Mr. Bradley was born in Boston in 1868. His father, a newspaper cartoonist, died when he was eight. Four years later his mother moved to Ishpeming, a small iron-mining town in northern Michigan. Here, he became a printer’s devil on the local newspaper.

The brief chronology of events in his legendary career (pp. 92-96) reveals pertinent details of the early years as art department apprentice with Rand McNally, Chicago map-makers, and as free-lance artist. He soon won recognition for his cover designs and drawings for Harper’s Weekly and The Inland Printer, and posters for Stone and Kimball’s Chap Book.

In 1895 he returned to New England to set up his Wayside Press in Springfield, Mass. He was twenty-seven then, had just designed his first sample book for Strathmore, and developed publishing plans for Bradley: His Book. Volume one, number one was dated May, 1896; the subscription price, one dollar the year. The cover was a poster treatment of a tree on a grassy hilltop; the frontispiece was by Edward Penfield, himself the subject of a lead article. Center spread pages, decidedly in the Kelmscott manner, were devoted to a poem by Harriet Monroe, with a floriated border surrounding the text in caps. The body type was the ATF version of the Morris Golden face.

Bradley: His Book was planned as an art and literary magazine, and also “a technical journal for those engaged in the art of printing.” Seven issues comprised its life span; the first four varied slightly from the initial 5¼ × 10½ inch size; the last three (of volume two) were 8 × 11 inches. A note indicated that “advertisements are newly prepared for each number without extra cost.” Products promoted included writing and printing papers, type, ink, periodicals, a “talking” machine, auto tires, baking and washing powder, and soap. A further note evidenced concern for design and typography, mentioning that “advertisements may be appropriately illustrated by any artist, provided the character of design and execution are suitable for pages of this magazine. Text on electrotypes will be reset in type from Bradley: His Book fonts.”

From this point on, the Bradley career moved into high gear. In 1900 he was commissioned by the Ladies’ Home Journal to design eight full pages of house interiors; he also designed a roman and italic type.

Three years later, at thirty-five, he headed a typographic and publicity campaign for ATF (1903), and wrote and designed their famous Chap Books. In 1907 he was art editor of Collier’s; and from 1910 to 1915 the simultaneous art editor for Good Housekeeping, Metropolitan, Success, Pearson’s and National Post. Then in his early forties, he dipped into the field of the motion picture as art supervisor of serials for William Randolph Hearst. In 1918 he was writing and directing motion pictures independently. Two years later he rejoined the Hearst organization as art and typographic supervisor for their newspapers, magazines and motion pictures. In 1930, age sixty-two, he retired to southern California.

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Of the Bradley renaissance a quarter-century later, a single design accomplishment seems significant: The 1954 Portfolio in the Strathmore distinguished designer series, begun in California in 1951, completed early in 1954 and introduced at a luncheon sponsored jointly by the Typophiles and Strathmore, held at the New York University Club. The date was just a few months short of sixty years from that significant day when the first paper-use specimen was issued by Strathmore in Mittineague.

Among the speakers paying tribute were Edwin H. Carpenter of the Huntington Library; Thomas Maitland Cleland, designer and artist; A. Hyatt Mayor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Frederic G. Melcher, dean of American publishers; Carl Purington Rollins, printer emeritus to Yale University; Walter Dorwin Teague, industrial designer, F. Nelson Bridgham, Strathmore president, and the undersigned reporter, who served as toastmaster.

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