A Symposium in Honor of Hans Rudolf Vaget

Remember when Hans Rudolf Vaget retired from Smith College and they held a symposium in his honor. Oh, man. For two days, a who’s who of Germaphiles gathered in Northampton, Massachusetts, to sprechen Deutsch. But more importantly, they had Barry Moser make portraits of Thomas Mann and Richard Wagner and then arrange them into this handsome poster. Letterpress-printed at the Kit Rin Press in nearby Florence, Mass, this one is accompanied by the tissue makeready made by the pressman to make sure the blacks were black and the whites were white. A nice thing with a rare artifact from the printing process. (Fun Fact: The printer was paid $825 [$1,400 in 2024 dollars] to print this poster plus a 4-page 2-color program for this event. We can’t figure out if that included the paper and plates. We’re guessing it did.)