The event is supported by members of the local chapter of the Women’s Bar Association, including presenting sponsor, Keches Law Group.

Featured Artists:

• Alison Wells, painter
• Anne T. Converse, photographer
• Khepe-Ra Maat-Het-Heru, performance artist

Also show will be a video/film of interviews of local children with their responses to the question, “What is your idea of social justice?

Date: Thursday January 28, 2010
Time: 6 – 8 PM
Place: The New Bedford Whaling Museum, 18 Johnny Cake Hill,  New Bedford, MA
Admission fee: $20

RSVP by Monday, January 25, 2010 through The Women’s Fund where you may purchase a $20 admission (no tickets will be issued) or mail payment in advance to:

The Women’s Fund
63 Union Street
New Bedford, Ma 02740

T: 508.717.0283

Admission will include complementary wine and appetizers.

A stage in the manufacturing of rope. "Feed end of Spreader" (Photo by Joseph G. Tirrell)

Records of company directors and stockholders (1848-1958) including correspondence, minutes, reports, deeds and bills of sale for land or ships purchased by the firm, tax appraisals, and proposals relating to the company’s physical plant; correspondence, general accounts, employee’s wage book, and production and sales records reflecting the firm’s manufacture of binder twine, transmission rope, rope cables, and nylon rope for U.S. and world markets; product catalogs and advertisements (ca. 1911-1958); articles of organization of Cordage Institute, a national trade organization; and memoir and newspaper clippings concerning the history of the company. Includes information relating to National Cordage Company and Travers Brothers Company, both in New York, N.Y. Persons represented include Francis A. Bryant and Martin Walter, Jr., presidents of the company.

Original funds for processing this collection were provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Coach with two large rolls of cordage in front of the New Bedford Cordage Company. (Photo by Joseph G. Tirrell)

Visit our flickr set to view all photos in this collection.

From publisher Basic Books:

Fast-paced, compelling, meticulously researched, and dramatically detailed, this saga from the annals of American, Irish, British, and Australian history comprises the first full telling of the secret yearlong journey of the American whaling ship Catalpa, under Captain George Anthony, out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1875. Risking his own freedom and career, Anthony sailed across international waters to Australia, to rescue from hellish imprisonment the group of British-soldiers-turned-Irish-rebels named “The Fremantle Six.” The successful escape and hostility the vulnerable Catalpa overcame both from the British Royal Navy and furious seas make Anthony’s historical voyage legendary. 8 pages of photographs add to this true story of daring on the high seas.

Typography is the art of designing the written word. Type is ubiquitous. It is in the books, magazines, and websites we read, the street signs we use to find our way, the fonts we choose in our MS Word documents. Letters are everywhere. In the landscape, letters reflect the culture of a time and place. As a typographer I am interested in how letters and type “live” in society, and how they change as life around them changes.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been researching lettering in New Bedford, Massachusetts. New Bedford had enough wealth early on to finance documentation of the town. Later it gained enough international fame (when the movie “Moby Dick” was produced) to warrant continued historic preservation. These days, along with the National Park Services and the Waterfront Historic Action LeaguE (WHALE) — which help keep historic buildings intact — New Bedford has the Whaling Museum Research Library to keep historic documents and photos archived and available to those studying the history of New Bedford and the history of whaling.

New Bedford is an excellent source of inspiration because of it’s financial, social, and industrial past: originally settled by Quakers from Plymouth Colony, it has been the whaling capital of the world, a major stop on the underground railroad, and one of the biggest cotton textiles producers in the US. It is also a small city that fought urban renewal, and now struggles to revitalize it’s downtown and to re-assert it’s identity.

Finally, the longevity of the town allows me to map its history against technological, political, cultural, and even typographic developments.

THE PROJECT: TYPEFACES OF NEW BEDFORD

My early personal interests in New Bedford were linked to the landscape: how certain street corners or buildings changed over time. (I can’t help but revel in the fact that life goes on around these buildings. Generations of people come and go. Businesses change. Tastes change. Technology changes. And thus, signs change.)

Later, in order to expand the scope of my research, I enlisted the help of some of my students. [type]Faces of New Bedford is an on-going undergraduate research project I facilitate with Juniors and Seniors at UMass Dartmouth as a typeface design project. Working with students allows me to conduct research on the role of lettering, writing, and typography over a period of 300+ years in a single place. In return, the project allows the members of my “research team” to learn about the process of designing and producing a typeface, while learning more about the history of New Bedford.

We lose a part of our history when letters are destroyed without documentation. Seeing how type lives in the context of society helps me better understand the history of my own field, and I’ve found it helps my students to identify with those that lived in the area. They begin to connect with and better understand both the history of the landscape and the history of typography.

THE PROCESS

In 2007 and 2008, students conducted research on the history of New Bedford — meeting with representatives from the National Park Service, WHALE, and the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library. They identified inspirational aspects of New Bedford’s history and found examples of writing and/or typography related to the times/events they were most interested in studying.

Students then designed digital versions of their chosen writing/lettering and wrote abstracts explaining their research (both “scholarly” and “creative”). The final result: 30 working typefaces and a series of 30 posters, each highlighting a different time in the history of New Bedford (1705-2007).

STUDENT WORK

Thirty typefaces have been designed over the years.

Some typefaces represent lettering from buildings and signs: the Cherry and Company Building, circa 1920; Signage for the Brightman Stationary Store located in the A. E. Coffin Building, circa 1930; Lincoln’s Department Store, circa 1938; A Boiler Repair and Welding shop, circa 1958.

Inspiration: Art Deco lettering on the Cherry and Company building, circa 1920. Photo by Jennifer Soares 2008.

Inspiration: New England Boiler Repair and Welding (in the building where “Cork” is now located) circa 1958. Photo from the Library of Congress Archives.

Other typefaces represent lettering from printed materials: text from the New Bedford Mercury, circa 1807; a broadside for an anti-slavery meeting, circa 1853; a broadside for the labor party, circa 1920.

Inspiration: A section from The New Bedford Mercury, circa 1807. From the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library .

Many typefaces are based on primary sources students found at the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library.

Steve Hickey based his typeface on the writing of John Akin, a town clerk in Dartmouth in 1705. Steve’s typeface is from the oldest artifact — a 300 year-old page of handwritten notes. Steve had to negotiate which letters to “use” in his final design. When we write by hand, we often form our letters differently from word to word. You can see below how John Atkin’s “o” changed as he wrote. Steve had to design an “o” to work in the context of every word.

Inspiration: A section from notes written by John Atkin, town clerk in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, 1705. From the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library. Note: image modified for legibility and color by Steve Hickey.

Typeface designed by Steve Hickey, 2007.

Amy Williams was inspired by the logbook kept by Seth Barlow, Jr., keeper on the brig The Nancy. Amid the day-to-day accounts about the weather, who had gotten sick or died, and the ships they saw on the open seas, she found pages of experimentation with form. Some of the letters written by Seth Barlow, Jr. where elegant script, others were bold, blocky, Roman forms. There were literally dozens of “fonts” to work with. Seth Barlow was a born letterer.

Inspiration: Logbook kept by Seth Barlow, Jr., keeper on the brig The Nancy, circa 1807. From the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library . Note: image modified (color) by Amy Williams.

Eric Galvez was intrigued by New Bedford’s wealth during the periods of prosperity linked first to the Whaling Industry and later to the Cotton Textile Industry. He was amazed that New Bedford used to be the wealthiest city in the United States! He found examples of Old Dartmouth and New Bedford insurance maps at the New Bedford Whaling Museum Library — maps that represent land ownership during prosperous times. As Eric designed a “prosperous” typeface based on one of the insurance maps, he truly understood for the first time how a typeface can communicate something more than the words on the page.

Inspiration: Cover of a Fairhaven Insurance map from 1906 — the height of the Cotton Textile Industry in New Bedford.

Typeface designed by Eric Galvez, 2007.

THE FUTURE

Students continue to work on typefaces inspired by the history of New Bedford. We’ve currently narrowed our focus to signs, and are working toward the day we will have a full New Bedford Typeface — a collection of various lettering styles from different periods in New Bedford’s history.

Unlike “regular” typefaces (e.g., Times New Roman), New Bedford won’t come in regular, bold, and italic. New Bedford is a type family built upon the history of a place, and will offer styles related to history, such as New Bedford 1880, 1920, and 1950.

Every semester we get a little closer to bringing New Bedford’s history to life in a new way. Through the letters that “lived” in New Bedford — letters and signs that changed as life around them changed.

New Bedford 1920 is in production. It is based on the Art Deco lettering from the Cherry and Company sign shown earlier in this post. The typeface was designed by Jennifer Soares, and is being refined and expanded by Justin Lilak at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

New Bedford 1958 is in production. It is based on lettering from the Boiler Repair and Welding sign shown earlier in the post. Originally designed by Kayla Hardy, the typeface is being refined and expanded by Jimmy Lee at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

NEW BEDFORD – Two days after the dawn of the new year in 1841, the whaler Acushnet tiptoed into frigid New Bedford Harbor, the first small steps on a lengthy voyage to the hunting grounds of the South Pacific. As the crew hoisted the newly christened vessel’s sails into the chill winter wind, they probably dreamed not only of warmer climes, but also of the great wealth that surrounded them in New Bedford, the whaling capital of the world. The city was among the richest in America, a commercial behemoth as massive as the leviathans its mariners harvested from the sea.

Among the names inscribed on the Acushnet’s crew list was that of a 21-year-old young man thirsty for adventure: Herman Melville. His voyage on the Acushnet served as inspiration for “Moby-Dick,’’ and the epic novel not only tells the salty tale of the elusive white whale, but also chronicles the prosperity of New Bedford at a time when whale oil and spermaceti candles powered the world.

A humpback whale caught at Icy Cape in August 1912 with the crew who made the strike.

This comprehensive multimedia presentation, developed with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, ECHO (Education Through Cultural and Historical Organizations) funding, and the generous contributions of Museum supporters, forms a new focal point for visitors experiencing the Whaling Museum. From Pursuit to Preservation guides visitors through the story of humankind’s evolving relationship with whales, from the whale as a source of survival and symbolic power, through to its exploitation for commercial wealth, to the first gropings toward scientific inquiry and contemporary methods of observation and study.

Whalebone processing in the yard of Pacific Steam Whaling Company

From ancient times, people have used the meat, oil, and bone of whales as important resources for their communities. The whale’s importance to humans’ physical well-being often fostered a symbolic cultural connection, a relationship that took many forms throughout the centuries and continues to evolve in contemporary art, literature, and popular culture. In From Pursuit to Preservation, the Whaling Museum takes visitors on a journey across time and around the world, using many items from its vast collection including unique maritime artifacts and art, photographs and whale skeletons as well as a listening station, digital picture frames, and thought-provoking interpretive signs to involve visitors in the discovery of the symbolic, spiritual, and cultural connections we share with these majestic and increasingly endangered animals.

Floating-Factory Ship THORSHAMMER with whales along side, circa 1928

Humans’ complex relationship with whales is told from the early harvesting of beached whales to the development of watercraft and weapons specifically to pursue the animals at sea. Once demand grew, an industry was born to hunt and process whales for the oil that would light the world for three centuries and the baleen that was the plastic of that age. While the Dutch and English led the way in the creation of this industry, by the early 19^th century, the United States, led by New Bedford, had the most productive whaling industry in the world. As the success of the industry began to threaten the survival of whales, new technologies made their oil less vital. And while whaling left New Bedford, the pursuit of whales continued in Europe and Asia at new levels of efficient slaughter hunting that enabled the harvest in one year to outstrip that of the previous decade in total. The move toward preserving whales came as humans hunters become so good at killing that international regulation was needed to keep whales from extermination.

National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration off the South Carolina coast working to free a young endangered right whale entangled in ropes and buoys

Visitors to the New Bedford Whaling Museum experience come away with a new concept of the power of the whale in the human imagination — representing nature’s power, the lure of the unknown, a monstrous foe, and a once abundant resource. And the Whaling Museum exhibition also creates a bridge of understanding about how the whale has come now to symbolize our emerging understanding of our place in the natural world and how profound our impact upon it can be. Our hunt now is for knowledge: the better to apply the lessons of the past to the challenges of the future.

The exhibition was designed by The PRD Group, Ltd. of Chantilly, Virginia, and fabricated by Color-Ad, of Manassas, Virginia. The Museum is grateful for their enthusiasm, hard work, and dedication to the quality of the finished product.

To view photos of the installation visit our Flickr site.

Segment One: Commercial Fishing Struggles and Survival

Segment Two: Art Scene featuring the NBWM!

Segment Three: Local Cuisine featuring Sid Wainer & Son

“There aren’t so many of those closed universes left in America, places where people share skill, custom, vocabulary, ethos, morality. Rory Nugent’s New Bedford is one of the holdouts, and it is described here with compassion and skill and humor. A classic American book”.
—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

“Lively, fascinating, and challenging. Rory Nugent has found the last of New Bedford’s indomitable fishermen, and the past comes roaring back to life just in time to make us think more deeply about the future of the seas.”
—Tony Hiss, author of The Experience of Place