Amelia Hugill-Fontanel, the Associate Curator in the Cary Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology, discusses the history of the collection, the nature of preserving the past, and the rapid development of printing—especially how quickly reproduction sped up—across the early part of the 19th century.
She’s held her position at RIT since 2009, and her time working with collection dates back a further decade. She’s an active artist and letterpress printer. She manages the Cary Collection’s extensive set of historical presses and type, which are used actively in teaching and research, and also lectures extensively printing history and practice. Amelia is the vice president of programs at the American Printing History Association.
Notes from This Episode:
RIT’s Digital Collections, which includes holdings from the Cary Collection
Dr. Therese Mulligan, chair of school of photo at RIT
Kodak Center for Creative Imaging (and the controversy behind it, only in part)
London’s St Bride Printing Library
Letter from the FBI to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Robert Bringhurst’s short book on Arrighi, The Typographic Legacy Of Ludovico Degli Arrighi
RIT students discovered palimpsest on manuscript page
A Collation of Facts Related to Fast Typesetting
Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises: The Doctrine Of Handy Works Applied To The Art Of Printing
Stanhope didn’t patent his press
“Flong Time, No See,” my monograph on flongs and stereotypes
Ed Folsom’s monograph “Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary”
Making Printer’s Type by Rich Hopkins
Stephen O. Saxe, who bequeathed his collection to RIT