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]

Paper, Print & Publishing, Book Binding Establishments, 1880. (Russ White)

A new digital humanities project from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo could potentially offer deeper understandings of the history of printing, publishing and the allied trades. Through the use of digital mapping tools, users can manipulate data to analyze historical changes in the manufacturing, distribution, sales and consumption of paper and printed material. [Read more]

Carl P. Rollins, Printer to Yale University from 1920–1948, founded the Bibliographical Press in the Yale University Library in 1927. Rollins taught a course titled “Eighteenth-Century Printing Office Practice” at the press in order to provide graduate students, librarians, and faculty members hands-on experience with typesetting and printing on the hand press. In addition, Rollins taught his students how to make paper by hand. The handwriting is by Rollins. (Courtesy of the Carl Purington Rollins Papers, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, Yale University)

I always hope that APHA conference sessions will reveal not just the ‘what’ and ‘how,’ but the ‘why’ of printing history and the allied arts, moving conversations beyond technical applications alone—always a deep well for practitioners—into the realms of significance. [Read more]

The 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Printing History Association will take place on Saturday, January 24 at 2 pm in the Trustees Room of the New York Public Library. Friends of the book arts past and present are urged to attend. APHA’s annual honorees will be present and make presentations:

The individual honoree is Paul F. Gehl, the George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and the Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing at the Newberry Library, Chicago. Gehl has been Custodian of the Wing Foundation on the History of Printing since 1987 and has enriched that collection by his judicious acquisition of materials, exhibitions both of print & calligraphy, and sponsorship of public lectures on various aspect of the book. In doing so, he has also enriched the broader community of lovers of print, calligraphy and the book. [Read more]

Photographs courtesy of Hay Library, Brown University

The Cincinnati printer Oscar Harpel produced and published Harpel’s Typograph in 1870. The Typograph was promotion piece, company advertising presented as a printing guidebook and an artistic sampler. It caused a splash among printers and made Harpel famous. On its strength, Harpel’s colorful presswork and ornate typography became “artistic printing.” Today Harpel’s Typograph fetches a high, and climbing, price in the rare book trade. [Read more]

Isaac Gewirtz, of the New York Public Library, has asked that this sad news be forwarded to APHA members.

On December 8, Stephen G. Crook, a long-time member and Executive Secretary of APHA, who retired from the New York Public Library’s Berg Collection in 2010, died. A memorial for him will be held on a weekday evening, at NYPL, in late January or February. The APHA membership will be notified as soon as arrangements have been finalized.

For twenty-one years, Steve brought passionate commitment, broad knowledge of English and American literature, careful attention, and a highly developed set of reference and descriptive skills to his work as a librarian in the Berg Collection, which was his calling. Legions of researchers benefited from his wise guidance. It was a privilege to work with him.

Isaac Gewirtz
Curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection
of English and American Literature

Megan Singleton spoke about her 2011 visit to the ruins of a former hand papermaking district in Lombardy called the Valley of the Paper Makers. Proportedly established in 1384 in the mountains above the villages of Tuscolano and Maderno on Lake Garda, most of the mill sites date to the sixteenth century when the area was abandoned due to the plague. However in the late seventeenth century it came to be re-occupied and by 1730 thirty-eight mills were reopened. [Read more]

Left: Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome in His Study, 1514 [MMA. 19.73.68]; verso; and x-ray. (Angela Campbell)

Angela Campbell, Assistant Conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, spoke about the paper production story behind Dürer’s Meisterstiche (“master engravings”) which include: Knight, Death, and the Devil; Melencolia I; and St. Jerome in His Study. Durer’s Meisterstiche represented an unusual opportunity for study because of past scholarship on the three works and because the Metropolitan Museum holds six impressions of Knight, Death, and the Devil, as well as four impressions of Melencolia I and four impressions of St. Jerome in His Study, each with slight inconsistencies. Art historian Joseph Meder’s chronology of Dürer’s impressions divided Melencolia into two states, the first state in which the number “9” appeared backwards in the background and the second in which it is printed correctly. In addition, many of the surviving Meisterstiche impressions had a distinguishing horizontal crease on their versos, which she thought which might be part of the history of the production of the prints. [Read more]

Left: a page of . Every page has illustrations surrounded by texts. Right: book cover exhibiting burnished design. (Val Lucas)

Kazuko Hioki and Anne Covell’s presentation took us from the Edo period in Japan (1603–1868) to the present day at the University of Iowa’s Center for the Book. Kazuko displayed examples of Japanese books, which were mostly side-sewn folded sheets printed from finely carved woodblocks. Some had embossed and decorated covers created from layers of recycled and dyed paper. [Read more]