Dard Hunter: The Graphic Works
by Lawrence Kreisman
Pomegranate, Petaluma, CA, 2012
112 pp., illus. 120 col. Trade, $29.95
ISBN: 978-0764961854.
In 1903, an Ohio chalk talk artist named
William J. (Dard) Hunter
(1883-1966) was touring the U.S. as an assistant for his brother, a
stage magician. On a terribly hot day in California, their act was
scheduled to follow a lecture by orator William Jennings Bryan (now
famously remembered as the villain in
Inherit the Wind). All the
show props were in place when Bryan arrived, but backstage as he groped
for the curtain, he became hopelessly entangled and ripped out wires,
strings and threads. Annoyed by the great man’s clumsiness, Hunter
secretly dumped red chalk dust into Bryan’s hat, which he had left
backstage. After the talk, Bryan jauntily placed his hat on his already
perspiring bald pate and walked out into the blazing sun, where he
became—literally—red-faced.
I got that from Hunter’s autobiography,
My Life with Paper
(easily one of my favorite memoirs). That story is not in this welcome
new book because its space is limited, and it is an effort to try to
zoom in on his achievements as a graphic designer. In fact, it may be
the first book to focus so intently on that aspect of his life, because
he is far better known as the last century’s foremost authority on
handmade papers, an interest that led him to travel the world and to
write twenty books about the craft and history of papermaking. There is
even a group that meets annually called
Friends of Dard Hunter: American Contemporary Hand Papermaking.
Dard Hunter had come from a family of Ohio job printers and newspaper
publishers, so, from a youthful age, he was well acquainted with type,
inks, paper and printing. During that 1903 tour with his brother’s magic
act, he stayed at the
Mission Inn in Riverside, California, an early
Arts and Crafts landmark. To see that building (and its interior
furnishings) piqued his interest and changed his life.
In 1904, he moved to East Aurora, New York (near Buffalo), where he
joined the
Roycroft Workshops, headed by Arts and Crafts guru
Elbert Hubbard. While there (he was allied with Roycroft, off and on, for about
six years), he was able to experiment (without having to earn a living)
with a range of handicraft media (especially jewelry, furniture and
stained glass) and the design of such hand printed items as letterheads,
business cards, postcards, advertising booklets, catalogs, bookplates,
initial letters, title pages, and entire books. This book reproduces
about 85 full-color images of his designs for print and stained glass,
the majority of which most readers, even die-hard Hunter fans, are
unlikely to have seen before.
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Dard Hunter design for an Elbert Hubbard aphorism (1908)
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During and after his years with
Roycroft, Hunter was able to make two
research trips to Europe, initially to Vienna in 1908 (newly married,
the trip was also a honeymoon), where he witnessed first hand the work
of artist-designers allied with the
Wiener Werkstatte. He met briefly
with Vienna Secession leaders Josef Hoffman and Otto Wagner (neither of
whom spoke English), and with architect Adolf Loos (who did speak
English, and was especially gracious).
Returning to East Aurora, Hunter was excited about the possibilities of
the Arts and Crafts Movement. Almost immediately, he began to prepare to
return to Europe in 1910, this time not just as a tourist, but to stay
longer and to study in Vienna, to visit Arts and Crafts centers in
Germany, and lastly to live briefly in London, where he worked as a
designer. In late 1911, he returned from Europe with his wife, distanced
himself from the Roycroft Workshops, and soon set up a paper mill in
Marlborough-on-Hudson in New York State, where he committed himself to
the handmade production of paper. He eventually resettled in Ohio,
where, in essence, he devoted his remaining life to the art, craft and
science of papermaking.
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