The Cowell Press and Its Legacy: 1973-2004
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University of California, Santa Cruz University Library The Cowell Press and Its Legacy: 1973-2004 Interviews with Jack Stauffacher George Kane Aaron Johnson Peggy Gotthold Felicia Rice Tom Killion Interviewed by Gregory Graalfs Edited by Gregory Graalfs and Irene Reti Santa Cruz, California 2005 All uses of this manuscript, including electronic publishing, are covered by an agreement between the Regents of the University of California and Peggy Gotthold (dated January 6, 2005), Aaron Johnson (dated January 6, 2005), George Kane (October 23, 2003), Tom Killion (dated August 10, 2004), Felicia Rice (dated August 6, 2004), and Jack Stauffacher (dated December 15, 2004). All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the University Library of the University of California, Santa Cruz. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the permission of the University Librarian of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 JACK STAUFFACHER 13 Introduction: The Beginning of Cowell Press 14 Teaching Continues Beyond Regents’ Professorship 18 Working with William Everson 20 Meetings with UCSC Faculty 22 Inability to Establish Program for the Study of Book Arts & History 23 Establishment of the Center for typographic language 25 Requirements of a Possible Book Arts & History Program 28 GEORGE KANE 30 Early Life 31 Job Printing & Newspapering 32 Job Printing 35 The Book Business 37 Cowell Press 40 Teaching Printing at Cowell College: Kane’s Book Arts Class 48 Pochoir 61 William Everson & The Lime Kiln Press 64 Thoughts on Fine Printing 66 Former Students at Cowell Press 68 The History & Significance of Printing 71 Some Illustrated Books from the Kane Collection 76 Wood Engraving 87 The Printer’s Chappel of Santa Cruz 97 AARON JOHNSON 101 Introduction: Working at Yolla Bolly Press 102 Study With George Kane at Cowell Press 104 George Kane: Teaching Style and Course Structure 107 Fellow Students 112 Exposure to Fine Books 114 Role of Other Fine Bookmaking Teachers at UC Santa Cruz 117 Support for Fine Bookmaking Programs & the Future of Cowell Press 118 PEGGY GOTTHOLD 121 Introduction: Foolscap Press 122 Meeting George Kane & Beginning at Cowell Press 124 Projects & Course Structure at Cowell Press 127 George Kane’s Influence 133 Early Interest in Bookmaking 136 Bookmaking Following Cowell Press 137 Influence of William Everson & Jack Stauffacher 139 The Printer’s Chappel of Santa Cruz 140 Support & Future of Cowell Press 141 Role of Letterpress & Fine Bookmaking 143 FELICIA RICE 145 Introduction: Discovery of Cowell Press 146 Studying with Jack Stauffacher at Cowell Press 149 Fellow Students & Projects at Cowell Press 153 Location of Cowell Press 156 Studying & Teaching with Sherwood Grover 157 Contact with The Lime Kiln Press 158 Working with George Kane 159 Envisioning A Role for Cowell Press 161 After Graduating 164 Future for Cowell Press 167 TOM KILLION 173 Introduction: Parallel Interests in History Studies & Serial Printmaking 174 Introduction to Richard Bigus, Cowell Press, & Jack Stauffacher 177 A Student at Cowell Press 178 First Meeting with William Everson & The Lime Kiln Press 180 Turning Point: Summer of 1975 181 Book Projects with William Everson 182 Graduate Studies & Travels 184 George Kane & The Printer’s Chappel of Santa Cruz 186 Killion’s Present Work & Ideas for the Future of Cowell Press 188 APPENDICES 191 Historical Chronology of Cowell Press & Related Events 192 Selected Bibliography of Cowell Press, 1974 to 2002 194 Selected Works of The Lime Kiln Press 197 Selected Bibliography of Former Students Interviewed 198 Index 201 Introduction page 1 Introduction I don’t recall how I first heard about Jack Stauffacher’s lecture — it may have been from a poster or a professor who suggested it — but one fall afternoon in 1973 I sat in Cowell College library and heard Stauffacher discuss typography and printing history. Something in his lecture excited me and as a result I enrolled in Stauffacher’s upcoming course at the Cowell Press. Little did I realize the implications of this decision. By 1976 I graduated from Cowell College with my individual major in The Art of the Book, having studied with Stauffacher and Professor Jasper Rose as well as William Everson at The Lime Kiln Press at McHenry Library. Professionally, I have since worked in printing, design management, publishing, and writing on topics of bookmaking history. Presented with the opportunity to prepare an oral history of the Cowell Press I jumped at the chance — eager to learn what has taken place since I graduated. I moved to the Boston area after graduating and maintained only limited contact with fellow students at Cowell Press. I saw Jack Stauffacher occasionally and William Everson only twice in those years before he died in 1994. However, when I returned to California in 1995 I began to re-establish my old friendships and connect with fine bookmakers of Santa Cruz. I unexpectedly encountered Tom Killion at the Palo Alto Art & Wine Festival and saw George Kane at a Colophon Club meeting. Felicia Rice and I stay in steady contact. Then in 2002, I organized a show for McHenry Library of Cowell Press works, celebrating its thirtieth anniversary. Following this I was keen to establish a complete Introduction page 2 history of the Press. This oral history provided the opportunity to interview George Kane, who taught at the Press from 1979 to 2004; to connect with other alumni of the Press; and to better understand the Press’s role at Cowell College and on the UC Santa Cruz campus. The Cowell Press is a legacy of the unique and experimental quality of the UC Santa Cruz campus, characterized by its early use of evaluations rather than grades, the emphasis on close teacher and student contact, and the Farm and Garden Project. The comparison with the Garden Project is particularly apt because it was a visit to the Garden Project and a meeting with its founder, Alan Chadwick, that first brought Stauffacher to the campus in 1972. Further, one can even say that the Cowell Press is tied not only to the legacy of the campus, but to the history of the Cowell Ranch on which it was built. It is unlikely that University of California President Clark Kerr knew anything of an old platen press in an outbuilding at the Cowell Ranch when, in 1961, the 2000-acre site was chosen for a new campus in the expanding University of California system.1 Rather, he and founding Chancellor Dean E. McHenry were concerned with large-scale issues in building the campus — working with landscape architect Thomas Church in designing the campus and in creating a human-scale university. Nonetheless, as Kerr wrote in his memoirs2 he and McHenry had long debated the respective virtues of colleges focused on a library and active cultural life or broad learning and community. 1. John Dizikes writes of a press being found at Cowell College in 1965 in his preface to . the highest form of flattery . (Cowell Press, 1982). Peter Manston says he found two. To date, however, I have not found any other documentation to verify these claims. Nonetheless, the presses were there. 2. The Gold and The Blue: A Personal Memoir of the University of California, 1949-1967, Volume One: Academic Triumphs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 261. Introduction page 3 Located on the rolling hills and pastures above Monterey Bay and touching at the edges of the redwood forests, the founders’ intention was to establish a decidedly experimental campus that would create a large research university made up of small colleges, each with its own academic program and identity, with an overall architectural vision inspired by Aigues-Mortes in the south of France.3 This new campus attracted a notable body of faculty possessed of a strong penchant for undergraduate teaching and — more portentously — engaged in innovative teaching experiments: student-taught seminars, and narrative class evaluations rather than letter grades. The faculty’s primary affiliation was originally with a single college rather than with traditional academic departments, which fostered the building of intellectual communities and close ties between students and professors. The study of bookmaking — of how thoughts and knowledge are communicated through the vital medium of a book — fit well within the parameters of such a teaching structure and the concept of the university envisioned by Kerr and McHenry. The study of book arts and printing history was first taught at Cowell College when Norman Strouse, former chairman of J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and a serious book collector, taught a course in the history of the book as a Regents’ Professor in 1969. In 1972 student Peter Manston discovered an old platen press at Cowell and subsequently taught letterpress printing class in 1973 which marked the beginning of the Cowell Press and the practice of bookmaking on campus. Sometime in 1972 UC Santa Cruz professor Paul Lee invited San Francisco typographer and printer Jack Stauffacher to the Garden Project founded by Alan Chadwick. Lee, who had first learned of Stauffacher when he bought a copy of his book Albert Camus and the Men of Stone, soon discovered their common interest in Goethe, whose botanical studies also influenced Chadwick. Jack came to the campus, met Lee and Chadwick, and printed a broadside to commemorate the occasion, Et in Arcadia Ego 3. Ibid., p. 274. Introduction page 4 [Here I am in Arcadia]. In time and with some combination of influences from Professor Lee and students SB Master and Thomas Whitridge, Stauffacher was given a Regents’ Professorship and first taught two seminar classes, Typographic Workshop and Typography, at Cowell Press starting in January 1974. In addition to Strouse’s book history course as an antecedent to Stauffacher’s appointment, other features of Cowell College played into its interest in book history.