Victor Hammer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Victor Hammer (September 9, 1882 - October 7, 1967), born in Vienna, Austria, was a painter, sculptor, printer, and typographer.
In 1897, he studied as an apprentice as an architect and a town planner, and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He produced his first type design, Hammer Uncial, in 1921. In 1922, he moved to Florence, Italy, where he set up a printing press. In 1929, he moved his printing operation into the Villa Santuccio in Florence and named it the Stamperia del Santuccio. The first book that was printed in this operation was Milton's Samson Agonistes (1931), using what would be known as his Samson Uncial type. Punches for the type were cut by Paul Koch, son of Rudolf Koch.
From 1936 to 1939, he lived in Vienna, where he served as professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. In 1939, he fled Vienna due to World War II and emigrated to the United States of America, where he taught at Wells College in Aurora, New York until 1948. Here he produced American Uncial - the best known of his five typefaces.
In 1948, he settled in Lexington, Kentucky and was artist-in-residence at Transylvania University. While in Kentucky, he is known for designing the official seal of Louisville, which was used until the city's City-County government merger in 2003.
He built his wooden press in 1927 with the help of local Florentine craftsmen based on a press in the Laurentian Library; the Laurentian's press is now known to be a copy of a wooden press. It was first used to print Samson Agonistes. When he closed his studio in 1933 the press was stored. In 1954 it was moved to the University of Kentucky where it has been in use by the King Library Press since 1959.
Hammer is buried in the cemetery of Pisgah Presbyterian Church near Versailles, Kentucky.
[edit] Typefaces
- Hammer Unziale – 1921
- Samson – 1931
- Pindar – 1933
- American Uncial – 1943
- Andromaque Uncial – 1958
[edit] Reference
- Holbrook, Paul Evans. An Introduction to Victor & Carolyn Hammer with a Listing of the Books Printed at Their Several Presses (Lexington, KY: The Anvil Press), 1995.
