February Evening Program

Book artist and letterpress printer Jessica Spring will share strange-but-true tales of her journey from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, guided by wise mentors – and some villains – who continue to inspire another climb into the press bed.

Spring began her interest in typography as a phototypesetter in the 1980s working for the college newspaper and learning graphic design. After graduation, she continued typesetting, working at the last typesetting shop on Printer’s Row, then at the Chicago Reader. Spring co-founded a graphic design firm, and for over a decade, offered letterpress printing while also serving predominantly nonprofit clients. As her interest in book arts grew, she attended graduate school at Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts and founded Springtide Press in 1999.

By 2003, Spring moved to Tacoma, Washington. She taught book arts for decades at Pacific Lutheran University and continues to teach workshops around the country. A continued focus has been researching historic type composition, which resulted in the invention of Daredevil Furniture to help other printers set type in circles, curves, and angles. Collaborations are a vital part of her work, including many years co-producing the Dead Feminists series and co-authoring Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color.

The projects at Springtide Press include artists books, broadsides, and ephemera, and can be found in collections around the country and abroad. Small finely-crafted editions and one-of-a-kind books explore historical topics, popular culture, and typography from a unique perspective. Spring’s work focuses on amplifying voices needing to be heard, telling stories in a new way, and ultimately, preservation through production.

Our shop motto, “where we always print damp” recognizes the Pacific Northwest as a fine place to print, where the damp climate helps make a good impression.

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.

February Midday Program

There’s nothing like a good moral panic about how young people are spending their time to get the blood boiling – whether it’s the presence of a pool table (Trouble, right here in River City!), corrupting comic books, or the perils of Snapchat.

That’s why Anthony Comstock’s 1883 conduct book Traps for the Young burned through five editions and rang alarm bells that echo today. Its legacy continues to shape censorship battles, contentious school board meetings, and confrontations in libraries. One First Amendment scholar suggests that Comstock is the individual who has most profoundly affected American culture.

Dr. Lindsay DiCuirci of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County will be revealing the story of Comstock’s crusade. A prize winning author, Lindsay directs the English Honors program at UMBC. She is a member of the American Antiquarian Society and a sought-after speaker across a range of bookish topics.

Whether you used to hide a copy of something banned in that D.H. Lawrence text you were supposed to be reading, searched for comics that didn’t feature the Approved By the Comics Code Authority seal, or thought a game of pool was a perfectly swell way to pass an evening in Iowa, it’s time you were Comstocked. Register for this event today!

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.

February Evening Program

In this program, Ed Potten and Elizabeth Savage will introduce Caxton Club members to an entirely new way of understanding woodblocks: as blocks of wood, which are organic materials that can be carbon-dated. The talk will introduce carbon-dating in book collector-friendly terms, survey our proof-of-concept project to carbon-date dubiously “medieval” and “early modern” woodblocks, and explore new evidence that they are instead antiquarian inventions. They are not fakes, intended to deceive. Instead, they shed light on a long-forgotten way that early book collectors explored and honored print heritage by commissioning new “old” woodblocks.

Edward Potten has published widely on book and library history, with a particular focus on the fifteenth century. He was formerly Keeper of Printed Books at the John Rylands Library, and Head of Rare Books, Joint Head of Special Collections, and Associate Director, Special Collections and External Relations, at Cambridge University Library. He is currently the Principal Consultant on an AHRC/DFG Project, a collaboration between the University of Manchester, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, and the University of Erlangen.

Dr. Elizabeth Savage FSA FRHistS is Senior Lecturer in Book History and Communications, School of Advanced Study, and Head of Academic Research Engagement, Senate House Library, University of London. Her books include Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum, Printing Colour 1400–1700, and Printing Colour 1700–1830. She curates and contributes to exhibitions about print heritage, and has convened book history courses.

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.

March Midday Program

Horace Walpole wrote a letter in which he coined the word serendipity.

The Royal and Ancient Gold Club of St Andrews got on course.

A 22-year-old George Washington leads an ambush that triggers the French and Indian War.

Louis XVI is born.

What will become Columbia University is chartered in New York.

The year is 1754 and the Columbia library begins – right from the beginning – to collect rare Hebraica and Judaica materials.

Today that collection has grown to include an amazing array of manuscripts, incunabula, sixteenth-century books, and much, much more.

Michelle Margolis, Lecturer in History and Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies, will give us a rare glimpse of the collection’s treasures, as she shares its story and illuminates its highlights. Her generously illustrated talk will reveal materials of great beauty, historical importance, and scholarship.

As the great ad campaign from the 1960s reminded us, you don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye … or to enjoy seeing a remarkable collection of Jewish books and documents. Step up to the counter and register for this Zoom only program today!

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.

March Evening Program

Japanese color prints and woodblock-printed books are beloved as works of art and literature. Less attention has been paid to those woodblock-printed images of the Meiji era (1868–1912) which purported to depict the news, especially events of the First Sino-Japanese (1894–95) and Russo-Japanese (1904–05) Wars. This presentation draws on works from the Anthony J. Mourek Collection now in the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago to understand how this traditional medium combined fact and fiction to express Japan’s new identity as a modern nation.

Chelsea Foxwell, Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College Director, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago.

Brooklyn Zhao, Undergraduate in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.

Register today. (Note: If registering through the University of Chicago Library, do not register through the Caxton Club.)

Reception with heavy appetizers 5:30 PM CT. Presentation 6:15. Club members: remember to bring your Caxton badge.

Transportation to the Union League Club at 65 West Jackson Blvd., Chicago.

The Union League Club is easily accessible through many public transportation methods. Additionally, the following options are available for those who wish to travel by cab or car.

The Union League Club front desk offers a connection to cab service through Curb. The desk will call cabs for members and all guests while allowing riders to remain inside until the cab arrives. No curb side wait. Cabs will accept all payment forms, following the payment procedures you experience with a street-hailed cab.

If you are traveling by car, the Union League Club offers valet parking for Caxton events at $35.00. You must register and prepay in advance through the Caxton Club.

Spot Hero is an independent parking option, generally offering spots at the 318 S. Federal Street garage adjacent to the Union League Club. You may reserve and pay for a guaranteed parking spot through the Spot Hero app or website (spothero.com).