Calligrapher, stonecutter, illustrator, poet, book and type designer,
Stephen Harvard’s art and craftsmanship are remembered here through selections of his work.
Initials carved into stone by Stephen Harvard. Black slate, 6 x 7.375 inches.
Made for Edward Connery Latham who presented it as a gift to his wife, Elizabeth French Lathem.
Alphabets of Grace
A Calendar of Letterforms and Type Designs
From the Colophon:
Alphabets of Grace has been set in type and printed by letterpress at the Meriden-Stinehour Press in Lunenburg, Vermont.
The paper is a unique letterpress version of Curtis Tweedweave, produced in a custom mill run for this project. Each month is represented by a different typeface or letterform, and these are identified within the specimens themselves in nine point Monotype Bembo. René Arsenault and John Stinehour were compositors, and Paul Hoffmann the production supervisor. The pressmen were John McCormack and Ken Brisson.
Stephen Harvard is the designer, calligrapher, and author of the descriptive texts. Mr. Harvard, a Director of Meriden-Stinehour Press, is an award-winning book designer and lettering artist. He is author of Ornamental Initials, a catalogue raisonné of the woodcut decorative alphabets of the renaissance printer Christopher Plantin (Godine, 1974) and An Italic Copybook: The Cataneo Manuscript (Harvard University, 1981). He lives with his wife and two daughters in an old farmhouse in New Hampshire's North Country.
Published by Cahill & Company, 1985
Alphabets of Grace is available for purchase in the Shop
Announcement, 8.5 x 11 inches, lettering and design by Stephen Harvard, for an illustrated talk he gave to the Society of Printers on April 6, 1988, four months before his death. His first illustrated talk to the Society of Printers was given on April 2, 1980, titled Living by Letters.
The printer dwells in two worlds –that of art, literature, and scholarship on one hand,
and on the other, the world of craftsmanship, tools, and materials.
It is the printer’s daily work to bring these two worlds together.
Quotation by Stephen Harvard, designed and printed by Roderick Stinehour and Dean Bornstein on the occasion of
the twentieth anniversary of the Printing History Association in 1994.
Announcement for a talk by Lance Hidy given at The Stinehour Press January 20, 1977.
Calligraphy by Stephen Harvard.
View the whole announcement here.
Stephen Harvard • A Life in Letters
Published by Harvard College Library, on the occasion of an exhibition of the work of Stephen Harvard held at
the Houghton Library, 23 April – 31 May 1990
Catalogue by David P. Becker, foreword by Richard Wendork with an introduction by Eleanor M. Garvey.
Designed by Christopher Kuntze, with title page calligraphy by Christopher Stinehour. Printed and bound by The Stinehour Press. The book contains an exhibition checklist of seventy-nine works by Stephen Harvard, including his designs for books, invitations, posters, broadsides, decorated papers, devices and type designs.
Stephen Harvard・A Life in Letters is available for purchase in the Shop.
In loving memory of Stephen Harvard, 1948 - 1988
❦
The lettering craftsman is apt to be a perfectionist – he is likely to have a crystal clear alphabet somewhere in his mind; a perfect, proportionate set of images that shine with pythagorean light. All of his work in the real world of ink, paper, copper, steel and stone will be an attempt, with varying degrees of success, to approach the ideal unseen letterforms. He is a craftsman who shares something with the artist as well as the mathematician; it is his trade as well as his joy to weigh form and proportion in his mind. – Stephen Harvard
