Arts and Crafts Society of Central New York Symposium -- Syracuse, New York Dard Hunter Revisited:  Handmade paper and craft design  October 11 and 12, 2002

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About the speakers

Cathleen A. Baker, Lecturer, College of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Alabama.

"Paper and Books: Dard Hunter's Legacy"

Baker will discuss Hunter as a designer and craftsman at the Roycroft Shops (1904 to 1910) and will then follow his career after East Aurora when he became a renowned figure in the art and craft of hand papermaking. Because he understood the crafts of hand papermaking, typefounding, and printing through sustained practice, and was a research scholar in these fields as well, he remains an exemplar to all who venture into the academic study of hand-crafted objects-fine or utilitarian.

Baker completed graduate studies in art conservation at the Courtauld Institute of the University of London, and in art history in the Department of Fine Arts at Syracuse University (where her M.A. thesis on a set of Audubon's Birds of America won a Graduate School Prize). In 1993, she left her tenured faculty post in the Art Conservation Graduate Program at the State University of New York College at Buffalo to embark on a biography of Hunter.  The resulting book, By His Own Labor: The Biography of Dard Hunter, reached publication in 2000 first in a limited edition from Steve Miller's Red Hydra Press where Cathy served as a "printer's devil" for the project.  A facsimile trade edition was issued by Oak Knoll Press later in the year. She has also earned an M.F.A. degree from the Book Arts Program of the University of Alabama.  Her thesis project, the letterpress-printed, Endgrain Designs & Repetitions: The Pattern Papers of John DePol, was published under her Legacy Press imprint.  In 2001 the Center for Book Arts in New York City mounted an exhibition on the production of the DePol book. Baker lectures widely and conducts workshops for the Paper & Book Intensive.  She teaches in the Book Arts Program of the University of Alabama's School of Library & Information Studies.

Don Cortese, Book Artist, Professor of Art, Emeritus, College of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse, University

"Paper is Part of the Picture"

Cortese will discuss Hunter as the "father" of modern hand papermaking and an exemplary researcher and author who has inspired many artists, including Harrison Elliot and Douglas Morse Howell. The renaissance of hand papermaking begun in the 1970s, which included many printmakers and fiber artists, left a strong and distinct concern for papermaking as an art.  The use of hand papermaking internationally by artists such as Picasso, Gris, Schwitters, and Rauschenberg in mixed-media contexts has had a strong impact on the current phenomenon of "artist's books." Cortese will examine these impulses as he illustrates the work of contemporary paper artists.

Don Cortese studied drawing and painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Syracuse University.  He then traveled to Central America as a Fulbright Program visiting artist. Drawings and paintings from this visit were subsequently shown in a solo exhibition at the Esuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Comayaguela, Honduras.  Cortese taught in Syracuse University's School of Art and Design from 1965 to 2000.  While art coordinator for the Syracuse University's London Program, Cortese studied English Private Press books, hand papermaking, and typography.  Receiving a Ford Foundation Grant, Cortese subsequently established a unique workshop in papermaking, in association with SUNY's College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse.  Cortese has taught and worked in Japan, Italy, and Belgium, and served as Director of the Syracuse University Florence Program. His work is represented in major international collections.

Dard Hunter III, Wood craftsman and grandson of the artist, Chillicothe,Ohio

"The Life of a Craftsman: a Personal Perspective"

Hunter III will provide a chronological survey of his grandfather's life and work, drawn from family letters, photographs, and the only known voice recording of Dard Hunter.

Dard III grew up watching his father print the monumental " Work of Dard Hunter," a two-volume masterwork for which all the papermaking, typesetting, printing, and binding were done by hand.  Through this experience he gained an intimate knowledge of his grandfather's work and character.  With the aid of Cathleen Baker, he has organized his family's archives (more than 10,000 letters and 15,000 books) into a publicly accessible storage system.  Funding for the renovation of the Hunter home, Mountain House in Chillicothe, Ohio, has come from the sale of decorative items created from Dard Hunter's original design work.

Philip Luner, Senior Research Associate, Emeritus, Empire State Paper Research Institute, SUNY-College of Environmental Science and Forestry

"Paper: A Ubiquitous, Versatile Material"

Luner will highlight the enormous range of paper products with unique features and will describe the process of assembling fibers and various additives into a structured material (paper).  Fiber organization and wood species strongly influence paper structure and hence paper properties.  He will illustrate these effects with reference to a number of paper grades and will outline several conventional paper tests and their sugnificance to making paper.

Luner is a retired professor of Paper Science and Engineering from the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse.  During his 37 years at ESF, he has made significant contributions to the science and technology of pulp and paper ranging from pulping to paper structure.  He has published seminal papers in several areas, has lectured widely in this country and abroad, and has been a consultant to the paper and chemical industries.  One of his favorite sponsored projects has been the examination of factors affecting paper permanence.  For his contributions to the paper industry he was elected a TAPPI Fellow in 1989.

Boice Lydell, Connoisseur and Curator of the Roycroft Art Museum, East Aurora, New York

"Dard Hunter's Influence on Roycroft Design"

Boyce Lydell's collecting and research has contributed much to the ongoing restoration of the Roycroft Campus and a resurrection of the original ambiance of this complex of buildings and landscaped space. Working toward the future return of thousands of the original furnishings and documents and, he hopes to foster at the Roycroft community a crafts revival. A selection of objects from Lydell's collection, which he has assembled over the past thirty years, is on display at present in the Roycroft Arts Museum.  He will exhibit Dard Hunter handicraft works from his collection at this conference.  Between 1985 and 1987 Lydell organized for the Roycraft Campus Arts and Crafts symposia and dealer shows that laid the groundwork for the subsequent annual Arts and Crafts events at the Grove Park Inn in Ashville, North Carolina.

In addition the Roycroft Campus restoration, Lydell has lectured widely on Walter U. Jennings, Master Coppersmith, the Leather Work of the Roycroft and Cordova Shops and related topics.  He is currently working on a book on Roycroft furniture and another on the life and work of Walter U. Jennings.

William Maurer, Director, Gomez Mill House, Marlboro, New York.

"Latest Discoveries at the Gomez Mill House: Archaeology and Dard Hunter"

Maurer will present an illustrated lecture on Dard Hunter's occupancy of the Gomez Mill House, showing many images of objects from that period, probably dumped in the Cellar in 1918 when the Hunters left for Newburg.  They range from pieces of Hunter's stained glass windows to blue willow dinner china made by the Buffalo Pottery Company in 1909.

William Maurer was educated in history at the Virginia Military Institute and Manhattenville College, and received a certificate in Museum Studies from New York University's Graduate School of Arts and Science.  After a professional career in the U.S. Navy, and later in the food brokerage business, Maurer joined the board of the DeWint House and became Chair of the Bergen County (NJ) Historic Sites Advisor Board.  Upon retirement, Maurer pursued his deep interest in historic sites.  He curated the Blackledge/Kearney House in Alpine, NY, and later the DeWint House in Tappan, NY.  He became the first full-time director of the Gomez Mill House in 1995.  Of its five owners, Dard Hunter was the fourth and most famous.  The mill has been restored and this past fall the 1880 root cellar was excavated, yielding over 400 pieces from the Hunter occupancy.

Steve Miller, Letterpress printer, publisher, and Coordinator of the MFA Program in the Book Arts at the University of Alabama

"Moved by the Spirit - Making the Dard Hunter Biography"

Steve Miller will describe what it was like to make a book by hand with Dard Hunter's shadow hanging over him.  Miller describes working with Cathy Baker over a nine-year period on her biography of Hunter as a "magnificent experience."  Twinrocker Handmade Papers produced the thousands of sheets that Miller dampened and printed from type cast by Michael Bixler in Skaneateles, NY.  The frontispiece by John DePol was a project that had a life of its own.  Miller will detail the working processes of producing a book about, and in the spirit of, Dard Hunter.

Miller teaches letterpress printing and hand papermaking in the Book Arts Program of the University of Alabama's Schhol Library and Information Studies. He publishes works of contemporary literature and aspects of hand papermaking under his imprint, Red Hydra Press.  He is past president of the Friends of Dard Hunter and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, Georgia.  He is a Co-director of Paper & Book Intensive.

The Dard Hunter Symposium is sponsored by the Arts and Crafts Society of Central New York, PO Box 35082, Syracuse NY 13235.  (Contact: Dave Rudd, Tel. 315-463-1568; Email: rudd@daltons.com; www.acscny.org)

In cooperation with the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York.  (Contact: Flora Nyland, Moon Library, SUNY-ESF, Syracuse NY 13244.  Tel. 470-6719; Email: fmnyland@esf.edu)

Assisted by the New York Center for Books and Reading, Syracuse University Library, Syracuse NY 13244 (www.newyorkbooks.org; Email: dcstam@aol.com)