Tales from the Kelly Collection Catalog, or Typographic Research as Tool Builder

Rob Roy Kelly’s published research — including American Wood Type 1828–1900 (1969) — helped fuel a revival of interest in nineteenth-century American printing types. His work continues to be an important starting point for current scholarly inquiry. The University of Texas Press published a monograph David Shields researched, wrote, and designed, The Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection: A History and Catalog, which functions as a ‘close’ reading of the collection. David Shields approached the collection as more than simply the 18,000+ pieces of wood type acquired by Kelly and dynamically defined it in broader terms as a range of objects, publications, research papers, and attendant activities in a number of archives around the United States. Viewing the collection broadly has provided the opportunity to look past Kelly as the sole instigator and investigator and perceive him as a link in the broader network of relationships that led to the success of his research project. The physical presence of the published book has helped Shields reconsider research work for the manuscript, not simply as a mode of historicization, but as developing a set of tools that could be useful to other (typographic) research projects. David Shields is an associate professor of graphic design, VCUarts, at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he also served as department chair from 2012–2021. His practice is an interchange between making form and writing words. Research ties together these two generative methods and is comprised of close readings of primary and secondary sources as well as direct engagement with physical objects and artifacts of the typographic production processes from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.