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]
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]
This fragment was discovered after removing the old packing on the tympan of the Kelmscott/Goudy Albion Press.
The Kelmscott/Goudy Albion press arrived at RIT on January 13, 2014. It had been expertly packed and carefully shipped 300 miles from Manhattan to Rochester, making what would hopefully be its last long-distance journey. The press has received a warm welcome at the Cary Graphic Arts Collection, with classes, friends, and reporters visiting to catch a glimpse of the famous machine, even while still disassembled. [Read more]
Jethro Lieberman speaks about the press at Christie’s on the eve of the auction. Photo: Paul Romaine.
The Cary Graphic Arts Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology announced today that it has acquired the Kelmscott/Goudy press, so named because it was first owned by William Morris then later Frederic Goudy. This famous iron hand press auctioned by Christie’s on December 6, expected to sell for between $100,000-150,000, actually fetched $233,000. [Read more]
Orbis Typographicus featuring text by Walter Crane & Hippocrates. Typeface: Delphin, Calligraphy by Hermann Zapf, 1980.
Orbis Typographicus is a letterpress portfolio tour de force that was released in 1980 after ten years of close collaboration between Hermann Zapf in Darmstadt and Philip L. Metzger of the Crabgrass Press in Kansas City. This title offers the reader a typographic world that only Professor Zapf could envision: full of alphabets and aphorisms, all handset and exquisitely printed by Metzger in a multitude of styles that make the reader believe that she is party to some wonderful typographic time travel. [Read more]
Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, etc. Manufactured by Wm. H. Page & Co., Greeneville, Conn. : The Co., 1874. 655.241 P133sp
Rob Roy Kelly wrote that Wm. H. Page’s Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, Etc., 1874 “has been rightfully acclaimed as containing the most superb wood type specimens ever printed.” This tome of 100 plates featured Page’s fantastic character designs, intricate borders and tint blocks, precisely printed in up to 7 colors each—sometimes with metallic inks, and always with interesting overprinted hues. About a dozen copies exist in libraries nationwide, and it is this rarity that encouraged curators at RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection to have RIT’s copy digitally photographed. [Read more]
