Walter Hamady

Walter Samuel Haatoum Hamady (born September 13, 1940) is an American artist, book designer, papermaker, poet and teacher. He is especially known for his innovative efforts in letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking. In the mid-1960s, he founded The Perishable Press Limited and the Shadwell Papermill, and soon after joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught for more than thirty years.

On his father's side, Hamady is descended from Lebanese Druze immigrants who founded a prominent grocery store chain in Flint, Michigan. His mother was an Iowa-born physician (a pediatrician and, later, a psychiatrist). His parents' marriage fell apart during Hamady's childhood, resulting in his being raised by his mother, with the support of his paternal grandfather (his beloved Jidu (grandfather)), Ralph Haatoum Hamady, whom Hamady has described as "a wonderful man [from Baaqline, Lebanon] who came to America as a teenager in 1907".

After high school, Hamady studied art at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan (BFA 1964), and at nearby Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA 1966). While still an undergraduate, concurrent with a visit to his relatives in Iowa City, Iowa, he was introduced to book artist Harry Duncan, who was a teacher at the time at the University of Iowa (Iowa City), and an important contributor to the revival of interest in letterpress printing. During that visit, Hamady saw for the first time a finely printed handmade book, in the tradition of the Kelmscott Press of William Morris, and the Private Press Movement. Soon after, in Detroit in 1964, while still an undergraduate, he founded his own press, which he named The Perishable Press Limited. And then, as a graduate student at Cranbrook, he launched the Shadwell Papermill, by which he contributed to the experimental use of handmade papers.

In 1966, Hamady became a member of the art faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where for over thirty years he taught papermaking, letterpress printing, and bookbinding. Using the Perishable Press trade name, he has designed and printed 131 limited edition books by such well-known writers as Paul Blackburn, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan (the Black Mountain poets), Loren Eiseley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Bernard, Clarence Major, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, W.S. Merwin, Howard Nemerov, Toby Olson, Richard Wiley, Joel Oppenheimer, Reeve Lindbergh, Jonathan Williams, William Stafford, Bobby Byrd and Paul Auster. In the process, he has also collaborated with a number of visual artists (who have illustrated his books), among them John Wilde, Henrik Drescher, David McLimans, Jim Lee, Peter Sis, Margaret Sunday, Lane Hall, and Jack Beal. While admired for his artist's books, he is equally or even more widely admired for his achievements as a teacher. One of his students was the 2015 United States Artists Fellow Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

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