Cary Graphic Arts Collection

Last updated
Cary Graphic Arts Collection
ImagineRIT2018CaryGraphicArtsCollection.jpg
Cary Graphic Arts Collection
43°05′02″N77°40′34″W / 43.08395°N 77.6761°W / 43.08395; -77.6761
Location90 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623-5604, Henrietta, New York
Established1969
Affiliation Rochester Institute of Technology
DirectorSteven K. Galbraith
Building information
Building Wallace Library
Website www.rit.edu/carycollection/

The Cary Graphic Arts Collection is a library and archive of books, type specimens, manuscripts, documents, and artifacts related to the history of graphical communication. Located in Wallace Library at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), in Henrietta, New York, the Cary Collection contains literate artifacts as old as cuneiform tablets and as recent as computer tablets and e-books, in all comprising some 40,000 volumes in addition to manuscripts, correspondence, printing types and traditional letterpress printing equipment.

Contents

A recent, newsworthy acquisition is the Albion hand press from the Kelmscott Press of William Morris. [1] [2] The Cary Collection also possesses one of the rare copies (only 440 printed) of the extravagantly produced and illustrated Kelmscott Chaucer of 1896, which the British Library has called "a new benchmark for book design at the end of the 19th century". [3] The Kelmscott Chaucer was hand printed on the Kelmscott Albion press which is also held in the Cary Collection.

History of the Cary Collection

The original collection of 2,300 volumes was assembled during the 1920s and 1930s by Melbert B. Cary, Jr., director of Continental Type Founders Association, past president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), typophile, and proprietor of the private Press of the Woolly Whale. In 1969, the books that formed the nucleus of the Cary Graphic Arts Collection were presented to RIT by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, as a memorial to Mr. Cary. The Charitable Trust also provided funds to support the use and growth of the Cary Collection, which has expanded almost 20-fold since its inception, and now includes materials related to the history of writing, the art of calligraphy, the formats and printing of early books, the design of typefaces, the technology of printing, the practice of paper-making, the art of the book and artists' books. The Cary Collection also includes works by recipients of RIT's Frederic W. Goudy Award for excellence of achievement in typography.

The Cary Collection has grown through several major donations. In 1982, the Cary Collection received the donation of The New York Times Museum of the Recorded Word, and in 1983 received the Bernard C. Middleton Collection of Books on Bookbinding. Recent gifts include the Jonathan and Patricia England Collection of American Fine Printing and the Ismar David archive, and an extensive collection, the most substantial in America, of manuscripts, layouts, calligraphy, and books by type and book designer Hermann Zapf. [4]

The Curator of the Cary Collection from 1979 to 2011 was David Pankow, now RIT Librarian Emeritus. The Curator, since 2011, is Steven K. Galbraith. The Associate Curator is Amelia Hugill-Fontanel.

The Cary Collection in education

The Cary Collection supports RIT undergraduate and graduate education in graphic design and graphic arts and is open to RIT students interested in researching any of its holdings. [5] The Cary Collection also regularly hosts RIT classes for lectures and demonstrations, and welcomes visiting scholars.

The collection also presents public lectures and exhibitions on the art, history, and scholarship of the book. David Pankow, then Cary Curator, was a co-organizer of the June 2010 "Future of Reading" Symposium at RIT [6] and the Cary Collection helped host the April 2012 RIT Symposium on "Reading Digital", organized by Charles Bigelow, then the Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Graphic Arts at RIT.

Highlights of the Cary Collection

Arthur M. Lowenthal Memorial Room CaryGraphicArtsCollectionLowenthalRoom.jpg
Arthur M. Lowenthal Memorial Room
Cuneiform tablet ImagineRITCaryGraphicArtsCollectionCuneiformTablet.jpg
Cuneiform tablet

The Cary Collection contains incunabula (books from the "cradle" of printing, before 1501) including books printed by Johann Fust & Peter Schoeffer, Nicolas Jenson, Erhard Ratdolt, and Aldus Manutius, and books printed during the 16th century French "Golden Age" of typography include volumes from the presses of Simon de Colines and Henri Estienne.

The collection includes 18th century type specimens by William Caslon and Pierre-Simon Fournier, and books printed by John Baskerville in England and Benjamin Franklin in America. Among the collection's 19th century type specimens is the two volume Manuale Typographica of Giambattista Bodoni, and numerous other 19th specimens from American and European typefounders.

Harkening back to ancient materials shaped by modern hands, the collection includes alphabet stones carved by Edward Catich, based on early Roman inscriptions, as well as Catich's rubbings (similar to tracings) of the Trajan Inscription in Rome of 113 A.D.

A 17th-Century English hornbook ImagineRITCaryGraphicArtsCollectionHornbook.jpg
A 17th-Century English hornbook

Images of some of the collection's holdings can be found online in its Digital Collections. [7]

Publications

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermann Zapf</span> German type designer and calligrapher (1918–2015)

Hermann Zapf was a German type designer and calligrapher who lived in Darmstadt, Germany. He was married to the calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse. Typefaces he designed include Palatino, Optima, and Zapfino. He is considered one of the greatest type designers of all time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederic Goudy</span> American printer and type designer (1865–1947)

Frederic William Goudy was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and his self-named type continues to be one of the most popular in America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morris Fuller Benton</span> American typeface designer (1872–1948)

Morris Fuller Benton was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kelmscott Press</span> Private press founded by designer William Morris in 1891

The Kelmscott Press, founded by William Morris and Emery Walker, published 53 books in 66 volumes between 1891 and 1898. Each book was designed and ornamented by Morris and printed by hand in limited editions of around 300. Many books were illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones. Kelmscott Press books sought to replicate the style of 15th-century printing and were part of the Gothic revival movement. Kelmscott Press started the contemporary fine press movement, which focuses on the craft and design of bookmaking, often using hand presses. While their most famous books are richly decorated, most Kelmscott Press books did not have elaborate decoration, but were published simply.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kris Holmes</span>

Kris Holmes is an American typeface designer, calligrapher, type design educator and animator. She, with Charles Bigelow, is the co-creator of the Lucida and Wingdings font families, among many other typeface designs. She is President of Bigelow & Holmes Inc., a typeface design studio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Bigelow (type designer)</span> American graphic and type designer

Charles A. Bigelow is an American type historian, professor, and designer. Bigelow grew up in the Detroit suburbs and attended the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982, the Frederic W. Goudy Award in 1987, Sloan Science and Film screenwriting awards in 2001 and 2002, and other honors. Along with Kris Holmes, he is the co-creator of Lucida and Wingdings font families. He is a principal of the Bigelow and Holmes studio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">P22 (type foundry)</span> Digital type foundry and letterpress printing studio, Rochester, NY, USA (created 1994)

P22 Type Foundry is a digital type foundry and letterpress printing studio based in Rochester, New York. The company was created in 1994 in Buffalo, New York by co-founders Richard Kegler and Carima El-Behairy. The company is best known for its type designs, which have appeared in films and on commercial products. The P22 Type Foundry retail font collection specializes in historical letterforms inspired by art, history, and science that otherwise have never been available previously in digital form. P22 works with museums and foundations to ensure the development of accurate historical typefaces, and with private clients to create custom bespoke fonts.

Melbert Brinckerhoff Cary Jr. (1892–1941) was a graphic artist who imported numerous typefaces from Europe. He married Mary Flagler Cary, an heiress of one of the founders of Standard Oil. Mr Cary founded the Press of the Woolly Whale, a private press dedicated to producing fine editions of works Cary believed to be of interest and overlooked—a rejection of the private press tradition of producing only new editions of classic works. In his own words:

Our intention [is] to publish only those text which appeal strongly to us, excluding those accepted classics, so completely accepted that they are never opened. Our interest lies only with those who read their books, cherishing them because of the enjoyment gained from using them.

Daniel Berkeley Updike was an American printer and historian of typography. In 1880 he joined the publishers Houghton, Mifflin & Company, of Boston as an errand boy. He worked for the firm's Riverside Press and trained as a printer but soon moved to typographic design. In 1896 he founded the Merrymount Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Rogers (typographer)</span> American typographer

Bruce Rogers was an American typographer and type designer, acclaimed by some as among the greatest book designers of the twentieth century. Rogers was known for his "allusive" typography, rejecting modernism, seldom using asymmetrical arrangements, rarely using sans serif type faces, often favoring faces such as Bell, Caslon, his own Montaigne, a Jensonian precursor to his masterpiece of type design Centaur. His books can fetch high sums at auction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gudrun Zapf von Hesse</span> German typographer (1918–2019)

Gudrun Zapf von Hesse was a German book-binder, calligrapher and typographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linn Boyd Benton</span> American typographer

Linn Boyd Benton was an American typeface designer and inventor of technology for producing metal type.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Will Ransom</span>

Will Ransom was an American graphic designer, letterer, typeface designer, and the foremost bibliographer of private presses.

The Frederic W. Goudy Award & Lecture were established in 1969 by funds donated to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust in memory of her late husband, Melbert B. Cary, Jr., a typographer, type importer, fine printer, book collector, and president of AIGA. The award was named after illustrious American type designer Frederic W. Goudy, a friend and business associate of Melbert Cary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Golden Type</span> Typeface designed by William Morris

The Golden Type is a serif typeface designed by artist William Morris for his fine book printing project, the Kelmscott Press, in 1890. It is an "old-style" serif face, based on type designed by engraver and printer Nicolas Jenson in Venice around 1470. It is named for the Golden Legend, which was intended to be the first book printed using it. The original design has neither an italic nor a bold weight, as neither of these existed in Jenson's time.

Edna Rudolph Beilenson (1909–1981) was an American typographer, fine press printer, typesetter, book designer, cook book author, publisher, and co-proprietor of the Peter Pauper Press from 1931 until his death in 1962, and afterward its sole proprietor and president until her death in 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RIT Press</span> University press

The Rochester Institute of Technology Press is a university press affiliated with Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, New York. The press—which is currently a member of the Association of University Presses—publishes between 8-12 titles annually and is operated by the RIT Libraries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Roy Kelly</span> American graphic design educator and wood type collector (1925-2004)

Robert Roy Kelly was a design educator who established multiple design programs in the formative years of graphic design education at art schools and universities. Known as a collector and scholar of wood type, Mr. Kelly authored American Wood Type, 1828–1900 (1969). His comprehensive wood type collection now resides at the University of Texas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ismar David</span> Calligrapher and graphic designer (1910–1996)

Ismar David was a calligrapher, graphic designer, and type designer.

Stephen O. Saxe was an American graphic designer and historian of printing.

References

  1. RIT Wins Auction of the Kelmscott-Goudy Press, American Printing History Association, December 10, 2013.
  2. Mature, Muscular, Literary and Available, New York Times, December 5, 2013.
  3. Kelmscott Chaucer, British Library
  4. About the Cary Collection RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection
  5. RIT's Cary Collection a Rochester Gem Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, February 8, 2014.
  6. Future of Reading RIT, 2010,
  7. "RIT Libraries Digital Collections" . Retrieved February 9, 2021.