Edwin H. Carpenter Collection on Hand Presses,
Scope and Content
This collection contains items collected by Edwin H. Carpenter about hand printing presses located primarily in California. The items were intended to be used to create a list or census of hand presses including information about the origins of the press and technical specifications. The materials include papers, photographs, and articles of various types. Correspondence and press information originate from many of those of the California press and printing community, such as Ernest Lindner, Lew Allen, Jeff Craemer, Richard Hoffman, Paul Landacre, Muir Dawson, Saul Marks, Ward Ritchie, and Roger Levenson. Items range in date from 1895 to 1988, but the bulk of the items date from the 1940s to 1970s.
Dates
- Creation: 1940-1988
Access
Collection is open for research.
Publication Rights
The Clark Library owns the property rights to its collections but does not hold the copyright to these materials and therefore cannot grant or deny permission to use them. Researchers are responsible for determining the copyright status of any materials they may wish to use, investigating the owner of the copyright, and obtaining permission for their intended publication or other use. In all cases, you must cite the Clark Library as the source with the following credit line: The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Biography
Edwin H. Carpenter was born in Iowa, August 21, 1915. He enlisted in the Army in Los Angeles on July 11, 1941, eventually becoming a warrant officer. He later became a Western American bibliographer at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. He was interested in hand printing presses, especially in California and the western United States. This collection contains information collected about hand presses, primarily in California. The information appears to have been intended to create a census of hand presses in the West. It is unclear whether an official list was published, but handwritten and typed drafts are included in the collection. The work of inquiring about presses and their owners was undertaken by Edwin Carpenter and Roger Levenson. Carpenter did publish a book entitled "Printers and Publishers in Southern California 1850-1876" (La Siesta Press: 1964). He died in Los Angeles on January 12, 1995.
Extent
1.4 Linear Feet (2 boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
This collection contains items collected by Edwin H. Carpenter about hand printing presses located primarily in California intended to be used to create a list or census of hand presses. Correspondence, photographs, and press information originate from many of those of the California press and printing community.
Arrangement
This collection is arranged thematically into series. Series 4 through 9 include information about hand presses owned by individuals or institutions, ordered alphabetically by model of press. The collection was physically arranged and inventoried by a previous processor. Slight adjustments were made later to the intellectual arrangement (such as placing certain miscellaneous folders into the proper series in the finding aid). A few folders were consolidated (box 2, folder 14 was moved to box 2, folder 5; and box 2, 97 was moved to box 2, folder 79).
The collection is organized into the following series:
- Series 1. About Hand Presses, 1895, 1942-1978
- Series 2. Correspondence, 1956-1981
- Series 3. Artists' Representations of Presses
- Series 4. Acorn, 1959-1975
- Series 5. Albion, 1940-1988
- Series 6. Columbian, 1961-1979
- Series 7. Imperial and Lowe, ca. 1960-1970
- Series 8. Washington, 1949-1986
- Series 9. Other Presses, 1967-1980
- Series 10. Miscellaneous, 1924, 1947-1982
Physical location
This collection is stored at the Southern Regional Library Facility. Please contact Clark Library staff at least 2 weeks in advance if you would like to view the materials in this collection.
Processing History
This collection was originally arranged and inventoried in the 1990s. In 2009, Slight adjustments were made to the collection's arrangement (such as putting certain miscellaneous folders into the proper series). This final processing and the encoding of the finding aid were done by Jamie Henricks in July, 2009.
- Title
- Finding Aid for the Edwin H. Carpenter Collection on Hand Presses
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Finding aid by Jamie Henricks
- Date
- 2009
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Repository