On October 3rd, at 2:00 p.m. noted designer, typographer, and design historian Paul Shaw, one of today’s foremost typography and design experts,  gave a presentation on “Strathmore Paper and Its Paper Promotions 1898 – 1934,” at the George Washington University, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, 500 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC.

From 1900 to 1930 American paper companies slowly shifed from selling paper as a commodity to promoting it as an essential design element. Strathmore Paper, one of the two frms leading this efort, relied almost exclusively on well-known designers, illustrators, and typographers to show printers how paper was more than a substrate, but an element on a par with illustrations and type. Among the designers and illustrators whose work will be showcased will be Will Bradley, Frederic W. Goudy, Fred G. Cooper, T.M. Cleland, W.A. Dwiggins, Helen Dryden and Walter Dorwin Teague.

Shaw has done extensive research and written about the history of graphic design with a focus on typography, lettering and calligraphy. He is the editor of The Eternal Letter: Two Millennia of the Classical Roman Capital (Codex Studies in Letterforms) released recently by MIT Press, and teaches at Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts.