Dard Hunter

The distinctive typography and elegant forms designed by William Joseph "Dard" Hunter (American, 1883-1966) have become icons of the American Arts and Crafts style and have established him as one of America's most influential graphic artists of the twentieth century. At age twenty-one, Hunter talked his way into a summer job at the famed Roycroft arts community in East Aurora, New York, and ended up staying. Under the mentorship of Roycroft leader Elbert Hubbard, Hunter forged his own design path, one that initially found its inspiration in William Morris's Kelmscott Press but quickly shifted to modeling contemporary European design trends. In England in 1911, Hunter becamefascinated with making handmade paper, a craft that had ceased to exist in the United States. He moved to Marlborough, New York, a year later, where he built a paper mill and became the reigning expert on papermaking, eventually writing eighteen books on the subject. But Hunter's graphic art is what remains instantly recognisable and beloved today. Accompanied with historical photographs and examples from Hunter's design contemporaries, author Lawrence Kreisman's illuminating text establishes Hunter as a unique voice that emerged from a multitude of extraordinary influences in an incomparable era of flourishing artistic achievement.