Victor Hammer - Professional Artist

Professional Artist

Hammer produced his first type design, Hammer Uncial, in 1921. In 1922, he moved to Florence, Italy, where he set up a printing press. In 1929, he moved his printing operation into the Villa Santuccio in Florence and named it the Stamperia del Santuccio. The first book that was printed in this operation was Milton's Samson Agonistes (1931), using what would be known as his Samson Uncial type. Punches for the type were cut by Paul Koch, son of Rudolf Koch. Hammer moved to Kolbsheim in Alsace in 1934 where he designed and built a chapel on an estate for a friend.

From 1936 to 1939, Hammer lived in Vienna, where he served as professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. In 1939, he secretly fled Vienna due to World War II and emigrated to the United States with his first wife, where he taught at Wells College in Aurora, New York until 1948. Here he produced American Uncial—the best known of his five typefaces.

In 1948, Hammer settled in Lexington, Kentucky and was artist-in-residence at Transylvania University, a post he held until retirement in 1953. While in Kentucky, Hammer was known for designing the official seal of Louisville, which was used until the city's city-county government merger in 2003.

Hammer built his wooden press in 1927 with the help of local Florentine craftsmen based on a press in the Laurentian Library; in 1960, the Laurentian's press was discovered to be a copy constructed in 1818. It was first used to print Samson Agonistes. When he closed his studio in 1933 the press was stored. In 1954 it was moved to the University of Kentucky where it has been in use by the King Library Press since 1959.