Summer Research Fellowships

The Cary Collection Summer Research Fellowships

The Cary Collection provides two summer Research Fellowships. 

The Cary Research Fellowship

The Cary Collection Summer Research Fellowship provides funding for one month of focused study in the Cary Collection. The fellowship is open to scholars engaged with subject areas covered by the library’s holdings. A stipend of $3,000 covers travel and living expenses. Selected research collections include:

• Graphic Design Archive consists of 45 archives related to Modernist designers active from the 1920s to the 1950s, as well as selected contemporary designers working in the modernist traditions.
• Type specimens and printers’ manuals.
• Historical printing presses, type (metal and wood), and matrices.
• Private press printing: Doves Press, Golden Cockerel Press, Kelmscott Press, Klingspor, Limited Editions Club, Merrymount Press, Officina Bodoni, Roycroft Press, Spiral Press, and Vincent Fitzgerald & Co.
• Substantial archives on type designers such as Frederic Goudy and Hermann Zapf.
• The archive of calligrapher Paul Standard, including decades of correspondence with major 20th-century graphic artists.
• Bernard C. Middleton Collection of Books on the History and Practice of Bookbinding.

For further information on our holdings, please visit our website and search our catalog.

Stephen O. Saxe Endowed Research Fellowship

History
Personal friends wished to honor the legacy of Stephen O. Saxe by establishing a fellowship in 2020 at the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection. Mr. Saxe (1930–2019) was a collector and historian whose canon of writings on printing history set the standard for contemporary practice in the field. He was a founding member of the American Printing History Association. He generously facilitated community research within his extensive private graphic arts history library, while publishing his own important works on typography and early printing technologies. As a legacy to Mr. Saxe’s memory, the Horton Family generously donated his collection to the Cary Collection in 2019. The Stephen O. Saxe Collection includes rare books and printed ephemera such as catalogs, unbound printed leaves, and business correspondence relating to printing history; as well as printing realia such as metal printers’ type, presses, and varied printing equipment.

Call for Proposals
The Cary Collection invites applications for the Stephen O. Saxe Endowed Research Fellowship for the study of the history of graphic communication as it pertains to printing history, printing practice, and typography. The fellowship is open to scholars and students pursuing research and continuing education in the subject areas covered by the library’s holdings, with emphasis on areas of strength held in the Stephen O. Saxe Printing History Collection. The fellowship provides funding for one month of focused study in the Cary Collection. A stipend of $3,000 covers travel and living expenses. Selected research collections include:

• Type specimens, 18th century to the present (in all formats—broadsides, ephemera, periodicals, books). This includes Saxe’s 19th and early 20th-century American and British specimen collection of over 300 books.
• Type foundry and type design collections, including those about all major American and European foundries in metal, photo, and digital type. Emphasis on Ed Benguiat, Morris Fuller Benton, Tom Carnase, Ismar David, Frederic W. Goudy, Bruce Rogers, Hermann Zapf, Gudrun Zapf von Hesse, and the RIT Goudy Award of Typographic Excellence honorees.
• Archival resources on American and European letterpress printing press manufacturers, including patents, manuals, and advertisements.
• Leaf collections of printed exemplars from the European incunabula period through the 20th century.
• Private press publications such as: Doves Press, Golden Cockerel Press, Kelmscott Press, Klingspor, Limited Editions Club, Merrymount Press, Officina Bodoni, Press of the Woolly Whale, Roycroft Press, Spiral Press, Stinehour Press, The Typophiles, and Vincent Fitzgerald & Co.
• Documentation of the amateur printing press movement from the late 19th to the mid-20th century: archives on amateur newspapers, press directories, ephemera.
• Typographic realia that can be used for a well-defined printing project during the fellowship (application must demonstrate proficiency in letterpress printing).
• Some 30 working printing presses: hand press, platen, and cylinder formats.
• Vintage type (metal and wood), including Saxe’s collection of about 150 19th-century American metal types, many originating from foundries that existed prior to the American Type Founders merger in 1892.
• Type punches, punches, and matrices, including 19th c. Japanese wooden punches for electrotyping.
• Phototypesetting realia.

For further information on our holdings, please visit our website and search our catalog.