Harvard, Stephen, 1948-1988

Stephen Harvard was a calligrapher, stonecutter, illustrator, and book and type designer.

Harvard was a Director of Meriden-Stinehour Press and an award-winning book designer and lettering artist. He was the author of Ornamental Initials, a catalogue raisonné of the woodcut decorative alphabets of the renaissance printer Christopher Plantin (Godine, 1974) and An Italic Copybook: The Cataneo Manuscript (Harvard University, 1981).

Harvard graduated from Dartmouth in 1970 and until his tragic death in 1988, he epitomized the trailblazing spirit of the Bridge Person, a term he coined to denote those who enrich themselves with a thorough understanding of the tradition and tools of their trade and seek to infuse new technologies, in his case the computer and the digital types he designed for Adobe, with ancient principles.

At the time of his death, Stephen Harvard was Vice-President of The Stinehour Press, founded in the early fifties by another Dartmouth alum, Roderick Stinehour.