Materialities of American Texts and Visual Cultures
Columbia University, April 9-10, 2015

An International Symposium Convened by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography. Co-sponsored by the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, The Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University, The Bibliographical Society of America, and The American Printing History Association. All events are free and open to public; please rsvp. [Read more]

Site visitor Anne Farnsworth sent this note:

My family was in the printing industry in New York state for a century. They started out printing milk tickets and evolved into one of the bigger printers of catholic church envelopes. My grandfather made a short film in the 1950’s detailing an average job from start to finish. I’ve uploaded it to Youtube with some commentary. 

The APHA conference program committee is pleased to announce that writer and journalist Alix Christie will be the keynote speaker at the American Printing History Association’s 40th annual conference: “Printing on the Hand Press & Beyond” to be held at RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection, Rochester NY, October 23–24.  [Read more]

“Materialities of American Texts and Visual Cultures”

On April 9–10, 2015, curators, conservators, and scholars from various disciplines will convene at Columbia University to discuss new approaches to American print and visual cultures generated by the recent humanistic interest in materiality. [Read more]

APHA’s Annual Meeting on January 24 in New York began as usual with officer reports on membership, programs and finances. President McCamant gave his report, saying that 2014 had not been momentous, but “we’re about as strong as we were a year ago in terms of members, and many of our activities are accomplishing very good things.” He praised the website and its developers, but noted that it garners only moderately better traffic than the old one and asked, “Are we failing to back it up with sufficient social media activity? Is there a fundamental disconnect between the subject matter APHA covers and online communication?” (An online content task force is now addressing these concerns. Membership is invited to comment on this post, or privately via the contact page.)  [Read more]

Via the contact form:

As a librarian at Plymouth State University, I am seeking the expertise of someone with an interest in industrial papermaking.

Plymouth State is home to a collection of thousands of photographs of the Brown Paper Company of Berlin, NH. A great many of these photographs were taken in the company mills in the early twentieth century and show their papermaking process and equipment. Currently the photographs do not have enough data attached to them to make them easily searchable. Together with two student employees, I have undertaken a project to add information to the photographs to facilitate folks finding and using them.

[Read more]

Fig. 1. Press pass printed by the Army of the Potomac, ca. April 1862 .(Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Graphic Arts Collection)

William Conant Church (1836–1917) of Rochester, New York was known for his newspaper work before, during, and after the American Civil War. He contributed to newspapers such as The New York Chronicle, The Sun (New York), the New York Evening Post, The New York Times, the Army and Navy Journal, and The Galaxy Magazine. [Read more]

Page spread from The Trained Printer and the Amateur: and the Pleasure of Small Books by Alfred W. Pollard, Lanston Monotype Corp., 1929. Title on cover: “New Series of the Centaur types of Bruce Rogers and the Arrighi Italics of Frederic Warde. Cut by Monotype and here first used to print a paper by Alfred W. Pollard.” (RIT Cary Collection)

At 6:30 p.m. on Monday, 17 November, the 2014 Lieberman Lecture sponsored by the American Printing History Association took place at the Melbert B. Cary Jr. Graphic Arts Collection in the Wallace Center at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Professor Herbert H. Johnson delivered an excellent address entitled “History of a Type Design: Centaur by Bruce Rogers. With a Footnote on Its Erstwhile Companion, Arrighi, by Frederick Warde.” Professor Johnson skillfully demonstrated how Rogers was able to orchestrate the association of his roman type with the complimentary one of Warde’s italic font. [Read more]

The American Printing History Association welcomes proposals for its 40th annual conference: “Printing on the Hand Press & Beyond” to be held at RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection, Rochester, NY, October 23–24, 2015. Proposals are due by March 15, 2015. PDF [Read more]