Here’s a basic collection printers interested in typography should own History, type design, typography and biography in recommended listing Individual opinions vary; printers may want to add other important works Some time ago this department listed the manuals which, since Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises, circa 1683, had influenced the compositor’s craft. There have been several inquiries [...]

The turn of the century witnessed the development of a number of distinguished American craftsmen who were devoted to the art of printing and who contributed substantially to the craft. Bruce Rogers, Frederic W. Goudy, Daniel B. Updike, William A. Dwiggins, and most of the others have all passed from the scene, leaving behind them [...]

Oz Cooper the fine Chicago artist and type designer, wrote on December 9, 1927, to Richard N. McArthur, then advertising manager of the typefoundry, Barnhart Brothers & Spindler: “Dwiggins should be seduced, and I was thinking that I might write him some day and try to get him interested. Not with any definite proposal, you [...]

From Boylston Street in Boston, Massachusetts there was published on this day in 1919 an outrageous pamphlet which purported be “Extracts from an investigation into the physical properties of books as they are at present published, undertaken by the Society of Calligraphers.” A note explained: ‘The accompanying extracts from the Transactions of the Society of [...]

“Dear RR,” wrote a distinguished designer of printer’s typefaces on this day in 1937 to an equally distinguished graphic artist who was then working upon his first type design: “the way I work at present is to draw an alphabet 10 times 12-point size, with a pen or brush, the letters carefully finished.” The type [...]

William A. Dwiggins chose this date for the first illustration in his whimsical essay, Towards a Reform of the Paper Currency, Particularly in Point of its Design, published in 1932. The illustration bears the caption, “Infuriated Artists demolishing the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at Washington. Morning of the 6th of July, 1951. First phase [...]

Across Harvard Yard at the commencement exercises on this June day in 1947 came the sonorous phrases of a recitation citing a printer for an honorary degree: “William Addison Dwiggins: Typographical designer whose skill and creative imagination have left a lasting impress on the pages of time.” Thus America’s oldest university honored with a Master [...]

On this day in 1952 the writer received from William A. Dwiggins of Hingham, Massachusetts a limited edition printing of an excerpt from the pen of Hokusai, the remarkable 19th century Japanese draughtsman, book illustrator, painter, and wood engraver. The philosophy expressed in this fragment from the introduction to Hokusai‘s Hundred Views of Fuji unquestionably [...]

“Your suggestion that I write a note about the work of my friend W.A. Dwiggins falls happily with my mood.” So began a letter written this day in 1939 by the President of the Society of Calligraphers, Dr. Hermann Püterschein. “. . . moreover,” continued the good doctor, “there are one or two points about [...]