#dard hunter

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Book cover

Dard Hunter. c.1900.

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Decorative Sunday: Paste Paper Edition

In 1942, Harvard University Press printed 250 copies of Decorated Book Papers: Being an Account of the Designs and Fashions by the bookbinder, author, and creator and collector of decorative papers, Rosamond Bowditch Loring. Published by the Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the 234 sale copies of the first edition sold out within months, despite the “then considerable price of ten dollars” and the economic stressors of the war. In addition to eight plates reproducing examples of 18th century decorative papers, the first edition includes twenty-five samples tipped in, many of which are from the author’s own extensive collection. 

While Loring collected a variety of a decorative papers, the examples shown here are from the chapter on paste papers, Loring’s area of creative specialization. The sample papers included in this chapter are all Loring’s own work, or that of her student, Veronica Ruzicka, who bound the first edition (it is worthy to note that Ruzicka is the daughter of illustrator, wood engraver, and type designer Rudolph Ruzicka, whose work we have highlighted several times). Ruzicka also contributed an essay when a second edition of the book was finally published by Harvard University Press in 1952, along with Dard Hunter and Walter Muir Whitehall. 

Rosamond Loring (May 2, 1889 – September 17, 1950) studied book binding under Mary Crease Sears at the Sears School of Bookbinding in Boston. Sears, about a decade older than Loring, had had to battle to learn the trade; women were barred from the Bookbinders Union but most commercial binderies were happy to hire women for particular tasks, such as sewing sheets, but maintained a strict separation of roles, preventing employees from learning the whole binding process from start to finish. Eventually, Ms. Sears secured an apprenticeship in France to complete her studies and opened her binding school in Boston shortly after, training several generations of women binders. While studying under Sears, Loring became frustrated with the lack of options for quality endpapers and became determined to make her own, which she sold to other binders at Ms. Sears’s studio. Her first major commercial commission was for the Houghton Mifflin publication of The Antigone of Sophocles, translated by John J. Chapman (Boston, 1930).

Our copy of Decorated Book Papers is a gift of Dick Schoen. 

-Olivia Hickner, Special Collections Graduate Intern

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Literary history that happened on 29 November

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Decorative Sunday

This Sunday we feature woodcuts, photogravure, and specimens from legendary American papermaker Dard Hunter’s A Papermaking Pilgrimage to Japan, Korea and China, published in 1936 in New York by Pynson Printers in a limited edition of 350. Each edition is signed by Hunter and the founder of Pynson Printers, typographer and book designer Elmer Adler. The woodcuts were cut by J. J. Lankes and the photogravure plates were printed by Photogravure & Color Co. of New York. The book was bound by master binder Gerhard Gerlach, a student of lauded German bookbinder Ignatz Wiemeler. The book includes original specimens collected by Hunter.

The first photogravure above (image #2), the frontispience for the book, is a kakemono by an unknown Japanese artist memorializing “Three Gods of Papermaking.” Depicted are Cai Lun, traditionally attributed as the Chinese inventor of paper in the early second century and Damjing (Donchō in Japan), the Korean Buddhist monk that is often credited with introducing paper to Japan in 610. They are shown alongside Seibei Mochizuki, who in 1572 brought papermaking to Nishijima, a mountainous region of Yamanashi Prefecture.

This book is the generous gift of the trusts of Hazel O. Metzner and Delia G. Ovitz, local sisters who worked as Librarians at UWM’s predecessor institution, the Milwaukee State Normal School. 

You can read more about Dard Hunter in this Typography Tuesday post.

See more wood engravings by J. J. Lankes.

Find more Decorative Sunday posts here. 

-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern

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Typography Tuesday

HUNTER TYPE & DESIGN

Dard Hunter -- Senior, Junior, and Dard III -- are most well-remembered as giants in the revival of hand papermaking in America. With the possible exception of Timothy Barrett, their contributions to American hand papermaking are unparalleled. But they are also remembered as accomplished type designers and letterpress printers. The Hunters’ proprietary typefaces, shown in the top image, were not only designed by Dard Sr. and Dard Jr., respectively, but they also cut their own punches, made their own matrices, and hand-manufactured their own types from their own hand-made moulds.

Dard Sr. began his career in 1904 as one of Elbert Hubbard’s Roycrofters Arts and Crafts community in East Aurora, N.Y. There he became fascinated by modern design, particularly contemporary Viennese design, and by 1910 he was the principal designer for Roycroft publications, dramatically altering the look of their books and other products. This can be seen in the three Roycroft books above, Justinian and Theodora (1906), Woman’s Work (1908), and So Here Cometh White Hyacinths, (1907).

In 1911, Hunter struck out on his own, founding the Mountain House Press and Papermill in Chillicothe, Ohio, and immediately began work on a new font of type in between making his own paper. By 1915 he had designed, cut, and manufactured a complete set of type. By 1916, he completed his first commission in his own type, the Chicago Society of Etchers’ The Etching of Figures. In the same year, he completed his second commission for the Society, Frank Weitenkampf’s The Etching of Contemporary Life (the title page above is reproduced in the 1997 keepsake,Twelve Treasures from the Library of the Book Club of California; the text page is reproduced in the 1998 book, American Proprietary Typefaces).

In 1940, Dard Jr. completed his own font of type, seen above in his Specimen of Type as reproduced in American Proprietary Typefaces. The culmination of the work done by father and son is their monumental 1950 publication Papermaking by Hand in America, which uses Dard Jr.’s type, and for which he cut seventeen new ornaments. Dard Sr. set the type himself directly from his notes, while Dard Jr. did the presswork. Dard Jr.’s special place in the history of typography is being the youngest to make a font of type completely by hand (21), besting his father by eight years. Today the tradition carries on at Mountain House with the work of Dard Hunter III.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts. 

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Books On Books Collection - Gerard Unger

Books On Books Collection – Gerard Unger

A Counter-proposal (1967) Een tegenvoorstel/A counter-proposal/Une contreproposition/Ein gegenvorschlag (1967)Gerard UngerPamphlet. 250 x 250 mm, 4 pages. Acquired from Antiquariaat Frans Melk, 27 April 2021.Photos: Books On Books Collection. A few months after Pieter Brattinga issued Wim Crouwel‘s New Alphabet (below left), he followed up with this single-fold riposte from Gerard Unger,…

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Books On Books Collection - Taller Leñateros

Books On Books Collection – Taller Leñateros

Incantations (2005)

Incantations (2005) Mayan Women Fathermothers of the Book: Ámbar Past with Xun Okotz and Xpetra Ernándes Casebound, glued. H250 x W250 x D50 mm, 194 pages. Acquired from Taller Leñateros, Chiapas, Mexico, 23 July 2020.

Acquisition of this anthology of magical songs and ritual paintings of Tsotsil women from the Highlands of Chiapas came primarily from an interest in its…

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A Papermaking Pilgrimage to Japan, Korea and China.

Dard Hunter.

New York: Pynson Printers, 1936.

Woodcut depicting the gampi plant. Paper mulberry and mitsumata are also illustrated in woodcuts; additionally, the book has 65 photogravure images.

Hunter saw an exhibit on papermaking and printing during a visit to the London Science Museum in 1911, and he was inspired. At the time, there were no producers of handmade paper in the United States, and Hunter decided there should be. Within two years he had a paper mill of his own, powered by a water wheel. In the following decades he travelled the world, researching papermaking, and writing over twenty books about his studies.  A fuller biography is available from the Dard Hunter Studios.