In this presentation, Munro will explore a selection of significant Black publications from the 20th century through the design of their layouts into their cultural relevance. He will talk about how these histories inspire Polymode’s poetic research process when applied to book design and his work as a design historian.

Annual Charles Rheault Lecture [description to follow].

*Note Thursday date

This lecture tells the story of one typeface: Empirica, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones and Nina Stössinger. Empirica starts from the most classic letterforms in the Western canon: Roman inscriptional capitals. It is a source of towering importance in the Western letter arts, but it also has a very limited scope, consisting only of capital letters made for carving in stone at large sizes. Moving outward and onward from this nucleus, Empirica attempts to project its logic forward, across a larger character set and family structure, to create a versatile typeface family that can be useful and appropriate for contemporary applications. It’s a story about extrapolating from history and imagining alternate timelines and solutions; a story of idealized letterforms that shine through the ages, but also adapt and translate between different eras and their specific tastes and technologies. It also illuminates different ways of working and understanding a type-design process, as Empirica’s development snaked back and forth between custom commissions for specific applications and a retail release that prioritizes usefulness across a wider audience.

Bill Goldston will recount the improbable saga of Tatyana Grosman’s flight from the Russian revolution to a bungalow on Long Island. He will describe her personal resolve to be a publisher and her determination to introduce the creative potential of printmaking to the rising stars of the 60s such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell and James Rosenquist. Further, he will tell how he was drawn to what became Universal Limited Art Editions, and how, after Tanya’s death, he guided the studio’s growth and experimentation up to the present.

John Robinson: What Happened to the Graphic Arts Industry

New England has experienced more shrinkage in graphics arts employment than perhaps any other region of the country. In the greater New Haven area of Connecticut, there were over 50 graphic arts companies “of size” (more than 25 employees) 35 years ago and another 100 smaller firms. While the majority of these 50 larger shops were printers, included among them were typesetting companies, color separation and pre-press companies, specialty finishing companies, and trade binders. Today that total of 150 firms employing over 3,000 people has shrunk to fewer than 20 graphics arts companies employing fewer than 300 people total, with only one of those companies, GHP, employing over 25 employees. There is no longer a single typesetting company, color separation company, specialty finishing company, or trade binder in the greater New Haven area.

The publication history of the true first edition of Allen Ginsberg's epochal poem "Howl," which he had duplicated himself in a tiny edition of just 25 copies, has for decades been clouded in rumor and misinformation. Much of this confusion stems in no small part from how Ginsberg printed the poem: by spirit duplicator (also known as "Ditto"). This talk will examine how an understanding of this printing process is vital to a proper understanding of the bibliography, history, and even interpretation of the poem itself.

Press tour and demonstrations at Ascensius Press and Firefly Press, Buxton, Maine, followed by a visit to Wolfe Editions, Portland, Maine. Both shops will have letterpress equipment set-up for hands-on demonstrations, including running a Monotype Composition Caster from a Mac computer and printing a broadside on a hand press.