On Sunday, April 18, type designer and book artist Russell Maret gave an illustrated lecture on “Letter Forms as Content” at 3 p.m. in Hill Memorial Library on the LSU campus.

Maret, who began studying letterpress printing and typography in 1989, discussed the development of his work and the evolution of his obsession with the alphabet.
           
This free event was sponsored by the LSU Libraries and the Baton Rouge Bibliophiles.
           
In his book, “Mediaeval in Padua,” Maret explores and illustrates the multitude of variant forms, calligraphic whimsy and sculptural skill of anonymous artisans in Padua, Italy, whose work crosses the centuries to illustrate the transition from Romanesque lettering to the highly ornamental and regimented Round Gothic epigraphic style. He has just completed a residency at the American Academy in Rome, which provided him with rich resources for further study of historical letterforms.
           
In Maret’s most recent book, “Aethelwold Etc.: Twenty-Six Letters Inspired by Other Letters and Non-Letters and Little Bits of Poetry Rendered with Accompanying Notes,” the text and images were printed from 163 plates in 105 different colors on a hand-fed Vandercook Universal III proof press. The book was bound and boxed in Texas by Craig Jensen and Gary McLerran at Book Lab II.
           
Maret began studying letterpress printing in 1989 with Peter Koch in San Francisco and went on to be resident printer at the Press in Tuscany Alley. He continued his studies at Firefly Press in Somerville, Mass., where he worked as a Monotype and Linotype compositor, as well as a pressman. He returned to New York in 1993 and began printing and bookbinding at the Center for Book Arts, where he was artist-in-residence in 1996. In the late 1990s, he began to study and explore geometric and pre-typographic alphabetic form, a focus from which his current work on the alphabet has developed.
           
Maret also won the 2009 Rome Prize in Design, an endowed residency awarded each year given to 15 emerging artists to refine their artistic aptitudes while living at the American Academy on the Janiculum, Rome's highest hill. During that time, Maret documented and map all of the in situ lettering in the accessible roman catacombs and evaluated the variant lettering styles found there.  His project, “The Subterranean Antique Letter,” will be documented in a forthcoming monograph as part of his series of books titled “Swan & Hoop.”
           
Maret has taught and lectured on letterpress printing, bookbinding, the history of letter forms and the history of the book at the Center for Book Arts, New York; the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, Ct.; La Casa del Libro, San Juan; and La Escuela de Artes Plasticas de Puerto Rico, San Juan.
           
For additional information on Maret, visitwww.russellmaret.com or visit .