Roycroft / Elbert Hubbard and Alice Hubbard

online version

Having taught courses in the history of design for many years, I have of course long known about the Roycroft Workshops in East Aurora NY, as well as their proprietors, Elbert Hubbard, and his second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard. But until recently, I hadn't realized the extent of their connections to people and events in Iowa. This new essay from The Iowa Source discloses the various details.

Book Review | Dard Hunter as Designer

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.

Dard Hunter design for an Elbert Hubbard aphorism (1908)

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. more…

Dard Hunter | Graphic Work

Above Dard Hunter self-portrait, from an advertisement for The Dard Hunter School of Handicraft in The Caxton: A Magazine for Quality Folks No 2 Vol II (November 1910).

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A new book has just come out about the American artist, craftsman and papermaker William Joseph (Dard) Hunter (1883-1966). The title is Dard Hunter: The Graphic Works by Lawrence Kreisman (Petaluma CA: Pomegranate, 2012). While it does provide information about his participation in the Roycroft Workshops in East Aurora NY (founded by Elbert Hubbard) and his contacts with the Wiener Werkstatte in Vienna (including some wonderful photographs that I haven't seen elsewhere), it isn't so much a biography as a rich, full-color portfolio of his Arts and Crafts designs for books, bookplates, typographic lettering, advertising brochures, and stained glass windows.

Among the many things he made while living at East Aurora was an ornate title spread for Hubbard's book White Hyacinths (1907), which was subsequently used for two other Roycroft books, The Tale of Two Tailors (1909) and Pig-Pen Pete (1914). more>>>