Graphic Artist

Lucy of the "Peanuts" comic strip would call RODERICK (ROCKY) STINEHOUR '50 a "fellow fussbudget" but only to describe the nature of the typographer's work, not his temperament.

Stinehour, a former Navy fighter pilot, at once the vigorous businessman and gentle artist, is founder and president of The Stinehour Press, awardwinning scholarly printers whose works regularly land among the "Fifty Books of the Year" chosen by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

The press, located in a barn in Lunenburg, Vermont, caters to fussy customers: the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, "Harvard, Dartmouth, the Smithsonian, et al. — an impressive list which quickly dispels any thought of hayseed sticking to the type.

A typophile before he came to Dartmouth, Stinehour majored in art and developed his skills and standards in the graphic arts courses of Professor Ray Nash. He bought his press while still an undergraduate and began by printing overall labels. Now the moneymaking Stinehour Press no longer solicits customers. Its reputation for fine bookmaking brings in jobs for fourcolor art books, books on the anatomy of the brain and nerves, chronologies for local historical societies, and enduring books for the Limited Editions Club.

Ideally Stinehour likes free rein on the entire project - selection of paper, typeface, design. Some customers give orders, but he refuses to accept any printing job that violates his standards.

"We're often able to give our customers much more than they knew they wanted," he says. "We know the possibilities of print."

In addition to his brother Laurance, who runs the small Hanover branch of the press, Stinehour has recruited about twenty other long-term employees whose qualifications range from business know-how, and experience as a casket factory foreman, to a Harvard background in classics. In his nonunion shop there are more typographers, in the true sense, than pressmen. His hand-picked employees manage their own work and are versatile enough to switch jobs to handle the most urgent problems.

The press provides a vivid contrast to the larger commercial printers whose employees are one-job men and who don't want to interrupt presses for short runs or do the fastidious makeready that fine printing requires.

Stinehour pays personal attention to the smallest details. He designed a watermark bearing a customer's crest for specially imported stock and then took care that the paper on the inside front cover would show off this watermark at center page.

His thriving business gives evidence there are customers who value this kind of attention and excellence.

"Good sound craftsmanship - this is what can survive and has survived in northern Vermont," he says.

Stinehour is also known in his field as the publisher of Printing & GraphicArts, a quarterly he founded with Professor Ray Nash in 1953.

One category in which he has yet to display his talents is children's books. "And that's unusual because I have eight," he boasts.