An Oral History of Jack Stauffacher
From letterpress to computer-designed fine printing
With the exception of a tour of duty in the United States Army during World War II, Jack Werner Stauffacher has been a printer and book designer for nearly 60 years—a career that began in 1936 in a small studio at his home in San Mateo, California and that continues to this day at his Greenwood Press in San Francisco.
His longevity and productivity have called for a sequel to his first ROHO oral history, A Printed Word Has Its Own Measure (1969), which covers roughly the first half of a truly distinctive career. In it, Jack observed that we must understand the new technology in order to continue producing attractive printing. He proved to be extraordinarily prescient. With the advent of the computer, a new technology has emerged that has profoundly affected, for both good and bad, the making of the printed page.
Jack Stauffacher printing his edition of Horace’s Odes on the Gietz Press, May 1993 |
Much of Jack’s effort during the past decade has been directed not only at understanding the new technology, but informing it. Committed to the best of the past, Jack has brought to bear his mastery of the history of typefaces and design and his long experience as a practicing printer. A printer-scholar, his aim has been to refine the computer’s potential.
Particularly noteworthy are the supplements to two of his important publications, Phaedrus by Plato (1977) and his edition of Horace’s Odes (1990). These supplements, A Search for the Typographic Form of Plato’s Phaedrus and The Continuity of Horace, illustrate Jack’s search through earlier exemplars of these works in manuscript and printed form for his final solution to their design.
Jack’s chief collaborator in coming to terms with the computer has been Sumner Stone of Stone Type Foundry Inc. and formerly of Autologic and Adobe Systems, where he was director of type design. Among Stone’s achievements are his contributions to the very successful digitization of such historic typefaces as Bodoni, Caslon, and Garamond and a strikingly beautiful collection of Bodoni ornaments. As Jack notes in his oral history, digitization, when properly manipulated, provides, as did punchcutting, for the proportional design of a typeface.
Stone has also digitized the Janson typeface (now called Kis/Janson)—Jack’s favorite. Jack’s affair with this typeface began in the 1950s when he acquired the Janson foundry type cast from original matrices by D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, as his house or proprietary type. This event was commemorated in his book, Janson: A Definitive Collection (1954), selected by the American Institute of Graphic Arts as one of its Fifty Books of the Year.
His championing of this typeface and his study of its creator, Nicholas Kis, resulted in Jack publishing in 1983 Gyorgy Haiman’s definitive treatise, Nicholas Kis: Hungarian Punchcutter and Printer: 1650-1702.
Stone presented Jack with a desktop computer in 1987. Two years later Jack produced his first “computer-assisted” book, Goethe and False Subjectivity by Leo Lowenthal. The computer has become an ally, under Jack’s firm control, ever since—for design, keyboarding, and digitization of typefaces. It has helped him greatly, he notes in his oral history, particularly with design, from the first sketch to the final solution, because of the flexibility and versatility it can provide in experimentation with line, word spacing, leading, and selection of type sizes.
A recent example of these attributes can be seen in the design of Porter Garnett: Philosophical Writings on the Ideal Book, published in 1994 by The Book Club of California. Using Stone’s Cycles typeface, in the design of which he was involved, Jack has produced effects which Stone found impressive, even startling.
Jack has found working with Stone “a rare and marvelous opportunity, like having your own type designer close by.” At the same time he remains true to the composing stick and the tactile pleasure of handsetting metal type, a ritual to which he returns periodically for revival.
The appearance of Jack’s second oral history marks the renewal, after a five-year hiatus, of the invaluable Regional Oral History Office series, “Books and Printing in the San Francisco Bay Area,” which the late Ruth Teiser directed for 30 years. Comprising over 30 oral histories, it includes interviews with such luminaries as Edwin, Robert, and Jane Grabhorn, Lawton Kennedy, Adrian Wilson, William Everson, and James D. Hart.
Scheduled for the next oral history interview in the series is Sandra Kirshenbaum, editor and publisher of the periodical Fine Print (1975-1990). The selection of Kirshenbaum is particularly timely in light of Bancroft’s recent acquisition of the Fine Print archives.
Robert Harlan is Professor Emeritus in the
School of Information Management and Systems
(formerly the School of Library and Information
Sciences) and interviewer/editor of the
Stauffacher oral history.
Volume 112
Spring 1998
Table of Contents
DeFeo, Conner papers add to Bancroft’s Beat collection
From the Director: What does Bancroft collect?
The Digital Scriptorium
Towards a Renaissance in medieval manuscript studies
Robert Frost Collection includes photos inscribed by the poet
Bancroft Fellows research images of the American West, history of Mexico’s Cora Indians
Freshmen discover the wonders of Bancroft
Bancroft staffer in the spotlight
An Oral History of Jack Stauffacher From letterpress to computer-designed fine printing
Where is the last portrait of Mark Twain?
