William Edwin Rudge

Background

William Edwin Rudge was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. , son of William Edwin and Lavina (Knapp) Rudge.

Education

He attended the public school. Later he took three-year course in engineering at Cooper Union.

Career

At twelve or thirteen Rudge entered his father's printing office at Nassau and Liberty streets, New York, where he learned his trade. His father soon suggested that the boy take over three presses in the plant and work for himself. This was the beginning of "The Printing House of William Edwin Rudge. " In 1895, the plant was moved to 83 Murray St. , where an electric motor was substituted for foot-power on the presses. The father became ill in 1900, and the son succeeded to the business. A fire at the Murray Street shop in 1905 necessitated another removal, to 218 William St. In 1921, the plant was moved to Mount Vernon, N. Y. , which for some time had been Rudge's place of residence.

Here, in a picturesque rural setting, a one-story, graystone building, once used for glass manufacture, was gradually remodeled and furnished with equipment capable of doing high quality work. Before 1912, Rudge had done general commercial printing. About that time he became associated with the group of typographers, designers, collectors, and others who founded the American Institute of Graphic Arts. He became sensitive to art, design, and quality, and set for himself the ideal of producing books and printed matter in the most beautiful form. For design of books he secured the services of such men as Frederic W. Goudy, Bruce Rogers, Frederic Warde, and W. A. Dwiggins. At his press in Mount Vernon he assembled a library on the graphic arts, consisting of histories and source books, together with examples of fine printing from the best presses.

He was constantly critical of his own work and always experimenting with new methods and processes in the hope of achieving finer results. "Expense, profit, all the limitations of the ordinary printer, have been brushed aside by the largeness of imagination which touched everything he did" (Saturday Review of Literature, July 25, 1931, p. 15).

He was a member of the advisory board at New York University for the course given by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and an officer of many organizations connected with the graphic arts. In 1925, Herbert Hoover, then secretary of commerce, appointed him to represent the printing industry at the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris. He made friends easily and kept them. He displayed a keen interest in his employees, with the result that several young men who began with him became designers of national reputation.

Achievements

• Rudge's work ranks with that of the foremost American printers and is highly regarded by fellow craftsmen of all countries. He received many medals and awards. Rudge produced many works of outstanding merit, notably, Joseph Pennell's Adventures of an Illustrator (1925), Mary Vaux Walcott's North American Wild Flowers (5 vols. , 1925), with faithful reproductions of water color sketches, produced by the "Smithsonian Process, " a method perfected by Rudge, consisting of four-color printing on all-rag, uncoated paper; Robert Bridges' The Testament of Beauty (1929); the Private Papers of James Boswell (1928), edited by Geoffrey Scott and Frederick Pottle; books by Hervey Allen, Ford Madox Ford, Cass Gilbert, Christopher Morley, Arthur Symons, and wood-engraving by Timothy Cole.

Works

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  • Print: A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts, V3, No. 4, Fall, 1945

    (Includes The Articles, Lettering And Calligraphy In Curre...)

  • A Conspicuous National Service

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • "Great-Heart" : the life story of Theodore Roosevelt

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The mouse and the moonbeam

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Kidd: A Moral Opuscule

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Relation of Art to Nature

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The alphabet: fifteen interpretative designs drawn and arranged with explanatory text and illustrations

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The city of crafts; a phantasy being some account of a journey to the court of the printers' guild

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Print A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts - Volume VI Number 3

    (Journal pertaining to the graphic arts.)

  • A CATALOGUE OF THE PUBLICATIONS OF WILLIAM EDWIN RUDGE, SPRING 1930

Connections

On April 18, 1906, Rudge married Lillie May Gould of Mount Vernon, N. Y. His two sons followed their father as printers.

Father:

William Edwin Rudge

Mother:

Lavina (Knapp) Rudge

Spouse:

Lillie May Gould

References

• William Edwin Rudge: A Brief Account of His Life and Work Together with Some Notes on His Influence on American Printing
• William Edwin Rudge (Typophile Chap Book 57): Limited Edition