Jack Werner Stauffacher (December 19, 1920[1] – November 16, 2017) was an American printer, typographer, educator, and fine book publisher.[2] He owned and operated Greenwood Press, a small book printing press based in the San Francisco Bay Area.[3]
At the age of 13, he established the Greenwood Press.[7] The press was named after the street on which it was located, in a small building that he and his father built behind the family home in San Mateo, California.[9] His first printed book appeared in 1941 when he was 20 years old, Washington Irving's "Three Choice Sketches By Geoffrey Crayon, Gent" based on The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent..[8]
In 1966, he reopened the Greenwood Press in a building at 300 Broadway in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco[12] and resumed producing books and limited editions such as Albert Camus and the Men of Stone (1971). In 1967, he was commissioned to redesign the Journal of Typographic Research,[13] later renamed Visible Language. The typographic composition he used for its cover was used for many years.
Several of his experimental compositions using wood and metal type are in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA),[15][16] the Stanford University Library, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).[12] He was the subject of an article and his work featured on the cover of the groundbreaking Emigre magazine in 1998.
Much of his life and work is documented in the book A Typographic Journey: The History of the Greenwood Press (1999) published as a limited edition book by the Book Club of California.
Phaidros: A Search for the Typographic Form of Plato's Phaedrus (1 ed.). San Francisco, California: Greenwood Press. 1978.
Three Choice Sketches (1 ed.). San Mateo, California: Greenwood Press. 1941. pp. Text and display handset in ATF Garamond, printed on Strathmore Book paper, bound in cloth.
This is a list of select exhibition of Jack Stauffacher.
2019 – Between the Lines: Typography in LACMA's Collection (group exhibition), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California[13]
2013 – Stauffacher and (Donald) Judd (group exhibition), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California[17]
2011 – Arch: A Book Project by Holly Downing and Jack Stauffacher (group exhibition), Graham Foundation and Festival of the Architecture Book, Chicago, Illinois[18]
2008-2009 – 246 and Counting, Recent Architecture + Design Acquisitions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Francisco, California[19]
2004-2005 – Belles Lettres: The Art of Typography (group exhibition), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California[20]
2002 – Jack Stauffacher: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design (solo exhibition), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California[16]
