Type@Cooper: Tales from the Kelly Collection Catalog, or Typographic Research as Tool Builder with David Shields <meta property=

Rob Roy Kelly’s published research — including <em>American Wood Type 1828–1900</em> (1969) — helped fuel a revival of interest in nineteenth-century American printing types. His work continues to be an important starting point for current scholarly inquiry. The University of Texas Press published a monograph I researched, wrote, and designed The <em>Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection: A History and Catalog</em> which functions as a ‘close’ reading of the collection. I’ve approached the collection as more than simply the 18,000+ pieces of wood type acquired by Kelly and dynamically defined it in broader terms as a range of objects, publications, research papers, and attendant activities in a number of archives around the United States. Viewing the collection broadly has provided the opportunity to look past Kelly as the sole instigator and investigator and perceive him as a link in the broader network of relationships that led to the success of his research project. The physical presence of the published book has helped me reconsider my own research work for the manuscript, not simply as a mode of historicization, but as developing a set of tools that could be useful to other (typographic) research projects.