Hamilton Workshop 2010

This weekend, Rick Valicenti and I went up to the Hamilton Woodtype Museum with the STA. It was an all-weekend workshop that included some Hamilton history, a crash course in letterpress by Paul Brown (the distinguished Indiana University professor/printer), and Hamilton director, Jim Moran. On day two Rick and I were left to our own devices in the print room.

Operated by volunteers of the Two Rivers Historical Society, the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum is the only one of its kind—dedicated to the preservation, study, production, and printing of wood type. With 1.5 million pieces of wood type and more than 1,000 styles and sizes of patterns, Hamilton’s collection is one of the premier wood type collection in the world.

If you haven’t been to Hamilton, I recommend you make the drive. I came away from this weekend with a deeper appreciation for our region’s rich design and printing history.

Hamilton is one of the few places that actually produces new wood type, and is working to preserve the art form. Above, Jim Moran demonstrates how to use a Pantograph to cut wood type.

That’s a 6′ (72″) tall wood type two! enough said.

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May 27-30 According to Rick Valicenti

The Hamilton Type Museum always seemed like a million miles away, but as every Chicagoan migrated north into Wisconsin for Memorial Day Weekend, the three-hour drive zipped by as Bud and I talked the whole way.

Expectations usually deny discoveries and so I did not try to pre-visualize the experience and if I had, I never could have imagined being in a group with my friend, Jack Weiss; Phil Hamilton who built the esteemed letterpress program at UW Madison; Renee Ramsey, Columbia College educator; and Carol Ross Barney, architect to name a few. Adding to the buzz were members of Chicago design’s next generation. Time well spent, indeed.

On the second day, I spent my morning making peace with a box of broken letterform misfits. The beautiful patina on each and every wooded letter fragment was rich with a history of the many impressions it had transferred. These pieces were moved into a rigid lockup on the Vandercook where metallic gold ink came in contact with black paper. Truth be Sold is an edition of 15.

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When we were working in the printing room, Jim Moran brought out a selection from Hamilton’s collection of 2000+ woodcuts created by the Globe Printing Company (Chicago). There were so many fabulous examples of classic design ephemera — that with a couple select pieces and a collage-like composition, it was easy to re-contextualize the parts into a new whole. “Total Ecstasy” is an edition of 10 and is available for sale on richardaily.com.

I spent day two printing a poster edition inspired by Nick Adam’s “We/Us=USA” series. 8 unique 18 x24″posters titled “The Greatest Show on Earth.” The title says it all. They will be released on richardaily.com.

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For more information about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum visit woodtype.org. Please help them in their mission to preserve design’s shared typographic history.

Jim and Bill Moran will be in Chicago on Friday June 25th at Columbia College, they’ll be presenting on “The Wood Type Museum of the Future”

The Moran brothers have a long history with the Hamilton Wood Type Museum and are now leading it into the future. We will hear about how today’s technologies are helping to preserve a rich past—from digitally archiving the skills of the last surviving employees of Hamilton Manufacturing, to using CNC routers to produce new wood type for generations to come.

They will also be hosting a workshop that weekend, see all the details at bookandpaper.org.