Lieberman, J. Ben

Educator, editor, author, amateur printer, and proponent of the private press, J. Ben Lieberman is widely regarded as the father of the twentieth-century chappel movement in the United States. Following his death, in 1986, friends of Lieberman in association with the American Printing History Association endowed the J. Ben Lieberman Memorial Lecture in his honor. Elizabeth Koller Lieberman was J. Ben Lieberman's lifelong partner in private press publishing and in the promotion of printing.

From the description of J. Ben Lieberman papers, 1902-1997, 1945-1984. (University of Delaware Library). WorldCat record id: 70998001

Epithet: of the Herity Press New York

British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue : Person : Description : ark:/81055/vdc_100000000496.0x0000af

Biographical information supplied by Jethro K. Lieberman and resumes found in the collection.

Educator, editor, author, amateur printer, and proponent of the private press, J. Ben Lieberman is widely regarded as the father of the twentieth-century chappel movement in the United States.

Jay Benjamin Lieberman was born November 17, 1914, in Champaign, Illinois. Lieberman grew up in Indiana and attended Benjamin Bosse High School in Evansville. He received a B.A. with honors in political science and philosophy from the University of Illinois (1935), where he was the editor of the student newspaper, the Daily Illini . From 1935 to 1936, he did graduate work in economics, political science, and philosophy at Columbia University. Lieberman also worked for several years at the Evansville Courier .

Commissioned in the U. S. Navy in 1942 and assigned to the Bureau of Naval Personnel, Lieberman served as director/officer-in-charge of the Informational Services Division and editor of the monthly Navy magazine (later renamed All Hands ). He also authored the Navy Editors’ Manual (1945).

Having completed military service in 1946, Lieberman was next employed by Washington State University in Pullman as the director of publication. In 1948 he took a position with the San Francisco Chronicle where he worked for five years, including a position as assistant to the general manager. During his years at the Chronicle Lieberman founded The Herity Press (1952) and received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University (1952).

After leaving the Chronicle in 1953, Lieberman worked as coordinator for communication media at the Contra Costa Junior College District for two years. While working in the district he taught Journalism 21 (Introduction to Printing) at East Contra Costa Junior College (1955) and earned a secondary teaching credential for California from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1955, he joined the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in Menlo Park, California.

In 1957, he founded the Moxon Chappel in San Francisco, the first of the modern chappels in the United States. Borrowing the term from early English usage, Lieberman defined a chappel as simply "a club, society or informal group of personal printers who live close enough to be able to attend meetings in each other’s homes in turn."

Lieberman moved to the East Coast in 1957 and became a public relations associate for General Foods Corporation, in White Plains, New York. By the early 1960s he was a professor at the Columbia University graduate schools of journalism and business, and in 1967 he was employed by Hill and Knowlton, Inc. as senior education counselor and associate director of the education department. In 1970, he was promoted to vice president and served as associate director of the youth and education department until his retirement in 1976.

Continuing his passion in promoting the private press movement and expanding on his concepts of "simple printing," in 1959 Lieberman founded Popular Printing Inc., (incorporated in Connecticut) to promote private printing by providing simple and inexpensive printing equipment. He held several patents for simple printing devices, including the Tympan-pack printing press and the six-toggle printing press. Although the company was out of business by the end of the 1960s, Lieberman continued to promote "simple printing" through publications and by founding chappels.

During the 1960s Lieberman was instrumental in the founding of various chappels in New York, including the New York Chappel and Westchester Chappel. At the first meeting of the Westchester Chappel in 1960 he invented the "prop card," short for proprietor’s card (as opposed to the press card.)

In 1973, he founded and was the first president of the American Printing History Association, receiving the fifth annual award from the association in 1980. He was also the chair of the International Goudy Centennial Committee and subsequently founded and was the first chair of the Goudy Society. He was a board member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, as well as an active member of the Typophiles, the Private Libraries Association, the Amalgamated Printers Association, the Graphic Arts Education Association, and the Type Directors Club.

Beginning in the 1970s, Lieberman also maintained a commercial press, the Myriade Press, which published books on typography and printing, such as Typographic Variations by Hermann Zapf.

Ben Lieberman acquired the Kelmscott/Goudy Press (Albion No. 6551) from George Van Vechten, Jr., and formally inaugurated the press at his home on January 31, 1961, on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Kelmscott Press. On June 26, 1962, at a joint chappel meeting in New York, Lieberman affixed a liberty bell to the press and declared, "As long as the private press wears liberty as her crown, the people are free."

Lieberman was the author of Printing as a Hobby (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1963) and Type and Typefaces (New Rochelle, New York: The Myriade Press, 1978), which was originally published as Types of Typefaces and How to Recognize Them (1967). He also wrote numerous articles and press releases and a musical comedy, which the Westchester Junior League produced.

J. Ben Lieberman died September 19, 1984, in New Rochelle, New York, where he had made his home since 1968. Following his death, in 1986, friends of Lieberman in association with the American Printing History Association endowed the J. Ben Lieberman Memorial Lecture in his honor.

Elizabeth Koller Lieberman was J. Ben Lieberman’s lifelong partner in private press publishing and in the promotion of printing. She was co-proprietor of the The Herity Press and maintained with Ben Lieberman the International Register of Private Press Names.

Elizabeth Koller Lieberman was born October 10, 1914, in Champaign, Illinois. Though she and Mr. Lieberman both were born in Champaign, they first met in college. They were married on July 4, 1941.

Mrs. Lieberman worked at Advertising Age in Chicago, Illinois, for four years after college. After marriage, she held a variety of part-time positions until her two children were raised. She then worked for several publishing houses in New York as a copy editor in the 1960s and 1970s, including Cowles and William Morrow.

Drawing from the International Register of Private Press Names that she maintained, she edited a list of press names, The Check-Log of Private Press Names . The Myriade Press published the check-log annually beginning in 1960. She also prepared the index for the 1994 Oak Knoll reprint of Maurice Annenberg’s Type Foundries of America and Their Catalogs .

Elizabeth Lieberman died in the Bronx, New York, on January 21, 2001.

From the guide to the J. Ben Lieberman papers, 1902–1997, 1945–1984, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)