Carolyn Reading Hammer


Carolyn Reading Hammer was the Curator of Rare Books at the University of Kentucky Libraries and the founder of multiple book arts presses in Lexington, Kentucky. These include the Bur Press, the Anvil Press, and the King Library Press. She, along with her husband Victor Hammer, was an influential figure in modern fine printing in the United States.

Early life and education

A native of Paris, Kentucky, Hammer earned her undergraduate degree from Transylvania University and her graduate degree in library science from the Columbia University. She worked at the Library of Congress, at the Stuart Robinson School in Blackey, Kentucky, and the University of Kentucky until her retirement in 1976. She worked with Margaret I. King, the University of Kentucky's first librarian, becoming the Head of Acquisitions and later the Curator of Rare Books.

Presses

Inspired by her class on rare books at Columbia, Hammer and Amelia Buckley started the Bur Press in 1943. They printed a series of books called Kentucky Monographs as well as calendars with photographs by the Lexington Camera Club. The first book printed in Kentucky Monographs was by UK Dean of Women Margaret Newnan Wagers entitled Education of a Gentleman: Jefferson Davis at Transylvania. The members of the Bur Press included Hammer and Buckley as printers, Harriet McDonald Holladay as artist, and Mary Spears Van Meter as hand book-binder. The first printshop was in Buckley's Dudley Road basement; the second and last in a room added on to Bullock Place, Hammer's home.
The Anvil Press, an association of multiple printers, was founded in 1953. Members included Victor Hammer, Carolyn Reading, Dr. W. O. Bullock, Virginia Clark, Clavia Goodman, Lucy and Joseph Graves, Harriett McDonald, R. Hunter Middleton, Maria Bizzoni, Gordon Bechanan, Caroline Porter, Nancy Chambers, and Martha Livesay. Publications of the press include Oration on the Dignity of Man by Pico della Mirandola, The Booke of the Duchesse by Chaucer, and William Tyndale's The Four Gospels. After 1978, Carolyn Reading Hammer used the moniker of Anvil Press exclusively for her own printing after buying out the other press members.
Carolyn Reading Hammer founded the King Library Press in 1956 in the basement of the Margaret I. King Library. It was originally called the High Noon Press, because it was operated by librarians on their lunch hour. The first work produced was The Marriage of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren. Hammer served as the director of the King Library Press until her retirement in 1976.

Personal life

Carolyn Reading Hammer married Victor Hammer, an Austrian-born American printer and typographer, in 1955. She studied hand printing under Victor Hammer starting in 1949, when he served as artist in residence at Transylvania University. The couple was friends with spiritualist Thomas Merton, exchanging a lengthy correspondence.