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ISO: Multograph?

From the Contact form: 

Are you aware of a printing device called a “multograph”? I know about the multigraph (invented in 1902), but I’ve also seen newspapers from the early 20th century refer to a “multograph.” Is that the same device, perhaps in an alternate or simply incorrect (mis)spelling? [Read more]

APHA’s 2021 Awards Recipients Named

The American Printing History Association has named Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. as the recipient of the APHA 2021 Individual Laureate and Mills College Book Art Program as the recipient of the APHA 2021 Institutional Award. [Read more]

ISO: abbreviations in Colonial America

From the Contact form:

I would like to learn more about early use of abbreviations in printing, especially in Colonial America. Did these come about specifically in newspapers to save space? Any resources you can share would be appreciated. Thanks!

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José Guadalupe Posada in the Brady Nikas Collection 

Jim Nikas

Posada popularized skeletal images called calaveras. Originally La Cucutacha appeared in a 1912 broadside and was later renamed La Calavera Catrina by Diego Rivera.

Called the Father of Mexican Printing, Artist of the People, and a prophet, Mexican artist/engraver José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) is credited by some as having created over 20,000 images. [Read more]

ISO: Identify A Wood Engraving Artist

Solved! This wood-mounted electrotype of a wood engraving and print (3″ ×  3¾″) are from the collection of Edna Macphail, which she inherited from her grandfather, the fine press printer Arthur W. Rushmore (1883–1955). [Read more]

Zenab Bastawala—Type Specimens: A Microscopic View of Assorted Metal Sorts During Colonial India

George Barnum

Electro block from Kikabhai Type Specimen, Bombay, 1883. (Zenab Bastawala)

Fri. Nov. 6 | What is more enticing, more alluring than catalogs? Who among us hasn’t mesmerized by the wonders in vintage printing catalogs and type specimen books?   [Read more]

Alessandro Colizzi—In the Footsteps of Nebiolo’s Art Studio: Reading the Evidence

Sara T. Sauers

A composite from the Nebiolo General Catalogue of 1939.

Sun, Nov. 8 |  Alessandro Colizzi, design faculty at Politechnic University in Milan, Italy, presented his research into the history of the Nebiolo Foundry, particularly the origins and development of their art studio. Founded in Turin, Italy, in 1852, Nebiolo was a small business launched in a newly united Italy.  [Read more]

Judith Poirier—Fraktura: A Typographic Horror Movie

Paul Moxon, Website Editor

Still from the film Fraktura, 2020, Judith Poirier

Fri., Nov. 6 |  Judith Poirier introduced Awayzgoose attendees to the process behind her brief abstract typographic movies, showing us how she produces letterpress animation—without a camera—to create compositions in motion punctuated with discordant (and harmonious) sounds.  [Read more]

Dafi Kühne‚ Alternatives to Wood Type in the 20th Century

Alice H.R.H. Beckwith

Dafi Kühne in his studio, Näfels, Switzerland

Thurs., Nov. 5 | Dafi Kühne discussed his research on twenieth century poster type pantograph cut from plastic and light-metal and cast plastic type. From his spacious well-equipped letterpress studio in the Swiss mountain village of Näfels, Kühne explained that these synthetic types do not need finishing with shellac or linseed oil, nor do they wear out over time as wood type does. Kühne’s talk is available at https://vimeo.com/476621015. [Read more]

Paula Scher—Keynote Presentation

George Barnum

Caption placeholder: poster for Shakespeare in the Park (Paula Scher)

Thur., Nov. 5 | Paula Scher’s name and visual style as a renowned graphic designer may be more familiar to other attendees of the 2020 APHA/Hamilton Wood Type Museum Awayzgoose than they were to me. But her work over the last quarter-century for New York’s Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park are immediately identifiable with their stark, uncompromising emphasis on typography. As she said, the identity she developed for the Public Theater “became New York.” [Read more]