The Richard Rockford Hebrew Wood Type collection
Scope and Contents
The Richard Rockford Hebrew Wood Type collection contains about forty fonts made from wood for letterpress printing in the Hebrew script. The type was used by the Jewish-American press at the turn of the 20th century. The collection contains forty eight boxes of Hebrew wood type arranged into sets according to related styles and sizes. One box contains letterpress proof prints of each set.
Dates
- Creation: undated
Creator
- Rockford, Richard F. (Collector, Person)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open to researchers.
Biographical / Historical
The Rockford Hebrew Wood Type collection was acquired from the found-materials artist and collector Richard F. Rockford who is based in Clarence, New York. Rockford first bought drawers of Hebrew wood type in the early 1970s in the New York City area from Walter Bick who said he bought them from the “Jewish Daily Forward” Yiddish newspaper. Rockford continued adding to the collection over the next 30 years, buying more wood type from Nathan Silver and others.
Extent
50 Box(es) (48 White Clamshell boxes size 16"x18". 1 Gray Lid box 13"x18". 1 Gray 22"x15". 17 linear feet.)
Language
English
Hebrew
Yiddish
Overview
The Richard Rockford Hebrew Wood Type collection contains about forty fonts made from wood for letterpress printing in the Hebrew script.
Arrangement
The collection contains 48 boxes of Hebrew wood type arranged into sets according to related styles and sizes.
Box 48 contains letterpress proof prints of each set.
Box 49 contains broken letters.
Box 50 contains research material, Adopt-a-font program, RAFC grant, related events and prints, and planing patterns prints.
The classification method used for this collection follows the one that is implemented in the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection for Latin wood type and was devised by David P. Wall in 1991. It was adapted by Shani Avni to accommodate the Hebrew script. The call number consists of five sections describing: the class (Hebrew), subclass (style: Merubah-Tag/Tagless), group (Variation: Curved Stroke/ Droplet / Mixed), subgroup (Proportion: Regular/Condensed/Extra Condensed/Mixed) and serial number.
Physical Location
05-2660 Lowenthal Reading Room Cary Collection
Other Finding Aids
A spreadsheet of the complete data regarding every font of the Rockford Hebrew Wood Type collection is available for download. This data includes sizes, character counts, typeface style classifications, and notations if characters are modified or missing from each alphabet. Rockford Hebrew Type Data
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The collection was accuired by RIT Cary Graphic Art Collection from Richard Rockford in 2014.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The collection was acquired with funds from the Ismar David fund, see email from November 20, 2013.
Processing Information
Finding aid created by Shani Avni in May 2021.
- Title
- The Richard Rockford Hebrew Wood Type collection
- Status
- Completed
- Subtitle
- Cary Graphic Arts Collection
- Author
- Shani Avni
- Date
- 11 May 2021
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 10 July 2024: Link to RIT Digital Collections moved to External Documents.
Repository Details
Part of the Cary Graphic Arts Collection Repository
