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Dard Hunter: Roycroft Designer
In 1883 William Joseph "Dard" Hunter was born into
a Steubenville, Ohio family at the height of the industrial
revolution. From an early age Hunter was familiar with the
automatic type-setting machines at his father's newspaper
business, and with the mechanics of the modern papermill across
the street from his home.
Dard's father, William Henry Hunter, was an ardent proponent
of modern advances such as the automobile, but he was equally
concerned that hand crafts not be sacrificed in the name of
progress. Indeed the elder Hunter was a amateur woodcarver,
and from 1891-1895 with two partners, he owned the Lonhuda
Art Pottery Company which rivaled the wares of Rookwood.
In 1900 the family moved to Chillicothe, Ohio to operate another
newspaper. His father, mother, and brother were writers on
the News-Advertiser; seventeen year-old Dard was its artist.
In 1904 Hunter decided that he wanted to make "Mission"
furniture, and he left home to join Elbert Hubbard's Roycrofters
in East Aurora, New York.
Within a few months, Hunter was designing stained glass windows
for the Roycroft Inn and title-pages for Hubbard's press.
Initially his designs, such as the one for Hubbard's The
Man of Sorrows (1905), were based on his earlier newspaper
efforts, for example, the 1903 "Ohio History, Notes and
Comments."
In his spare time Hunter perused journals such as Deutsche
Kunst und Dekoration. He was inspired particularly by
the designs of Josef Hoffmann of the Wiener Werkstätte
(Viennese Workshops), so much so that Hunter spent his honeymoon
in Vienna in 1908.
For the next few years, Hunter gradually incorporated into
his designs the geometric patterns and highly stylized figures
which decorated the objects he had admired in Vienna.
When Hubbard started the Roycroft Press in 1895, he based
its style on that of William Morris, the late nineteenth century
Renaissance revivalist and leader of the English Arts &
Crafts movement. In 1909 Hunter's "modern art" designs
for books, leather, glass, and metal helped unify the Roycroft
product line and distinguish it from that of other American
arts & crafts businesses.
page 3 > Dard Hunter Discovers Hand
Papermaking, Typography & Printing
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