As a member of a network of printers, designers, and bibliophiles, Carl Purington Rollins (1880-1960) helped transform graphic design and bibliographic studies in the United States. During his career, Rollins designed over 2,000 books and 8,000 pieces of ephemera. By applying the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement and design principles based on historical precedents to contemporary books and ephemera, he influenced the appearance of printed materials in twentieth-century America. This survey of the life and work of Rollins tells the story of the presses and collaborations with which he was involved.

In addition to his printing and design output, he helped Yale University become an internationally renowned center for printing and the graphic arts, and his teaching at the Bibliographical Press, affiliated with the university's library, established design standards for scholarly publishing and for the teaching of hands-on bookmaking processes within academia. Through consulting, lecturing, and teaching, Rollins shared teaching practices he developed at the Bibliographical Press with faculty members and librarians at a number of colleges and universities.

A Printer with My Hands, which draws extensively on archival sources and is illustrated with images of Rollins' work, documents his distinguished career and explores his collaborations with his wife Margaret Dickey Rollins and his colleagues William Addison Dwiggins, Bruce Rogers, and Hannah Dustin French. Offering a fresh perspective into printing history and new insight into the origins of the bibliographical-press movement, this eminently readable book will appeal to bibliophiles of all types.

81 full-color illustrations.

Katherine M. Ruffin holds an AB in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College, an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama, and a PhD in Library and Information Science from Simmons University. She has published limited-edition books and broadsides under the imprint Shinola Press since 1994. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections.

Katherine is the Director of the Book Studies Program and Senior Lecturer in Art at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. Since 2000, she has been teaching in the Book Arts Laboratory in Clapp Library. Her teaching practice is focused on integrating letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking into various aspects of the liberal-arts curriculum. In addition to managing the college's Book Arts Lab and the Papermaking Studio, she directs the activities of the Annis Press, the lab's imprint. She also coordinates the college's library-based Book Studies initiative.

Katherine teaches the history of the book at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University. With John Kristensen of Firefly Press, she teaches a class on the History of 19th and 20th Century Typography and Printing at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. She served as Vice President for Publications for the American Printing History Association from 2016 to 2020. She was elected to membership in the Society of Printers in 2002 and to the American Antiquarian Society in 2022. The School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama honored her with an Outstanding Book Arts Alumnae Award in 2024.