Christine Garnier (Robert McCamant)

Saturday, October 7, 1:30-3:15 pm ★ James Berkey, “Controlling the Press, Losing the Battle: Ambiguity, Agency, and Print in Civil War Soldier Newspapers” ★ Joshua Brown, “Rise and Fall: Political Cartoons, Caricature, the Civil War, and the Transformation of Visual Satire” ★ Christine Garnier, “Assembling the Runaway: Self-Liberation and Visual Games of the American Civil War” ★ Kate Phillips, “The Topsy-Turvy Networks of Civil War Era Illustrated Envelopes” [Read more]

American Antiquarian Society founder Isaiah Thomas portrayed by actor Neil Gustafson. (Photo: Robert McCamant)

Friday, October 6, 6:45-8:30 pm ★ Christina Kraus, “‘Pointing the moral’ or ‘adorning the tale?’ Illustrations and Commentary on Vergil and Caesar in 19th Century American Textbooks”★ Shawna McDermott, “Phrenology and Childhood: Visual Portrayals in the Periodical Press 1850–1900” ★ Amanda Stuckey, “A Library for the Blind: Tactile Literacy and the Nineteenth-Century Embossed Book” ★ Laura Wasowicz, “From Plantation Bitters to Mi Abuela Facil: McLoughlin Brothers as ‘Manufacturer’ of Children’s Picture Books” [Read more]

The American Printing History Association (APHA) is currently accepting applications for the 2018 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History for the study of printing history. An award of up to $2,000 is available for research in any area of the history of printing, including all the arts and technologies relevant to printing, the book arts, and letter forms.  [Read more]

From the contact form:

Hi, I’m a doctoral student at Columbia University. I’m researching women printers and printers from minority backgrounds in the US and UK who worked during the long 19th century.   [Read more]

Extending the upcoming 2017 APHA conference’s theme beyond North America, one can say that Arabic printing, in its early history, was not “Good, Fast, and Cheap.” It was quite the opposite. In spite of that, the technological and material limitations around which early Arabic printers worked prompted the search for innovative and unusual visual solutions to technical problems. Before turning to a couple interesting examples, a little should be said about the history of Arabic printing in general, or, more importantly, how it is distinguished from that of printing in Europe and America. While Gutenberg’s revolutionary work heralded printing in the modern world and is typically credited with the subsequent proliferation of printed books that democratized knowledge production, Arabic-script book production in the Islamic world took a different path.  [Read more]

Via the contact form:

I am trying to found out what type of printing presses would have been used 75 years ago in a small 2- or 3-person shop. The shop would have printed invitations, flyers and bulletins, and perhaps even a small weekly or bi-monthly newspaper. Also from what companies would this shop have purchased paper, ink, etc. Thank you for any assistance you can provide. —Frank Caso

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Printing History 22, the second issue produced by the team of Brooke Palmieri, editor; Michael Russem, publication designer; and Katherine Ruffin, Vice-President for Publications, has just been mailed to APHA members. Kim Schwenk is the guest editor of this issue, which is based on the Black Arts and Printer’s Devils theme of the APHA conference held at the Huntington Library in October 2016.  [Read more]

7:30 pm,  Thursday, November 2, the University of Iowa English Philosophy Building (EPB), room 107. Free & open to the public

Women & the Labor of Print: An American Story

Women printers were a central presence in colonial and early republican America. Between 1639 and 1820 at least 25 women press owners ran businesses, acted as publishers and performed other work, such as postmistress and shopkeeper, that was often a core part of the printer’s role. By 1821, the number of women press owners in the newly formed states had dropped to one. Women didn’t disappear from printing; their collective role, however, changed substantially in the industrializing U.S. This illustrated talk will examine case studies of women and printing in eighteenth and nineteenth century America to explore women’s shift from owner to worker, with a seventeenth-century aside to query just who was America’s first printer.  [Read more]

This text is a revised and edited version of the chapter “Printing Fabric” in Johannes Teyler and Dutch Colour Prints, Ad Stijnman (comp.), Simon Turner (ed.), IV pts (Ouderkerk aan den IJssel: Sound & Vision, in co-operation with The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 2017), in the series: The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700.

Fig. 1 – Putto Carrying a Basket with a Flower Bouquet on his Head, in profile to the left (NHD (Teyler), no. 36, state II), etching inked à la poupée printed on linen trimmed to fit on a hand fire screen, screen is 26 × 20 cm (max.) (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, BK-NM-3152)

[Read more]