Programs > Conference
The Annual Conference
Since 1976, the American Printing History Association has organized an annual conference on a selected theme in printing history. In the early years the annual conference was invariably held in New York City, but since the mid 1980s the organization has sought venues further afield. Conferences typically consist of a day or two of formal papers, presentations, and panels combined with tours of local collections, studios and other spots of interest to historians of printing. There are also plenty of opportunities for socializing and fellowship.
Conference papers are usually summarized in the APHA Newsletter; indeed, many of them have been published in APHA's semi-annual journal, Printing History.
The 2009 Conference
APHA’s 34th Annual Conference, “The Book Beautiful,” meets in Newport, Rhode Island, October 16th-18th, 2009, during our 35th anniversary year. The background for the theme is T.J. Cobden-Sanderson’s insight, voiced in London at the Art Workers’ Guild in 1892, that “if the Book Beautiful may be beautiful by virtue of its writing or printing or illustration, or binding, or by virtue of the thing to be communicated to the mind, it may also be beautiful by the union of all to the production of one composite whole, the consummate Book Beautiful.” Investigating the production and impact of such texts and books will take our conference from 18th-century printing in Newport, London, and Paris, to 20th-21st-century books in the United States, England, and France.
The program has been published and registration is now open. William S. Peterson, emeritus professor of English at the University of Maryland and editor of APHA’s journal, Printing History, will deliver the keynote address.
For more details, click here.
Past conferences
The following is a complete list of APHA conferences (held in New York City unless otherwise noted).
2008
Saving the History of Printing at the Grolier Club and Columbia University, New York
2007
Transformations: The Persistence of Aldus Manutius at the University of California Library, Los Angeles
2006
The Atlantic World of Print in the Age of Franklin at the University of Pennsylvania and the Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia
2005
[r]Evolution in Print: New Work in Printing History & Practice at Mills College, Oakland, CA
2004
Picture This: The Art and Technique of Illustration at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE
2003
New Work in Printing History at the Grolier Club, New York
2002
A New England Wayzgoose at the Museum of Printing History, North Andover, MA [Not a formal conference]
2001
Transatlantic Type: Anglo-American Printing in the Nineteenth Century at Washington University, St. Louis, MO
2000
On the Digital Brink at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
1999
Fine Book Design in the Twentieth Century at the Grolier Club, New York
1998
Chicago Printing History at the Newberry Library, Chicago
1997
Twentieth-Century Book Design at the University of Texas, Austin
1996
Twentieth-Century Traditions of Fine Printing in California at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
1995
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Printing: The Book in Jefferson's Virginia and the Early Republic at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville
1994
APHA at Twenty: Celebrating the Past, Looking to the Future at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
1993
The Humanist Printer in Providence, RI
1992
Printing and Publishing History at Princeton: Materials and Methodologies at Princeton University, Princeton
1991
A Washington Wayzgoose at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC
1990
The Printing of American Newspapers from 1690 Into the Future at Columbia University, New York
1989
Colonial New England Printing at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
1988
The Book Arts in Philadelphia, 1785-1840 in Philadelphia
1987
Government Printing in the Western Hemisphere: Technology, Design, Politics
1986
The Printing Surface
1985
Printing Without Type
1984
Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Printing and Publishing
1983
Twentieth-Century American Typography and Typographers
1982
Nineteenth-Century America: Book Trade Technology and Social History
1981
The Mark of the Printer: Fine Commercial Printing in the Machine Age
1980
The Permanence of Ephemera
1979
The Renaissance Book
1978
The Decorated Book/The Crystal Goblet: A Reconsideration
1977
Printing Revolutions: The First Two and What They Can Teach the Third
1976
Typographic America: A Bicentennial Perspective
APHA’s 34th Annual Conference, “The Book Beautiful,” meets in Newport, Rhode Island, October 16th–18th, 2009, during our 35th anniversary year. The program has been published and registration is now open. William S. Peterson, emeritus professor of English at the University of Maryland and editor of APHA’s journal, Printing History, will deliver the keynote address.
The recent issue of the Newsletter contains an announcement of the upcoming annual conference in Newport, Rhode Island; various notices of interest; chapter news from across the country; articles by Paul Moxon on the Vandercook and by Frank Romano on the typographic point; and a trustee profile of Russell Maret. Download it in PDF form here.
You'll read in the summer newsletter that from the fall issue 2009 (number 172) onwards the Newsletter will only be available in electronic form on this website. It will no longer be printed and mailed to members, a significant cost savings that may have an unexpected benefit: going electronic will make it possible for us to produce more newsletters each year. For the time being the design of the newsletter will remain the same, so those who wish to print it out will have the recognizable and familiar object to hold. Soon though we will reformat it somewhat for easier reading on your i-Phone or Blackberry. Of course we will continue to archive the newsletter on the website, so that all back issues will be available. We are also investigating ways to feed the publication to interested subscribers.
The excellent Brian Frykenberg is stepping down from the editorship of the Newsletter after the next issue and we need are seeking an active and well-connected member to replace him. The new editor will come just as we are migrating from print to electronic, a great opportunity for a creative, web-savvy person to expand and enhance our beloved workhorse. Contact Martin Antonetti, the VP for Publications, at mantonet@smith.edu if you are interested or know of someone who might be.