Press of the Woolly Whale records

The Press of the Woolly Whale was in operation in New York City from 1928 to 1942, during which time it produced private and limited edition volumes, publications related to printing and typographic arts, and a wide variety of ephemera that reflected the interests, professional relationships, and personal humor of Melbert Brinkerhoff Cary Jr., his wife Mary Flagler Cary, and their friends. While Cary directed the press's efforts, he employed George W. Van Vechten Jr. for typesetting and press work. Two exhibitions profiled the press's achievements (Grosvenor Library, Buffalo, New York, in 1939, and Rochester Institute of Technology in 1972); the catalogs from those exhibitions contained bibliographies which were superseded by David Pankow's checklist in Melbert B. Cary, Jr. and the Press of the Woolly Whale (Rochester: Cary Graphic Arts Press, Rochester Institute of Technology, 2002).

Melbert Brinkerhoff Cary Jr. (1892-1941), a New York businessman and prominent figure in the fields of typography and private printing during the second quarter of the twentieth century, was born in New York, the son of Melbert and Julia Metcalf Cary. Educated at the Groton School and Yale University (Class of 1916), he served in France with the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. Cary was the director of the Continental Typefounders Association, Inc., which he organized in New York City in 1925 to import from Europe the best new designs in type, initials, borders, and ornaments being developed by foundries on the continent, but cast to American type height and using the American point system so that designers and printers in the United States could use fresh and modern faces for commercial advertising.

In 1923 Cary married Mary Harkness Flagler (1901-1967), the daughter of Anne Lamont and Harry Harkness Flagler, and the granddaughter of Henry Morrison Flagler, one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company. She was raised in New York City and in Millbrook, New York, where the Carys continued to maintain homes after their marriage. Melbert Cary Jr. served as president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, was proprietor of the private Press of the Woolly Whale, and a collector of printer's manuals and type specimens, great books of the printer's art, and rare playing cards; he acquired the Kelmscott/Goudy Press (Albion No. 6551) on which William Morris had printed The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896), from Frederic W. Goudy in 1932. Mary Flagler Cary was the president of the National Orchestral Association and a collector of rare manuscript music.

George W. Van Vechten Jr., American printer, typographer, and book designer, was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, attended Carnegie Institute of Technology, and died in Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1962, at age 55. He produced private and limited edition works for thirty-five years with Frederic W. Goudy at the Village Press, with Melbert B. Cary Jr. at the Press of the Woolly Whale, and from 1941 to 1962 at his own Van Vechten Press in Metuchen. Van Vechten inherited the Kelmscott/Goudy Press (Albion No. 6551) upon Cary's death in 1941.