Twenty of us piled into a van for the 90 minute drive from Rochester through rolling hills and magnificent autumn foliage to the town of Skaneateles, on the northern shore of the Finger Lake for which it’s named. There, Michael and Winifred Bixler welcomed us into their shop and home where we met up with seven more attendees who had arranged their own transportation. Michael began by giving us a brief history of Monotype development in America and England, and then telling us about the Bixler Letterfoundry. Established in 1968 with the purchase of their first Monotype machine, the Bixlers built up their business with an extensive inventory of Monotype faces, the ability to fulfill large orders, and timely delivery. [Read more]
I have a researcher who wants to know who set and printed the visual poetry for pages of Marius de Zayas’s magazine 291? Any leads would be appreciated. Thank you
Entrance to the Vignelli Center. (All photos Keelin Burrows)
Tour of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies Rochester Institute of Technology
1 pm friday, october 23
Located on the RIT campus, the Vignelli Center for Design Studies, is the repository for the archives of husband and wife design team, Massimo and Lella Vignelli. Opened in 2010, the center serves as an exhibition and study space available to students and the general public. The collection largely came to the university due to the efforts of Roger Remington, the Massimo and Lella Vignelli Distinguished Professor of Design at RIT, who honored the Vignellis’ wish to have their collection displayed and used as a teaching tool. [Read more]
Gwido Zlatkes and Ann Frenkel fill the Reading Room of the Cary Graphic Arts Collection with words and music. (Seth Gottlieb)
Gwido Zlatkes & Ann Frenkel: “A Pushmi-pullyu: The Collaborative Multidisciplinary Work Process at Vigoda Press”
6 pm thursday, october 22
The lecture and musical performance by Gwido Zlatkes and Ann Frenkel was a wonderful way to end the first day of the annual conference. In their presentation spanning just over an hour and a half, they provided insights into the history and function of their Vigoda Press. Gwido, originally from Poland, met Ann while she was working in a university library. Primarily, the pair publishes original translations of Polish poetry set to original scores. The two also perform their own experimental theater pieces. For each book presented, Gwido discussed the original writer and his translation of the piece, after which Ann performed one of her original compositions. [Read more]
Left, Alice and Elbert Hubbard at the hand press. Right, girl stitching at sewing frame. (Courtesy The Roycroft Campus Corporation)
Alan Nowicki: “The (Re)Birth of Roycroft Printing” ¶ Julie Mellby: “Lew Ney: Greenwich Village Printer”
3 pm saturday, october 24 ⋅ track 1
Alan Nowicki began his presentation by discussing Roycroft Shops founder, Elbert Hubbard, who had been a salesman and the innovative marketing manager for the Larkin Company, a soap manufacturer in Buffalo, New York. He retired in 1892 after traveling to England and visiting the Kelmscott Press. While there is no historical record of a meeting with its renowned proprietor William Morris, Hubbard was enamored of the work done at the press. [Read more]
Carving the cheeks and setting the till for a common press. (Jeffrey D. Groves)
“A Hands-On Approach to Printing History: Lessons Learned in the Construction of a Common Press”
9:30 am saturday, october 24
In his classes, Jeffrey D. Groves utilizes the iron hand press to provide students with an introduction to letterpress printing as well as to an historical background of the process. A hand press is something which in our digital age is very attractive for students to use. Groves says to hear the snap of the frisket releasing the paper from the type form provides an audible sign that the ink has been transferred to the paper and gives students a hands-on experience with the process. [Read more]
Jerry Kelly addresses the audience at RIT, showing a photo of Hermann Zapf teaching at RIT ca. 1979. (Emily Hancock)
The Frederic W. Goudy Award for Excellence in Typography was presented to Jerry Kelly on October 24, 2015 as the closing event of the APHA conference at RIT. The Goudy Award is a tradition that is co-sponsored by the Cary Graphic Arts Collection and the RIT School of Media Sciences that honors outstanding practitioners in type design and its related fields. The first Goudy laureate in 1969 was Professor Hermann Zapf, (1918–2015), who later taught at RIT in the 1970s and 80s. It was fitting that the latest Goudy Award should go to one of Zapf’s most successful students, Jerry Kelly, a leading calligrapher, book designer, type designer, and typographer who practices out of New York City. [Read more]
Building printing forms with furniture and reglets. A form on the Cary Graphic Art Collection’s Vandercook SP20. (Val Lucas)
Suzanne Powney: “Printing Expressively with Furniture and Reglet, a Typographic Map”
9 am-noon friday, october 23
In this workshop, participants were shown that the horizontal beds of a Vandercook proof press and an Albion hand press are ideal for printing wood furniture and reglets—materials not normally thought of as relief surfaces—to create printing forms in the shape of maps and skylines. To inspire us, instructor Suzanne Powney shared pages from her 2015 calendar that used this technique. [Read more]
Josef Beery demonstrating the common press at Rare Book School. (Amanda Nelsen)
Amanda Nelsen & Josef Beery: “When the Printer is a Press: Teaching with the Common Press” ¶ Todd Samuleson: “Manageable Engine:” The Common Press as a Focus for Book History Pedagogy”
10:45 am saturday, october 24 ⋅ track 3
In a refreshing change to academic protocol, the presenters of this panel decided to deliver their talks as one big program rather than two distinct ones. They asked the audience, well over thirty people, to circle around their chairs and to interject with comments and questions in the course of the discussion. This roundtable format helped to bring out the central and shared ideas in the approaches of teaching book history at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and the Book History Workshop at Texas A&M University in College Station. Both programs emphasize the necessity for returning the human body to the study of books and bibliography. Reading about books and their histories can not substitute for the kinds of practical knowledge that material study affords. Likewise, while better than consulting digital surrogates, merely viewing book-objects in a special collections library cannot teach our students half as effectively as hands-on encounters with the materials and processes of composing, imposing, printing, binding, etc. [Read more]
Image Permanence Institute’s Alice Carver-Kubik in the Microsocopy Lab. (Dianne L. Roman)
Behind-the-scenes with the renowned archival preservation foundation that serves collections worldwide.
11 am & 1 pm, thursday, october 22
The Image Permanence Institute primarily focuses on assisting institutions with their physical environment for the preservation of their cultural property through monitoring and managing humidity and temperature, yet there is much information here the individual producer of materials and the small-personal collector can benefit from. [Read more]
