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.
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