Arthur W. Rushmore Collection
Personal Library, Papers, and
Publications of Private Pressman
Arthur W. Rushmore
Arthur W. Rushmore (1883-1955) and the firm of Harper & Brothers were in fruitful collaboration for a period of some forty-five years. Rushmore started with the firm on January 4, 1904, at first working under Joseph W. Harper II then purchasing agent and head of manufacturing. Rushmore was promoted to the head of book production in 1922 and in 1942 was elected to the Board of Directors. He made his debut as designer in 1911, when he created a new cover for Harper's Magazine, the first change in its cover design in thirty years.
The relationship with the Harper firm was vastly enriched by Rushmore's founding of the Golden Hind Press in 1927, an independent endeavor in fine printing bearing his own imprint. Rushmore used the Golden Hind as a laboratory for his ideas on typography, title page design, page layout and illustration, hand-setting nearly one hundred works for Harper & Brothers, including many of the limited editions of the poems and plays of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The press issued approximately 200 books. Of this number 90 bear the Harper imprint, 50 the Golden Hind imprint, and the remainder a variety of notable publishers.
A number of works hand-set at the Golden Hind were chosen for the prestigious American Institute of Graphic Arts "Fifty Books of the Year" shows. They include Edna St. Vincent Millay's Fatal Interview (1931), Warren Chappell's Anatomy of Lettering (1935), and Marguerite Vance's A Star for Hansi (1936).
The Golden Hind Press was located in Madison, New Jersey at 59 Fairview Avenue in a large 19th century farm house, which also was the home of the Rushmore family. The operation of the press was largely a family venture with Arthur as printer, his wife Edna Keeler Rushmore as compositor, daughters Elaine as proof reader and Delight as designer of many of the German paste paper covers used in the binding of Harper and Golden Hind Press books.
THE COLLECTION
The collection includes Rushmore's personal library devoted chiefly to typography, type specimen books, calligraphy, printing history and the book arts. The output of the Golden Hind Press is documented by over 200 items ranging from galley proofs to finished books. In addition the collection contains over eighty photographs of the Rushmore family (Ca. 1900-1955) together with his colleagues in the printing and publishing industry. Other components include correspondence of some 726 letters. Of special significance are the 150 letters in response to Rushmore's delightfully written hoax, The Mainz Diary (1940) in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Gutenberg's invention.
In the collection are 100 Harper imprints that were hand-set at the Golden Hind Press, and printed in the main by the Haddon Craftsmen of Camden, New Jersey. The Harper-Golden Hind collection includes the limited editions of Edna St. Vincent Millay and other mid-twentieth century literary notables such as Frederic Prokosch and Genevive Tagggard. The Harper juvenile list includes Lois Lenski, Clare Turlay Newberry, Margaret Wise Brown, and Marguerite Vance.
In the course of its history the Golden Hind Press produced a vast array of fugitive items including posters, broadsides, bookplates, invitations, and memorial service tributes for Harper executives. Work done for the firm is reflected in galleys, page proofs and posters illustrative of Rushmore's commercial design work in advertising Harper publications.
The collection is accessible through an author/title/subject catalog. Correspondence, calendars*, personal name index to correspondents, descriptive bibliography of the press, index to broadsides, galleys, page proofs, etc.
*for each decade, 1911-1950
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