J. Ben Lieberman papers

The J. Ben Lieberman Papers, acquired in 1998, comprise 66 linear feet of files and oversize boxes, which reflect some of the accomplishments of educator, printer, and self-described “generalist” J. Ben Lieberman and his wife Elizabeth Koller Lieberman. The collection reflects the lifelong passion of the Liebermans for popularizing personal printing and their leadership in the modern private press movement in America. Organized in twelve series, the papers document the Liebermans' personal and professional printing projects, the social and professional networks of printers and typographers, printers' chappels, type specimens, commercial type directories, and other trade ephemera. The collection is doubly rich for documenting the collaboration of printers who learned from each other and shared their expertise and enthusiasm, as well as for providing exhaustive reference files related to technical aspects of the twentieth-century printing trade.

Ranging in dates from 1902 to 1997, with the bulk of the material dated between 1945 and 1984, the files consist of a wide variety of printed material. Printed formats include magazines, newspapers, posters, prop cards (proprietor’s cards), greeting cards, books, galley and page proofs, broadsides, keepsakes, invitations, menus, prospectuses, type specimen sheets, calendars, stationery, clippings, forms, manuals, catalogs, brochures, reports, announcements, book covers, and ephemera. The Liebermans received many of these printed items from proprietors as a prerequisite to registering their private press names or from commercial print-related companies.

Additionally this collection includes correspondence, photographs, negatives, contact sheets, paper samples, bills and receipts, mock-ups, notes, a design portfolio, stereotypes, electrotype plates, minutes, a corporate seal, bylaws, membership lists, applications, histories, and phonograph recordings. Other formats, such as lithographs, etchings, a charcoal drawing, and watercolors, are related to the small collection of artwork accumulated by Ben Lieberman.

Among the Liebermans' contributions to popularizing personal printing were their registry of press names, the publication of The Check-Log of Private Press Names, the invention of the prop card (proprietor’s card), and the founding of the modern chappel movement in the United States. The records track each of these contributions, providing an early proposal and bylaws for the first chappel (Moxon) founded by Lieberman in 1957, as well as copies of the published check-log.

Elizabeth Lieberman was registrar for the registry of press names and the editor of the check-log. The registry of press names generated a substantial file of private press ephemera; one of the strengths of this collection. Over twenty linear feet of examples of printing by private press proprietors, mainly in the United States, but including some examples from Great Britain, are available for research.

Publications bearing the Liebermans' private press imprints, The Herity Press and the Ioxis Division of Herity Press, both represented in the collection, were devoted to serving the personal press and chappel movements. The Herity Press produced many of their keepsakes, announcements, booklets, and other ephemera on their Kelmscott/Goudy Press (Albion No. 6551) acquired from George Van Vechten, Jr. First used by William Morris to print his Kelmscott Chaucer, Frederick Goudy brought this press to the United States for his Village Press.

In addition to participating in many chappels, Ben Lieberman was active in numerous print-related organizations and founded several. The files chronicle Lieberman’s efforts in forming the American Printing History Association and the Goudy Society, as well as his early leadership as president and chair, respectively, of these two organizations.

Ben Lieberman’s passion for and advocacy of what he termed “simple printing” is obvious among records of his writing, speeches, teaching, and exhibitions. Lieberman believed that "simple printing" was not only a creative outlet as a hobby but a powerful tool for literacy and international development. In an attempt to make printing equipment and supplies universally and cheaply available, Lieberman invented several simple printing presses and founded of a company, Popular Printing, Inc., to sell printing supplies and small presses.

Noted as an authority on print and typography, Lieberman collected extensive subject files (on print and graphic arts topics), files on printers, files on type and reproduction processes, and a collection of type specimen sheets. These files and the research they represent demonstrate Lieberman's interest in the history of print, particularly technology and type design. This research informed his speeches and his writing, particularly his books, Type and Typefaces and Printing as a Hobby. Lieberman's experiments with type design are illustrated by a mock-up for a typeface called "upstroke" that is found in the first series.

Lieberman's writing also extended to reports and articles. For example, Lieberman, considered an authority in the United States on freedom of the press, wrote the article on the subject for Encyclopedia Americana.

The files on cold type, photo-processes and twentieth century reproduction methods (Series VIII) illustrate the services and products available during the mid to late twentieth century to practitioners of printing. The brochures, catalogs and printed material sent to Lieberman offer a snapshot of what was on the market and demonstrate many of the processes, including cold type, offset lithography, gravure and rotogravure, and screen process printing.

In the ninth series and scattered through out these papers are files which originally belonged to O. Afred Dickman, longtime advertising production manager for The New York Herald Tribune. Many of the older type specimen catalogs and commercial type directories, as well as some of the paper samples originally belonged to Dickman. As a longtime friend and associate of Ben Lieberman, Dickman’s files were absorbed into the Lieberman papers.

Detailed descriptions of the material accessible in this collection are available in series notes that begin each series in this finding aid. These notes offer a range of dates for the material in that series, describe the arrangement of the material, list the types of material found in the series, and further elaborate on the contents.

The J. Ben Lieberman Papers are a testament to most of the roles served by Lieberman, from journalist to administrator, from international development practitioner to teacher, from printer to advocate. Some aspects of his career, such as his faculty appointment at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and his public relations work are only mentioned in the papers.

The strength of these papers is the legacy of twentieth-century personal printing movement, nurtured by Ben and Elizabeth Lieberman, and sampled for posterity in this collection.