Participant Info

First Name

Stephen

Last Name

Saxe

Press Name

Fort-Hill Press

City

White Plains

State

NY

Country

US

Email

sos22 AT optonline.net

Website or Blogsite

Year You Started with Letterpress

1966

How You Got Involved In Letterpress Printing

I've been interested in printing from age 10. I finally bought a tabletop Pilot press in 1966.

Presses & Equipment

Golding Improved Pearl 11; Vandercook SP-15; C&P Pilot; Foolscap Folio Albion; and about 20 small "hobby" presses. I have a collection of about 500 fonts of nineteenth-century type, and about 250 nineteenth-century American foundry type specimen books.

Education & Training

A.B. Harvard, 1951; M.F.A. Yale, 1954.

Work History

Scenic Designer, New York City Opera; television scenery, CBS-TV, New York; Book Designer, Harcourt Brace, New York.

Other Interests & Hobbies

I worked as a scenic designer at CBS-TV for many years, designing soap operas: The Edge of Night, and As the World Turns. For the New York City Opera I designed the sets for Porgy and Bess, starring William Warfield, and for Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard. In the UK, I designed a television play for ABC-TV. I also made working drawings of HMS Victory at Portsmouth, for an exhibition at Mme. Tussaud's, The Battle of Trafalgar and the Death of Nelson.

At this point I had become very interested in typography and the history of printing. I worked as a book designer for Harcourt Brace in New York. Meanwhile I had bought a Pilot press, quantities of type (especially nineteenth-century faces) as well as nineteenth-century British and American foundry type specimen books and printers\\\' manuals.

In 1974 was a founding member of the board of the American Printing History Association; I edited the APHA Newsletter from 1986 to 1990, writing an article on some aspect of printing history for six issues each year. In 1992 the Yellow Barn Press printed and published my American Iron Hand Presses, with wood engravings by my friend John De Pol. A trade edition was published the following year by Oak noll Books.

Other books I have had a hand in: I edited the second edition of Maurice Annenberg's American TypeFoundries and their Catalogs; edited Gabriel Rummonds Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress. Most recently I co-edited, with Alistair Johnston, Loy's Nineteenth-Century American Designers and Engravers of Type. All of the above books were published by Oak Knoll.

Letterpress Group Memberships, If Any

APA, APHA Founding Member

Birth Year

1930

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