Dard Hunter printer's mark photograph

Pictured is a box label that reads “Old Papermaking, by Dard Hunter.” William Joseph "Dard" Hunter (1883-1966) was a notable printer and papermaker. The label shows Hunter's bull-and-branch printer's mark. A printer’s mark is a publisher's emblem or trademark, which usually is placed on the title page of a book. Hunter added a new branch to his printer's mark whenever he wrote, designed, and printed a new book. Therefore, this mark shows that "Old Papermaking" (Chillicothe, Ohio: Dard Hunter, 1923) was Hunter's third book. William Joseph Hunter was born in 1883 in Steubenville, Ohio, where his father, William Henry Hunter, ran a newspaper business. The elder Hunter was an advocate of hand crafts and also an amateur woodcarver. Dard (a family nickname) learned typesetting at his father's business and the mechanics of papermaking at a papermill near his home. In 1900 the Hunter family moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, to run another newspaper, and Dard was its staff artist. Dard became interested in the Arts and Crafts movement, and in 1904 he moved to East Aurora, New York, to join the Roycrofters, a community of craft workers and artists that was a branch of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States. Hunter created designs for books, leather, glass, and metal, and also tried his hand at pottery, jewelry, and furniture. He founded a correspondence school, the Dard Hunter School of Handicrafts. In 1910 he moved to Vienna, where he took courses in lithography, book decoration, and letter design. Afterward he settled in London, where he developed a fascination for papermaking. In 1912 Hunter and his wife, Edith, moved to Marlborough, New York, where he designed and built a water-powered paper mill and designed a distinctive font that bears his same. In 1919 Hunter and his family returned to Chillicothe, where he worked and lived for the rest of this life. He founded Mountain House Press, a letterpress printing studio where he wrote and published 20 books on papermaking