[Libri] Printer and Oliphant Press Founder Ronald Gordon Will Lecture at Amherst College Friday, Sept. 21

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August 21,  
2007                                                             
Contact: Stacey Schmeidel
For immediate  
release                                                             
Director of Public Affairs
                                                                        

              413/542-2321


Printer and Oliphant Press Founder Ronald Gordon Will Lecture at  
Amherst College Friday, Sept. 21

AMHERST, Mass.—Ronald Gordon, a leading printer and typographic  
designer who founded the Oliphant Press in New York, will speak on  
“The Oliphant Press: Tradition & Transformation” at 4 p.m. Friday,  
Sept. 21, in the Archives and Special Collections of Robert Frost  
Library at Amherst College. A reception will follow. Both events are  
open to the public at no charge.

Gordon studied printing and book design with Leonard Baskin as an  
undergraduate.  He has written: “Amherst played an essential role in  
my becoming a graphic designer and printer.” He founded the Oliphant  
Press shortly after graduating from Amherst in 1965. In the four  
decades since its founding, the Oliphant Press has carried on a  
tradition of fine printing and typographic design. Beginning as a  
letterpress printer and designer, Gordon has adapted his style and  
his design skills as the craft shifted to computer typesetting,  
offset printing and now, digital printing. The press name is an  
archaic form of “elephant”; its logo appears almost exclusively on  
advertising rather than on books.

Gordon’s talk coincides with an exhibition, “The Seahorse and the  
Elephant: Amherst and Fine Printing,” which will be held in the  
Amherst College Archives and Special Collections from September 1  
through December 16. The exhibition features the work of Gordon and  
another Amherst graduate, Roland Wood ’20, who (with John Fass) co- 
founded The Harbor Press. The Harbor Press was synonymous with fine  
printing in New York for almost two decades (1925-1942). Its seahorse  
logo appeared in dozens of versions on many Harbor Press productions.

Thanks to generous gifts from Gordon and Wood, Amherst College’s  
Archives and Special Collections holds a comprehensive collection of  
the productions of the Oliphant Press. The Archives and Special  
Collections also holds the archival collection of the productions of  
the Harbor Press, including not only the books they published, but  
also much of the ephemera—advertising material, job printing and  
privately printed books and pamphlets.

“The Seahorse and the Elephant” is co-curated by Daria D’Arienzo,  
head of archives and special collections, and John Lancaster, retired  
curator of special collections. The exhibition is part of “Bookmarks:  
A Celebration of the Art of the Book,” a region-wide festival from  
September 2007 to January 2008 that will bring to life the Pioneer  
Valley’s great literary traditions through film, family events,  
lectures and readings. The initiative is sponsored by the Amherst  
College Library (http://www.amherst.edu/library/) and Museums10, a  
partnership of 10 museums and friends (including Amherst College’s  
Mead Art Museum, the Emily Dickinson Museum and the Museum of Natural  
History) within the Pioneer Valley. More information about  
“Bookmarks” is available on the Museums10 Website, www.museums10.org.