Joseph Blumenthal (1897–1990)

Joseph Blumenthal was born in New York, on October 4, 1897, the son of Samuel and Rose Hart Blumenthal. After attending Cornell University, he founded his Spiral Press in New York in 1926. Blumenthal specialized in producing limited editions of fine printing for publishers including museums and libraries, as well as for clients ranging from the poet Robert Frost to the commercial publisher Random House. He closed the press in 1971 and concentrated
on writing and preparing exhibitions about the history of books and printing, working with the Pierpont Morgan Library, Dartmouth College Library, and other institutions. The Morgan Library celebrated Blumenthal in its exhibition The Spiral Press through Four Decades (1966), and for the library he organized Art of the Printed Book, 1455-1955: Masterpieces of Typography through Five Centuries in 1973. Blumenthal wrote a memoir, Typographic Years: a Printer's Journey through a Half-century, 1925-1975, which was published in 1982. His final two books were Robert Frost and his Printers (1985) and Bruce Rogers: a Life in Letters, 1870-1957 (1989), both published by W. Thomas Taylor.

Joseph Blumenthal and Ann White Blackshear were married in New York City on April 25, 1929. Ann Blumenthal had been a copywriter prior to their marriage and was active in charitable work, particularly those related to Quaker causes. Over the years, the Blumenthals had homes in New York City, in Valhalla, New York, and in West Cornwall, Connecticut. Divorced in 1951, the couple remarried again in Peekskill, New York, on April 25, 1952, and died together in their home in West Cornwall on July 11, 1990.