Bibliophiles across the state will soon appreciate the work of Tracy Honn, director of the Silver Buckle Press. Honn recently designed the promotional poster for the Wisconsin Book Festival, which will be held in Madison, Oct. 22-26.
Honn received an invitation from the Wisconsin
Book Festival this spring to design the poster, 
which
will be copied and posted across the state. Along with the commission for
the art work the Silver Buckle Press is hand printing 50 limited edition pieces
for the Wisconsin Book Festival.
Honn, shown working on the Vandercook press to the right, designed and printed
the three-color, limited-edition posters. Honn’s Silver Buckle Press
artwork was commissioned by the Wisconsin Humanities Council for their second
annual Wisconsin Book Festival. The festival will use the design
for its offset poster advertising the event throughout the state.
“We’re thrilled the Silver Buckle Press was invited to do the artwork, since the festival poster will be on display all over Wisconsin this fall, and lots of people will see our work. It’s a cheerful and exuberant design that uses a lot of our historic wood type.”
Rachel Melis, a graduate art student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, also assisted in creating the limited-edition posters.
The Silver
Buckle Press, housed in Memorial Library, is a working letterpress museum
with
movable type designed to create limited-edition pieces such as the poster
in progress on the left.
The UW-Madison libraries purchased the collection in 1973, from
the late Robert Shaftoe's estate. Shaftoe initially assembled the presses
with the intent to pursue "printing pleasure and enlightenment,"
ac
cording
to the Silver Buckle Press's Web site. The collection, consisting of more
than 200 different fonts and a variety of presses, serves as an educational
tool as well as a working press.
The Wisconsin Book Festival will run Oct. 22-26 in Madison, although smaller events are held elsewhere in the state throughout the year. This year's presenters include Madison natives Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer and most recently author of Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, and Dwight Allen, author of Judge. Grace Paley, a renowned poet, essayist and feminist who authored many works, including three short story collections, will also attend the festival as a keynote speaker.
Last year's activities, in the festival's inaugural session,
drew more than 8,000 people to Madison over the five-day period.
