Only on Saturday: The Wood Type Prints of Jack Stauffacher

A detailed exploration of Jack Stauffacher's innovative wood type prints, showcasing his artistic journey and impact on typography. Only on Saturday captures his legacy beautifully.

This book presents a remarkable homage to the experimental letterpress prints of the esteemed scholar-printer and AIGA medalist, Jack Stauffacher. Created during his weekends, these prints are influenced by the modern artists of his time. Stauffacher’s exquisite works showcase the versatility of wood type, liberated from its traditional communication role, allowing it to explore letters as forms of pure artistic expression. The resulting prints are abstract, dynamically composed, and often richly layered, reclaiming typography as a worthy subject for gallery display.

Only on Saturday: The Wood Type Prints of Jack Stauffacher features an impressive collection of 500 images, many of which have never been published before. This first trade book dedicated to Stauffacher's work also includes insightful essays from collaborators within the realms of art and typography, providing a compelling narrative behind the creation of these prints. Born in 1920 in San Mateo, California, Stauffacher was not just a printer and typographer; he was a fine-book publisher whose unique aesthetic sensibility earned him a place in rare book collections and prestigious museums like SFMOMA and LACMA.

Stauffacher began his printing apprenticeship at the age of 16 and continued to create books for his Greenwood Press for nearly eight decades. His teaching roles at Carnegie Mellon and the San Francisco Art Institute, along with his position as typographic director at Stanford University Press, highlight his significant contributions to the field. However, it was his later wood type prints, produced from 1966 until his passing in 2017 at age 96, that elevated his work into the fine art domain, culminating in an AIGA Medal award in 2004 for his influential impact on typography and design.