Annual Rheault Lecture

Over the course of five years, Dr. Steven Galbraith, Curator of RIT’s Cary Graphic Arts Collection, and Shaun Foster, RIT Professor of 3D Design, collaborated with 15 students to create a Virtual Reality experience in which users learn how to print on a 19th-century cast iron printing press. The centerpiece of the experience is a 3D model of the Kelmscott/Goudy Press, a press once owned by William Morris and Frederic Goudy, and now preserved at RIT’s Cary Graphic Arts Collection. Dr. Galbraith will recount the creative process, from producing an accurate 3D model of the Kelmscott/Goudy Press to designing the experience to capturing the sounds of the press at work. After the presentation, participants will be invited to try out the experience and virtually print a leaf from William Morris’s edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896).

Steve Galbraith is Curator of the Cary Graphic Arts Collection, Rochester Institute of Technology

The humble ballot illuminates the noble but highly flawed process at the heart of our American democracy. This talk traces the visual story of the printed ballot, from early handwritten tickets to colorful and typographically outlandish examples from the 19th century. Responding to the explosive growth of an evolving electorate as well as a legacy of fraud, the struggle for suffrage, and concerns about voting security, the ballot reveals insights into our electoral process both past and present.

Alicia Cheng is Head of Design at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, how did people secure their private letters? The answer is letterlocking—the ingenious process of folding, slitting, and securing a letter with a strip of paper and sealing wax so that it becomes its own envelope. The practice, used by historical figures ranging from Elizabeth I and her spymaster to Japanese samurai lords, and now nearly entirely forgotten, was an everyday activity for centuries, across cultures, borders, and social classes. 

Jana Dambrogio provides a sneak peek at Letterlocking, a monograph co-authored by Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith, experts who have pioneered the field over the last ten years. The book tells the fascinating story of letterlocking within epistolary history, drawing on real historical examples from all over the world. 

Attendees will have the opportunity to unlock and lock letter models. 

*Please note this meeting is on the second Wednesday of the month due to the Rosh Hashanah holiday.

Draw Me Ishmael: The Book Arts of Moby Dick is the first exhibition focused on the book arts of the hundreds of editions published since 1851: the illustrations, binding designs, typography and even the physical structures. Drawn almost entirely from the Phillips Library collection, this intimate gallery space explores decades of creative approaches to interpreting the novel visually in book form. It will shed some light on Melville’s original inspiration and include a contemporary update through recent artists’ books, graphic novels, a translation into emoji and pop-up books. Think untraditionally and independently about Moby Dick, appreciate the variety of approaches to visualizing the novel and explore copies of more than 50 books on display.