolymer plates for photogravure.

Rebecca Romney

Go Big or Go Home: Hand-Colored Plate Books and the Documentation of Disappearing Native American Peoples | recap

Rebecca Romney has a B.A. in Classical Studies and Linguistics from Brigham Young University. She has been working at Bauman Rare Books since 2007, and in 2010 she became manager of the Las Vegas Gallery of Bauman Rare Books. Today Ms. Romney is also known for her recurring appearances on the History Channel’s popular show Pawn Stars, in which she appraises books and documents. She maintains a blog on classic books at http://www.rebeccaromney.com.

Nick Sherman

Chromatic Type and William Page’s Magnum Opus of Multi-Color Typeface Design | recap

Nick Sherman is a Brooklyn-based typographer working with Font Bureau to promote typefaces for print and digital media. He is the founder of Woodtyper, an online journal focused on large and ornamented type and related matters. A letterpress printer, web designer, and type history enthusiast, he serves on the artistic board for the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum as well as the board of directors for the Type Directors Club. He is both a graduate of and consultant for the Type@Cooper typeface design program at Cooper Union, and an active member in the Society of Printers, ATypI, and APHA.

Jane Rodgers Siegel

Experiments in Color Printing, Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries: A Survey | recap

Jane Rodgers Siegel is Rare Book Librarian at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, an APHA member since 1989, and book history aficionado.

L. Elizabeth Upper

Rediscovering Color in German Graphic Art, 1487–1600 | recap

L. Elizabeth Upper is Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge University Library, and Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. She recently completed a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge on early modern color printmaking in the German-speaking lands, and her current research concerns the dissemination and functions of color printmaking in Tudor England. She previously worked at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and in Special Collections at Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Her forthcoming publications include the volume Printing Colour, 1400-1800: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2014), which she is co-editing with Ad Stijnman.

Laura Wasowicz

McLoughlin Brothers: Innovators of the Nineteenth-Century Picture Book | recap

Laura Wasowicz is Curator of Children’s Literature at the American Antiquarian Society. Since 1987, she has worked to acquire, catalog and provide reference service for the AAS collection of 24,000 children’s books issued between 1650 and 1899. She has written articles on various aspects of nineteenth-century American children’s book publishing, picture book iconography, and child reading habits. She is also the editor of theNineteenth-Century American Children’s Book Trade Directory, available on the AAS website.

Matthew McLennan Young

The Heyday of Trichromatic Process Printing: (A)bney to (Z)ander | recap

Matthew Young is a graphic designer, collector, and the author of two books: The Rise and Fall of the Printers’ International Specimen Exchange (2012, Oak Knoll Press) and Field & Tuer, the Leadenhall Press (2010, Oak Knoll Press and The British Library). He has previously presented papers at APHA and other conferences on the subjects of his books and related topics.

Philip Zimmermann

The Apex (and Subsequent Demise) of Process Color Letterpress as Shown in the Printing of the National Geographic Magazine in the Nineteen-Fifties | recap

Philip Zimmermann is an artist, printer and a professor of Visual Commu­nications at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. He taught offset lithography and pre-press (among other subjects) for many years at Purchase College, SUNY. He has operated his press, Spaceheater Editions, since 1979. In 1980 he edited and published the book Options for Color Separation for the Visual Studies Workshop Press in Rochester NY. After graduating with an MFA from VSW, he trained doing color separations with Harry Christen of Christen Litho Laboratories of Rochester, one of the first users of the Vario-Klischograph and of Hell drum scanners in the United States.