The Legacy Press Series: Russell Maret

The Legacy Press Series @ The Center for Book Arts with Russell Maret

Thursday, November 17, 2022 @ 6:30pm

The New York Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers in collaboration with The Center For Book Arts presents The Legacy Press Series. Join us for Mr. Maret’s lecture pertaining to his publication “Visionaires and Fanatics and Other Essays on Type Design, Technology, and the Private Press” : The Legacy Press (2021).

Mr. Maret discusses “A Flexible Matrix: The Calligraphic Typeface Used to Print the Theuerdank, 1517“.

In 1517, Johann Schönsperger the elder printed the Theuerdank for Emperor Maximilian I, using a typeface based closely on the calligraphy of Vincenz Röckner. The type is such a close facsimile of calligraphy, in fact, that at first glance it is hard to believe it is cast and set in metal. In order to achieve this appearance, the artisans who created the type took a radical approach to the typographic page, designing a typeface that is composed both horizontally and vertically. By making use of a vertical compositional axis, letters could be set in such a way as to align with ornamental swashes above and/or below, allowing the same letter to look as if it had multiple variants. The resulting composite letterforms created a unique typographic page, and laid the ground work for later composite typefaces such as Alpha-Blox. In this talk, Maret will use high resolution images of the Theuerdank type to analyze its composition and demonstrate the type’s remarkable alphabetical potential.

Please register using this link:

https://centerforbookarts.org/calendar/talk/the-legacy-press-series-a-flexible-matrix-the-calligraphic-typeface-used-to-print-the-theuerdank-1517

Russell Maret is a book artist and letter designer working in New York City. He began printing in San Francisco as a teenager before apprenticing with Peter Koch in Berkeley and Firefly Press in Somerville, Massachusetts. He set up his own press at the Center for Book Arts, New York in 1993 and has been printing and publishing ever since. In 1996 Russell began teaching himself to design letterforms, leading to a twelve year study before he completed his first typeface in 2008. In 2009 Russell was awarded the Rome Prize in Design from the American Academy in Rome. In 2011, he began working to convert some of his type designs into new metal typefaces for letterpress. Since then he has produced four metal typefaces, including Hungry Dutch, a new face for Monotype composition casting, as well as multiple suites of metal type ornaments. He is the current North American Vice Chair of the Fine Press Book Association. He has been the printer in residence of the Press in Tuscany Alley, San Francisco (1990); Artist in Residence at the Center for Book Arts, NYC (1996); Printer in Residence at the Bodleian Libraries Bibliographical Press, Oxford (2017); a trustee of the American Printing History Association; and a Master Lecturer in the MFA Book Arts & Printmaking Department of University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Russell’s books and manuscripts are in public and private collections throughout the world.

The Center for Book Arts is located at 28 West 27th Street, 3rd floor.