Hammer, Victor Karl, 1882-1967

Correspondence to Lewis Mumford from Victor Karl Hammer and his wife, Carolyn R. Hammer.

Printer, associated with the Anvil Press of Lexington, Kentucky.

Victor Hammer (1882-1967), Austrian-born artist active mainly in Florence and Vienna and later in the United States. His output consists largely of portraits and religious scenes--paintings, sculpture, drawings, woodcuts, engravings, and mezzotints. He is widely known for his contribution to the book arts as a designer of uncial typefaces and a printer on hand presses. An avid amateur musician, Hammer played the clavichord, lute, and clarinet. A number of his friends were musicians, among them Schenker and Hans Weisse (who dedicated several of his compositions to Hammer). He completed a mezzotint portrait of Schenker in 1925, and a portrait drawing of Weisse in 1923. His exchange of letters with Schenker record their discussion of the existence in both music and pictures of the Urlinie. The influence of Schenker's ideas can be seen in Hammer's essays on the philosophy of art, most of which he published after his emigration to America in 1939. He taught at Wells College in Aurora, New York, and later at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he continued his work in the book arts with his second wife, the printer Carolyn Reading Hammer.

Hans Weisse (1892-1940), Austrian (later naturalized American) teacher, theorist and composer, who studied with Schenker between 1908 and 1919, taught for ten years in Vienna and, after contemplating prospects in Germany, opted to emigrate to the United States, teaching in New York until his premature death. He, more than anyone else, deserves credit for initiating the wide dissemination of Schenker's theory that took place in the U. S. in the mid-20th century, his impact coming not through publications but through his teaching, his pupils including Oswald Jonas, Adele T. Katz, William J. Mitchell, and Felix Salzer. Arriving in New York in late September 1931, he introduced himself to his new colleagues at Mannes with a successful half-hour talk on "the relationship of a music theory teacher to the other teachers in a school of music" and he quickly confirmed his reputation as a gifted educator. Many of the letters of this period he wrote to Schenker during this period describe the success he had in communicating the importance of music theory for the way music should be listened to and, especially, performed.

Victor Hammer (1882-1967), born in Vienna, was a trained architect with a particular interest in calligraphy and printing. From 1898-1908 he was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. After exhibiting his various works in the years leading up to World War I, he spent four months in combat as a soldier with the Fourth Austrian Infantry Regiment. The remainder of the war he spent as a war artist in the Urals and in Constantinople. In 1919 he returned to his studio in Vienna and began his printing career, publishing Milton's Samson Agonistes in 1931. Hammer remained in Vienna until 1939. After the outbreak of World War II, he immigrated to the United States, and secured a teaching position in the art department at Wells College. Here he established both the Hammer Press and the Wells College Press, cut his third type-face (known as American Uncial), and continued to paint portraits. In 1948 Hammer accepted a position at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He continued his work there until his death in 1967.

Hammer is best known for his typeface designs, engravings, and woodcuts, though he is also known as a portraitist and a painter of religious or allegorical images. Hammer's typefaces are unique, as he would create types through cutting his own punches, instead of drawing letters and relying on others to cut them.

There are four presses that are identified with the work of Victor Hammer: the Stamperia del Santuccio (established in Florence, 1929), The Hammer Press, The Wells College Press (Aurora, New York), and The Anvil Press (Lexington, Kentucky).