Specimens of Holly Wood Type, Borders, Reglet and Furniture, Manufactured by Hamilton & Katz, Two Rivers, Wisconsin, ca. 1884. Courtesy of the RIT Cary Collection.

The 40th Susan Garretson Swartzburg ’60 Memorial Lecture at the Wells College Book Arts Center will coincide this October with the 40th Annual American Printing History Association conference. Professor David Shields will deliver his talk “Muster Hundreds! Towards a People’s History of American Wood Type,” at 5:30 p.m. on October 21, at the Wells Stratton Hall Auditorium in Aurora-on-Cayuga, New York. This is one day before the APHA Printing on the Handpress & Beyond activities begin at RIT in Rochester, New York. Why not come a day early to enjoy both!

David Shields is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Design at The University of Texas at Austin where he served as the Head of the Design Program and as the Design Custodian for the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection. Professor Shields focuses his research on 19th century typographic form and visual culture arising from investigations of the Kelly Wood Type Collection. He keeps a blog of his research at Wood Type Research. He was the 2012 recipient of the APHA Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship for his proposal “A Handlist of 19th & 20th Century Wood Type Specimen Books.”

This lecture is part of series named for Susan Garretson Swartzburg, who was a champion and founding organizer of the Wells Book Arts Center. For more information about the details of attending this free lecture, please contact bookartscenter@wells.edu.