Adrian Wilson (1923 – 1988) was an American book designer, and author of the influential 1967 work entitled, ''The Design of Books''.

Early life and education

Adrian Wilson was born on 1 July 1923 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and raised in Beverly, Massachusetts. He attended Wesleyan University, only briefly. He left college to joined the war resistance movement, where he learned about book design and graphic design. During World War II he was interned at Camp Angel in

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, Oregon where he printed

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's anti-war poems for Untide Press. After the war he and his new wife, Joyce Lancaster Wilson, settled in San Francisco and helped to form the Interplayers Theater. In 1947 he studied architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, but soon left, first to join Jack Stauffacher at the

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, and afterwards to join the University of California Press.

Career

After a few years he left the Press, but he accepted commissions from them for many years. In 1957 appeared his ''Printing for Theatre''. One of his apprentices was printmaker

Peter Rutledge Koch Peter Rutledge Koch, also known simply as Peter Koch (born 1943) is an American letterpress master printmaker, artists' book publisher and small book publisher, typographer, educator, and designer. Koch is Internationally known for his artist boo ...

. In 1958 he sold his press and he and his wife began a tour of Europe, where they met Will Carter, John Dreyfus,

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, Stanley Morison,

Beatrice Warde Beatrice Lamberton Warde (September 20, 1900 – September 16, 1969, née Beatrice Becker) was a twentieth-century writer and scholar of typography. As a marketing manager for the British Monotype Corporation, she was influential in the deve ...

and Giovanni Mardersteig. In 1983 he was an early recipient of a MacArthur Foundation award. He developed an interest in early book illustration, leading to his ''The Making of the

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'' (1976), and (with his wife) ''A Medieval Mirror'' (1984), an account of early printed editions of the '' Speculum Humanae Salvationis''.Berkeley: University of California Press
online edition
/ref> He died of congestive heart failure on 3 February 1988 in a hospital in San Francisco.

References

External links

*Douglas C. McGill
"Adrian Wilson, 64, A Printing Teacher and Book Designer"
''The New York Times'', 6 February 1988.
Guide to the Adrian Wilson Papers
at The Bancroft Library 1923 births 1988 deaths MacArthur Fellows Book designers University of California, Berkeley alumni {{Book-art-stub

Early life and education

Career

References

Further reading

External links