"Tramp Printer"

This week the well-worn Providence, R. I. public library offered an unusual exhibition by a gifted man who calls himself a "tramp printer." It will be shown later in New England, Midwest and Far West cities. Containing 768 items, the collection ranges from the classic Oxford Lectern Bible and some 400 other books to waggish menus, from paintings to a "No Trespassing" sign. The "tramp printer" is Bruce Rogers, greatest modern book designer. At 68, a trim, blue-eyed, steady-handed oldster who might pass for a waggish sailing captain, Bruce Rogers is to U. S. book-designing and printing what Frank Lloyd Wright is to architecture, Edward Steichen to photography.

A native of Lafayette, Ind. (where he was an art-classmate at Purdue of George Ade and John T. McCutcheon), Bruce Rogers decided on book-designing instead of painting when he saw the first books of William Morris' famed Kelmscott Press. In the '90s, when Bruce Rogers started his career, U. S. books were as dingily printed as they were apt to be turgidly written. They provided an aesthetic sensation for readers not unlike that of walking along a muddy road in the dark. Bruce Rogers' imaginative, lucid, unaffected craftsmanship let air and light into book pages. Other designers have matched his craftsmanship, but not his creativeness.

Bibliophiles are responsible for Bruce Rogers' reputation as "a limited editions man." But expensive limited editions, such as his Montaigne and Oxford Bible, account only indirectly for Bruce Rogers' influence on U. S. and British bookmaking. Far more influential were the trade editions he designed during his 17 years with Houghton Mifflin's Riverside Press. More concrete is his influence on such disciples as Milton Click, chief designer for Viking Press, whose books are among the most attractive now published. "B. R." is not particularly interested in de luxe editions as such. Of his 400-odd books, he himself owns less than 75, few of the expensive ones.

Now at work on the Limited Editions Club's 37-volume Shakespeare, he still holds his job as adviser to the Harvard University Press. Theoretically he is supposed to be retired; the catch is that he cannot afford to be. As independent as he is softspoken, Bruce Rogers prefers to die in harness rather than cash in on purely commercial work. Last year his earnings were $1,200; his peak (for two years only) was $10,000 a year.

His luxuries (which he puts before the necessaries) are his small Connecticut country place, "October House," a small sailboat on Connecticut's Candlewood Lake, and summer cruises in the Baltic on Finnish windjammers. He reads few books, would "rather open a vein than write," though T. E. Lawrence frequently made corrections in the Odyssey at his suggestion. (Rogers suggested the Odyssey translation to Lawrence.) Fond of bright clothing, Italian cooking, puns and typographical horseplay, Bruce Rogers particularly likes lying abed mornings. On his tombstone, chuckles "B. R.," he would like to have chiseled these instructions for the Angel Gabriel: "Call me last."

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