The committee reviewed thirty-one applications for the 2025 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History, MSL Fellowship for short. The range of projects and varied experience brought to each provided a fascinating insight into the current state of research in what is broadly understood as print history. Reaching a decision to make one award has many challenges, and the committee considers many factors—feasibility (can the project be done and does the researcher have the background to realize the project), impact (will the outcomes be of value to the field), and overall merit (will the work advance our historical knowledge).

Our decision was to award the MSL Fellowship to Craig Eliason for his project, A Ledger of Lettering: Launching Research on Non-Typographic Letterforms. The plan is ambitious and Eliason proposes a project that “looks at letterform norms outside of typography, from around 1880 to 1960.” Research questions that will guide his research include: “What styles, standards, and practices develop for letterform design in these fields, and how do they compare to each other? To what extent do the conventions of lettering that take root in these crafts and industries emulate contemporary or historical type designs, and to what extent do they show independence from type? Does the formalization of lettering practices in this era represent a professionalization of handwriting?” Much of the research will be at the Letterform Archive in San Francisco, and the ML Fellowship will provide funding for travel and accommodations on site. Eliason’s proposed outcome will be a book surveying these letterforms.

Eliason brings extensive knowledge of the history of typography to his work, along with considerable experience in type design. For more than fifteen years, he has published scholarly articles on such topics as “Typefounding Classification,” the work of Adrian Frutiger, and done conference presentations on Giambattista Bodoni’s “Exotic” writing systems, “Didot and Fashion,” and “Teaching Type Design to Non-Designers.” The combination of this work with his experience in teaching and designing makes him well-prepared to engage with the “Ledger of Letterforms” project which, when completed, will provide a valuable resource for other researchers, teachers, designers and students interested in the relationship between handwritten and printed letterforms. 

Craig Eliason is a Professor of Art History at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota where he has been on the faculty since 2002 after completing a PhD in Art History at Rutgers University in New Jersey earlier that year.