Courtesy of Letterform Archive, the exhibition 'Typographic Jazz, The Monoprints of Jack Stauffacher' is on display at Hamilton from November 9 through December 30, 2023. This exhibition looks beyond the methods displayed in his well-known portfolio editions of wood type prints, and includes his sketches, iterative proofs, and other unfinished work to help us understand his process and give us a peek into his mind. 

A special 'Thank You' to Bank First, our sponsor for this exhibit!

Hamilton Wood Blocks
Wood Type
Collection of Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum 

In 1966, when Jack established the Greenwood Press at 300 Broadway in San Francisco, he received a box of large wood type from another printer in the building. The mismatched blocks became the raw material of Jack’s experimentation over the next forty years. The type hasn’t yet been identified, but some of it likely originated at the Hamilton Manufacturing Company. Shown here are five matching typefaces from Hamilton’s collection.

Ten proof prints pulled from Stauffacher’s own wood type, and ten facsimile reproductions of monoprint and edition prints made with the same letters (and others). 

Printing in an edition of 200 for the 2023 deluxe education of Only on Saturday: The Wood Type Prints of Jack Stauffacher. Thanks to the Stauffacher family for loaning the type, and Monique Comacchio and the CODEX Foundation for printing the proof prints. 

The Vico Collaboration: Vico Wooden Letters
Portfolio 4: Study for eyes of needles (later reworked as waves murmur) 2003, letterpress with metal and wood type and tape, San Francisco 

EX
Date unknown, letterpress with wood type, San Francisco

M
Circa 1990, letterpress with wood type, San Francisco 

Jack’s experiments in inking with wood type included sponging the inked letters with a rag to create surface texture in the finished print. 

Gs
Date unknown, letterpress with wood type, San Francisco

Jack called this technique on and off inking. For each print, the G is inked once, and then repositioned and pulled a number of times. This series goes from one to six impressions. 

Broken Cs
Circa 1980, letterpress with wood type, San Francisco  

Jack loves the broken sorts. In this series the broken C is first shown put together and then across the bottom are five more signed finished prints. Above each is an experimental proof on newspaper. 

Early Work
Date unknown, letterpress with wood type on newsprint, location unknown 

These three prints show a lockup with a split foundation, the Chinese newspaper overprinted in the middle, and then the result of the two impressions with the newspaper type offset the wood type.

Red 2s
1990, letterpress with wood type, San Francisco

Jack sometimes applied ink and solvent directly to the type in a painterly way, using brush, rag, or brayer.