November Evening Program

In this program, Lauren Hewes will introduce Caxton Club members to the Stephen D. Paine Collection of American Ephemera at the American Antiquarian Society, a national research library located in Worcester, Massachusetts. The talk will include an overview of the 18,000 objects in the Paine Collection – a private collection built between c.1975 and 1997 and recently donated to AAS – and an explanation of the Society’s larger ephemera holdings. Hewes will discuss how libraries decide what qualifies as “ephemera” and how researchers have used pre-1900 ephemeral objects in their projects.

Lauren Hewes is the vice president for collections and Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts. She manages and oversees the Society’s acquisition, cataloging, conservation, curatorial and readers’ services departments. She is also the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts and builds and cares for the Society’s extensive collections of prints, broadsides, ephemera, and photographs, working with the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC), AAS fellows, and outside scholars to make connections between American history and the visual resources of the Society. Lauren has previously held positions at the Print Council of America, the National Park Service, and Shelburne Museum, and she has published widely on American printmaking and portraiture. She has a BS from Ithaca College and an MA in art history from Williams College.

Register today.

Zoom presentation is free and open to all.

Zoom begins at 6:30PM CT/7:30 PM ET. Preregistration required via website.

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.

November Midday Program

Have you stretched an animal skin lately? Prepared its surface to accept ink? Collected oak galls to make ink? Scribed? Added rubrics and colored initials? How about applied gesso and then adhered gold to it? Painstakingly painted on vellum?

Our guest Sara Charles has. To paraphrase the movie Pulp Fiction, she will go Medieval on us.

But worry not. Her talents are all for good – particularly as they inform her wonderful book, The Medieval Scriptorium (Reaktion Books, Ltd., 2024). In it she brings to life the grueling, creative, smelly, artistic, earwax-laden, glittering, backbreaking, world of creating books fully by hand.

This talented book historian will be joining us from the University of London, where she is co-editor of Historical Research and Journals Manager for University of London Press. She has appeared at Canterbury Cathedral in the documentary series History Hit, presents fascinating how-to videos on YouTube, shares content on teachingmanuscripts.com and continues to create illuminated manuscripts that are breathtakingly beautiful.

Great news! You won’t have to find and sharpen a quill, dip it ink you’ve made yourself, and copy dense text in order to register. You can sit in your comfy chair, login, and register online. No squinting required.

November Evening Program

Book artist and letterpress printer Jessica Spring will share strange-but-true tales of her journey from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, guided by wise mentors – and some villains – who continue to inspire another climb into the press bed.

Spring began her interest in typography as a phototypesetter in the 1980s working for the college newspaper and learning graphic design. After graduation, she continued typesetting, working at the last typesetting shop on Printer’s Row, then at the Chicago Reader. Spring co-founded a graphic design firm, and for over a decade, offered letterpress printing while also serving predominantly nonprofit clients. As her interest in book arts grew, she attended graduate school at Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts and founded Springtide Press in 1999.

By 2003, Spring moved to Tacoma, Washington. She taught book arts for decades at Pacific Lutheran University and continues to teach workshops around the country. A continued focus has been researching historic type composition, which resulted in the invention of Daredevil Furniture to help other printers set type in circles, curves, and angles. Collaborations are a vital part of her work, including many years co-producing the Dead Feminists series and co-authoring Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color.

The projects at Springtide Press include artists books, broadsides, and ephemera, and can be found in collections around the country and abroad. Small finely-crafted editions and one-of-a-kind books explore historical topics, popular culture, and typography from a unique perspective. Spring’s work focuses on amplifying voices needing to be heard, telling stories in a new way, and ultimately, preservation through production.

Our shop motto, “where we always print damp” recognizes the Pacific Northwest as a fine place to print, where the damp climate helps make a good impression.

This is the night the Caxton Club will announce its own book artist grants recipients. Register today.

Reception 5:30 PM CT. Presentation 6:30. Hot buffet dinner with vegetarian options to follow. Club members: remember to bring your Caxton badge.

Transportation to the Union League Club at 65 West Jackson Blvd., Chicago.

The Union League Club is easily accessible through many public transportation methods. Additionally, the following options are available for those who wish to travel by cab or car.

The Union League Club front desk offers a connection to cab service through Curb. The desk will call cabs for members and all guests while allowing riders to remain inside until the cab arrives. No curb side wait. Cabs will accept all payment forms, following the payment procedures you experience with a street-hailed cab.

If you are traveling by car, the Union League Club offers valet parking for Caxton events at $35.00. You must register and prepay in advance through the Caxton Club.

Spot Hero is an independent parking option, generally offering spots at the 318 S. Federal Street garage adjacent to the Union League Club. You may reserve and pay for a guaranteed parking spot through the Spot Hero app or website (spothero.com).

December Midday Program

There is no vaccine. It can strike anyone. The chief occupant of the White House. A famous author. A lexicographer. A steel magnate.

When it takes hold the mania begins to fester and then erupts in a messianic drive to invent a new communications method that will require everyone in the United States to unlearn something they’ve been taught (or not) since childhood.

Before it subsides it can bankrupt the infected. Expose them to public ridicule. And provide a barrel of laughs to all of us who read about it, hear about it, and watch from a safe distance.

It’s the contagion that Gabe Henry reveals in his exceptionally entertaining book, Enough Is Enuf – Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell (HarperCollins 2025). Henry, also editor of Eating Salad Drunk: Haikus for the Burnout Age by Comedy Greats, will tell the sad tale of how English was mixed in a great bowl into which was dropped Celtic, Latin, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman and then seasoned by the whims of Wiliam Caxton. And about the Quixotic missions by the great and the obscure to rationalize it, as they are consumed by the thought, “If only everyone would just listen. My scheme makes so much sense.”

Quick! Register today before our whole website is taken over by emojis!

Live attendance and Carolers Luncheon

View Zoom program on eighth floor, Steel Room, Union League Club. Presentation begins at 12:00 PM CT. Optional buffet lunch with carving station, wide selection of food and deserts, Christmas carolers, and a holiday toast. A chance to dine and linger with fellow Caxtonians. Reservations and pre-payment required by 12:00 p.m. 12/09/25.

Zoom presentation is free and open to all.

Zoom begins at 12:00PM CT/1:00 PM ET. Preregistration required via website.

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Transportation to the Union League Club at 65 West Jackson Blvd., Chicago.

The Union League Club is easily accessible through many public transportation methods. Additionally, the following options are available for those who wish to travel by cab or car.

The Union League Club front desk offers a connection to cab service through Curb. The desk will call cabs for members and all guests while allowing riders to remain inside until the cab arrives. No curb side wait. Cabs will accept all payment forms, following the payment procedures you experience with a street-hailed cab.

If you are traveling by car, the Union League Club offers valet parking for Caxton events at $35.00. You must register and prepay in advance through the Caxton Club. Valet parking options will now be included as an option with all event registrations.

Spot Hero is an independent parking option, generally offering spots at the 318 S. Federal Street garage adjacent to the Union League Club. You may reserve and pay for a guaranteed parking spot through the Spot Hero app or website (spothero.com).